Twas Not A Good Day For Jenna's College Ambitions

As a teen comedy, Awkward spends a lot of time luxuriating in the hallmarks of its genre — love triangles, break-ups, hookups, unplanned teen pregnancy, you name it. It's clear, four seasons in, that all of these things are considered inexorable parts of the show. At its heart, though, Awkward is the coming of age story of one teenage girl. And that teenage girl did not have a good day in this week's episode. In fact, it kinda notoriously blows not to get into the college of your choice.

Yep, Jenna Hamilton got rejected from SCU, which means at least a couple of things: One is that you can probably bid adieu to the idea of Luke returning (unless he's willing to do the long-distance thing). Another, bigger one is that it's gonna leave Jenna to re-calibrate some things about her life. Matty mentions off-hand that she (thank goodness) applied to more than one school, so she'll likely get accepted somewhere — but Jenna's storyline this episode dealt more with her coming to terms with the constant rejection that will be a part of her life as she embarks on her chosen career as a writer.

There's a lot in the air as our main characters head into their final stretch of high school: What's the future of Jenna and Matty? Will they remain adorable friends or fall into each other's romantic clutches again? Will this show actually tackle the college years, or will they try to find a way around it? None of this was addressed head-on in this episode, but it's certainly something lurking in the background.

Once Jenna funnels her thwarted dreams into thinking of it as the beginning of her writer's dues-paying, Jenna actually kind of starts to rock the rejection thing: She owned it, she looked forward — and then she used it as an excuse to give a speech to Owen and then mack on him for a while. Girl's still a teenager, after all.

Image: MTV