'He's a bit of a control freak': Boy George's manager Paul Kemsley says he hopes singer 'won't kick off' on I'm A Celebrity. 'I can't.!' Seann Walsh can't stop laughing as he realises his new I'm A Celeb campmate is Matt Hancock and warns MP campmates won't like him Kate Moss looks incredible in sheer dress with plunging neckline - after stumbling over her words during speech at WSJ awardsĪnya Taylor-Joy stands out in bold blue gown with her co-star Nicholas Hoult at star-studded premiere of The Menu PEN15 Season 2 Part 2 (a.k.a Season 2B) is now streaming on Hulu.Matt Hancock's arrival goes down like a lead balloon! 'Speechless' I'm A Celebrity campmates grill MP on why he 'isn't at work' We’re lucky to have been invited to this one-of-a-kind sleepover, which wisely chose to end before it wore its guests out. The show shares big, vulnerable feelings with us, the kind that can only be conveyed through whispers after midnight. PEN15 takes universal experiences, like questioning friendships or realizing your parents don’t see you as a kid anymore, and lends them a breathtaking, taboo-shattering quality. If these final episodes are sadder than usual, it’s because the end of childhood is a bitter pill to swallow. Some moments in the show ring so clear and true that writers may as well have pulled them from viewers’ own gel-pen-covered diaries. In the end, PEN15 is a series of snapshots. But the Anna and Maya we see on screen are too vibrant and too world-hungry to stay in a cartoon-like stasis. At one point, Konkle and Erskine said they wanted to keep the characters in seventh grade forever. They’re braver now, but they’re also not as afraid to speak up about their needs. They’ve learned to tell each other they’re beautiful, and they are starting to learn to believe it. Anna and Maya might still be seventh graders, but their identities aren’t quite as fragile as they once were. It helps to have someone to laugh with, and PEN15 remains an excellent ode to adolescent friendship. Laughing together about it now so you can cry a little less about it later. Maybe growing up means wandering through trauma without realizing its impact. Still, our heroes shake it off in a realistic way. There’s a scene in the finale that’s perhaps more upsetting than the show’s creators intended. If the show’s superpower is its ability to transport us back to middle school through the specificity of storytelling, these last episodes should come with a warning label. Maya is led into a dark room by an off-putting high-school boy. Anna goes to a modeling audition that’s almost certainly a scam. PEN15, too, begins to careen towards painfully formative rites of passage with purpose. When Anna gets her braces off at the beginning of the penultimate episode, the world starts to see her differently. They’re simply unable to put a lid on the all-powerful force of their friendship. They’re distressed by the idea of cancer and the Holocaust, but they also giggle their way through funerals. Maya and Anna are at once perpetually self-involved and earnestly concerned. The adult lead actors (who also co-created the show with Sam Zbibleman) continue to embody facets of their teen selves with easy authenticity. Maya has just received an ADD diagnosis, and she spins out into tantrums whenever reality starts to feel too real. Her dad lost the house, and she says she’s worried about what he’ll do if he feels like he’s lost her, too. So when PEN15 gets darker, as it often does in Season 2B, it’s a darkness that’s easy to absorb and tough to shake off.Īnna’s parents broke up. The show’s writers tap into a hyper-specific feeling of over-exhausted melodrama that’s too real for comfort. In an early episode, for example, seventh-graders Anna ( Anna Konkle) and Maya ( Maya Erskine) attend a sleepover that goes on far too long. PEN15 communicates a keen sense of emotional intimacy. It’s rife with perfectly impressionistic memories that adults could point to and say, “That’s when I wasn’t a kid anymore.” The back half of Season 2 is made up of uneasy defining moments. PEN15 has always been a warts-and-all portrayal of adolescence - one of the best since Freaks & Geeks. With its final seven episodes, the Hulu series displays an acute awareness of that often-unstoppable shove towards adulthood. In part 2 of its second season, PEN15 captures this feeling with painful precision. There are moments when teens teeter on the edge, anxious and exhilarated, only to find themselves tumbling into a new phase of life that they don’t understand. In reality, growing up can feel more like being pushed. It implies an easy progression, a sort of natural blooming. The phrase “coming-of-age” has always been a bit lacking.
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