When I was in middle school, my best friend and I wore best friend heart necklaces from Claire’s as a symbol of our everlasting friendship. Aside from this memorable slice of my youth, middle school was a mortifying period of my life. Junior high is the bridge between elementary and high school, the gap between childhood and being a teenager, and a whirlpool of angst, raging hormones, and sheer awkwardness. Sometimes, the only thing that makes it a little less painful is having a best friend by your side throughout the terrifying journey.
For decades, female friendship in teen television has consisted of women being pitted against each other rather than being portrayed in genuine ways. Instead of choosing to highlight the power that female friendship can have — especially during formative years — edgy narratives have consistently placed women in toxic friendships that consisted of backstabbing and sometimes disingenuous dynamics. For instance, throughout Gossip Girl’s six-season run, iconic duo Serena van der Woodsen (Blake Lively) and Blair Waldorf (Leighton Meester) often acted in ways that only served themselves, and while they did have their good moments together, those were usually overshadowed by the intricate plots the pair crafted to hurt each other. As much as I personally enjoy watching dramatic teen shows that fall into guilty pleasure territory, my heart is flooded with joy when I discover those that offer a heartwarming look at friendship from the perspective of women.
Enter Pen15, Hulu’s refreshingly authentic cringe-comedy that depicts the devoted friendship between two seventh-grade girls in its purest form.
Set in 2000, Pen15 follows Maya Ishii-Peters and Anna Kone, a pair of ride-or-die best friends trying to navigate the world of taboo subjects such as periods, unrequited crushes, thongs, instant messaging, and desire. The twist, however, is that the two tween protagonists are played by the show’s thirtysomething co-creators and real-life best friends, Maya Erskine and Anna Konkle, alongside an ensemble composed of actual middle school-aged actors. With Maya’s bowl cut, Anna’s silver braces, their Limited Too-esque fashion, and the precise physicality that adopts the average teen’s poor posture, Erskine and Konkle fully transform into thirteen-year-olds. They are so believable as versions of their younger selves that I often find myself forgetting that the characters are being played by adults.
Anna and Maya are each other’s foils. While Anna has a reserved wallflower personality, Maya is impulsive and rambunctious, which makes them two halves that form a perfect whole. When I tore through the show’s first season in 2019, I immediately felt a connection to them because I, too, was a middle school outcast who had very few friends and tried desperately to fit in in ways that often failed. Watching some of my most vulnerable years be recreated is both cathartic and anxiety-inducing, but also makes me feel understood in a way that I hadn’t before.
At its core, Pen15 is a sincere love letter to BFF love. Maya and Anna are inseparable, experiencing almost everything together, from their first step into middle school to their first cigarettes and thongs. They are totally unafraid to be themselves when around each other; they play with dolls, gush about their crushes over the landline, and experiment with witchcraft.
The first episode of the series begins on the night before seventh grade as Maya and Anna look through their yearbooks while chatting on the phone about how seventh grade is going to be the best year of their lives. Just a few minutes later, their dreams are crushed as Maya is dubbed the UGIS (Ugliest Girl in School). “You are my actual rainbow gel pen in a sea of blue and black writing utensils,” Anna reassures Maya afterwards. They make a pact to endure the horrors of middle school together, regardless of what bumps there may be in the road.
The sophomore season is rooted in the emotional aspects of growing up, taking a deeper examination of the bond between Maya and Anna as puberty and the turmoils of adolescence stretch their friendship to a breaking point. As Anna attempts to deal with her parents’ impending divorce, Maya continues to explore her sexuality and her ill-fated crush on the school heartthrob. All the while, a rich girl named Maura (Ashlee Grubbs) — a villain undoubtedly worse than any mean girl on TV, perhaps because we have all most likely known someone like her at least once in our lifetime — inserts herself into the tight-knit friendship and pulls it out of orbit. From the inside, Maura slowly rips apart Maya and Anna’s friendship by feeding off of Anna’s insecurities and slowly turning her against Maya, culminating in a sleepover that goes horribly wrong.
The show’s most touching scene comes from the season 2 episode “Sleepover.” As Maya soaks in a yuzu bath with her mom (played by Erskine’s own mom, Mutsuko Erskine), Maya’s mom comforts her by telling her that her mind is like a “salad bowl” that holds the things that are most important to her. After discarding the “junk” in her invisible bowl, Maya picks up a yuzu from the bath and places it on her head, representing Anna, something that she wants to cherish and maintain in her life. Pen15 recalls a time when your best friend is your entire world, where no matter what happens in that phase of your life, you both have each other and that’s what truly matters most in the end.
Erskine and Konkle have said that Maya and Anna will forever remain in the seventh grade, which is fitting since middle school feels like an inescapable hell most of the time. While I had not yet been born in the year 2000, Pen15 is strikingly accurate in mirroring the anxieties of my middle school experiences. Regardless of the era you were in middle school, the series understands the universal experiences of adolescence and transports us back to our cringe-infested memories of that time in our lives. There is truly no TV show that understands teenage friendship and the horrors of middle school better than Pen15.
