Can 'Awkward' Become A Teen Show Classic?

I don't know what I expected from MTV's Awkward when I first decided to watch it. I know I'd seen the logline on IMDb and side-eyed it so hard I had to check the show out for myself before railing about its insensitivity to my friends and turns out, I ended up not railing about it at all. I was taken in by the Awkward's emotional aesthetic. As much as I sort of liked it, though, I did not expect Awkward, for all its flaws, to actually morph into a long-form portrayal of relatively realistic high school relationships. Somehow, though, it did — and nothing's proving that more than the trailer for Awkward 's Season 4.

The show has its share of the ludicrous, of course: Tamra, Sadie, Val, and other supporting characters are somewhat deep, but they're still the source of very heightened and occasionally insensitive comedy. And the teen tropes are of course there — the friends with benefits (this time between Jenna and Matty), the hot new girl encroaching on romantic "territory," the potential romance with a college boy — but there's also a through line that might be... genuinely emotionally resonant? The dredging up of past emotional buttons (i.e. Jenna's first season insecurities about how Matty feels about her), the need for emotional space translating into more complicated relationships, the pressures the final year of high school puts on those friendships and romances, etc. It feels real.

This show is far from perfect but this season's shaping up to be teen classic in the very best way.

Image: MTV