Awkward. is celebrating New Year’s Eve! Nothing throws me off more than when shows celebrate holidays in the wrong season. Jenna and Matty are spending a quiet New Year’s Eve together as friends, though Jenna’s quiet candlelight dinner featuring cheap champagne seems a little more romantic than friendly. Unfortunately, mixed messages mean that Matty brings Jake along to hang out. To save face, Jenna drags Tamara over and the slightly awkward foursome plays the Resolution Game.
Over at Sadie’s, Ally hands caterer trays to Tyler and Sergio. When Sadie protests, Ally reminds her that she told Sadie and company to wear black—the party is for Ally’s sorority sisters, and the teens were always intended to be the help. Sadie tweets out the party and their address to the whole school in retaliation.
Jenna’s shindig is failing, so the group decides to go to Sadie’s. They make a Fuck It List, a list of everything they thought they were too sad or too lame to do over the past year. This spins off Matty and Jenna’s anti-wingman pact, in which they promise to prevent each other’s hookups at Sadie’s party.
Ally opens the door to find every high school student in a ten-mile radius. “Your geriatric snooze-fest just turned into a high school rager,” Sadie says smugly. Ally hugs her tightly. Jenna and Matty start doing their cockblocking dance—Matty interrupts some dude trying to help Jenna with the ice luge and Jenna stops a cougar from getting her claws in Matty. With Matty blocked, the cougar brings Jake upstairs… to introduce him to her kid in the hopes that he can play her some lullabies.
In this week’s episode of The Ways My Parents Scar Us, Lissa walks in on her dad licking a male stripper’s stomach. Sadie believes this is a good thing—now he can come out! Lissa approaches her dad about it, telling him about her newfound relationship with Tyler to get him to open up. “I’m so glad you confessed your sins, Lissa. God forgives,” he says, throwing the attention off of him. Lissa’s mother is horrified.
Jenna tries to track down Matty for a midnight toast, but can’t find him. Matty and his mom are in the midst of apologies, Matty for giving his mom so much shit and Mrs. McKibben for how she handled the adoption situation. Jenna stumbles upon Owen (a dude she blew off earlier) playing Green Day’s “Basket Case” on the piano. She hangs out with him, as Tamara and Pete told her that Matty left with the cougar. SIGH. Look with your eyes, Jenna! Besides Matty and his mom, hookups all around! Sadie and Sergio, Jake and the cougar, Lissa and Tyler—and of course, Jenna and Owen.
At school, Jenna finds out that Matty was with his mom, not hooking up with Ally’s friend on New Year’s Eve. Cue the guilt! Tamara asks where she was at midnight, so she lies and claims she was with her mom. Owen walks by and Jenna realizes that not only did she hook up with someone in the school, she hooked up with a sophomore.
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With it being New Year’s Eve, Awkward.’s second episode of the season seems to be the fresh start—the premiere wrapped up more storylines than it launched. Unfortunately, I wasn’t a big fan of this episode; we meandered around the party too much with Jenna. It felt like wasting time with very little happening. I’m hoping for more plot in the next one.
Episode Rating: 5/10
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