Ashley Rickards, Beau Mirchoff, and Brett Davern star in the MTV comedy/drama Awkward. Season one premiered on July 19, 2011, and season two kicks off on June 28, 2012.
Season 1: What You Need to Know:
Jenna Hamilton (Ashley Rickards) is a 16-year-old unpopular girl just trying to make it through high school, but that soon changes when she receives a ‘carefrontation’ letter which reads in part:
Jenna, as you are now, you could disappear and no one would notice. Below is a list of suggestions you should take into serious consideration:
1. Stop being a p***y.
2. Your instincts suck. Second guess them.
3. The only people more pathetic than you are your friends. Drop the dead weight.
4. When you’re pretty, you’re happy. And clearly you’re not happy.
5. Pull your head out of your *** and stand out.
6. Nobody likes the pitiful. Stop being such a drag.
7. You have to be cruel to be kind.
8. Make amends.
After receiving that letter, Jenna has an accident in her bathroom that involves spilling a bottle of pills then slipping on them and breaking her arm. Her parents think she tried to commit suicide, and even though she tried telling them – and everyone else – repeatedly that she wasn’t trying to, no one believes her. Her bully, Sadie Saxton (Molly Tarlov), who happens to be an overweight cheerleader (kudos to MTV for not stereotyping the cheerleader character) definitely does not let up on her after hearing about the supposed suicide attempt.
Jenna thinks her bad fortune is about to end when she loses her virginity to her long-time crush, the popular Matty McKibben (Beau Mirchoff), but that’s short-lived. She quickly gets put back into her “Miss Not Popular” place when he asks her if she can keep that between just the two of them. They continue to sleep with each other in secret.
During the first season, Jenna and her friends are on a mission to find out who wrote the “carefrontation” letter. Although their obvious first choice is Sadie, they soon realize it’s not her. Her friends suggest it might even be Matty, which Jenna doesn’t want to hear any of, but they quickly find out it was not him either.
Jake (Brett Davern), another popular jock who is best friends with Matty, realizes he has a crush on Jenna even though he has a girlfriend. Jake eventually breaks up with his girlfriend because of his feelings for Jenna, and he was tired of Lisa and Sadie bossing him around and telling him he couldn’t be friends with Jenna.
Throughout the season, we see Jenna’s relationship, or lack thereof, with her parents who had her when they were teenagers. Her mother, Lacey (Nikki Deloach), thinks she’s still a teenager herself and is more into trying to be Jenna’s friend than a parent. Lacey also tries to change her daughter because she wants her to be popular, at one point even letting Jenna throw a party when her husband goes out of town.
Someone drugs Jenna, and she ends up getting with her best friend’s boyfriend. It turns out her mother’s old high school friend who never grew up was the one who drugged Jenna. Jenna’s best friend Tamara (Jillian Rose Reed) finds out about Jenna getting with her boyfriend when photos wind up posted all over the internet. After not speaking to Jenna for a couple of episodes, they are friends again and back to trying to find out who wrote the note.
Jenna grows tired of being Matty’s secret, so she breaks it off with him. At the end of season one, Jenna and Jake go to the winter formal together, where they become a couple. Unlike Matty, Jake has no problem being seen in public with her. At the end of their winter formal date, Jenna goes home and sets the house alarm off on accident, and while looking in drawers for the code to turn it off, she finds the same paper her “carefrontation” letter was written on.
Assuming her own mother wrote the letter, it will be interesting to see what’s going to happen during season two.
The Cast:
Ashley Rickards – ‘Jenna’
Beau Mirchoff – ‘Matty’
Brett Davern – ‘Jake’
Molly Tarlov – ‘Sadie’
Jillian Rose Reed – ‘Tamara’
Jessica Lu – ‘Ming’
Desi Lydic – ‘Valerie’
Nikki Deloach – ‘Lacey’
