In the greenhouse with Maya and Anna (Hulu’s PEN15, S2E3) — In the greenhouse with Maya and Anna (Hulu’s *PEN15*, S2E3)

PEN15 is a show that fits neatly into the box of “things Michael will definitely watch.” Two middle school friends struggle with the coming reality of high school, relationships, family drama, and the internet. In the first season, Maya and Anna go through a series of first desires (first kiss, first period, first time talking to an older boy online, etc.), making a pact to experience everything together, as best friends. Created by, written by, and starring comedians Maya Erskine and Anna Konkle, the show pulls hard on what it was to be a teenager in the 90s.

To set up this episode, you need to know a few things:

- In season 1, Maya is hopelessly in love with the cutest boy in school, Brandt, who she ultimately gets felt up by in the janitor’s closet at the school dance (along with Anna, because they do everything together, awkwardly). At the end of this scene, Brandt tells Maya that he loves her. Season 2 reckons with this admission and whether it was really about getting the chance to feel her up (telling her whatever she wants to hear) or a real heartfelt admission (of which he is now embarrassed to have).

- Anna’s family is breaking apart. In season 1, her parents go on a retreat to save their marriage, which ultimately dissolves anyway. Season 2 deals with this reality. Her parents are separated but living together in their family house, trying to make co-parenting work while also trying to decide if they should fully separate through a divorce and live in different houses.

- Maya and Anna are not popular. They are nerdy and awkward and basically only have each other. Often, in school, they are ostracized, trying desperately to fit into many groups - trying to find a path to “cool.” In the previous episode, to great comedic effect, they join the wrestling team (Maya, to have time and physical contact with Brandt, and Anna to help Maya but also to fit in with the boys on the team and find that inevitable “coolness” that comes from being a part of sports.) Their efforts often fail them, due to their true nature as best friends and weirdos. This creates conflict between them, but also between them and the rest of the school. It’s a great way to build inciting incidents into the plot, allowing an entire season to remain intact while also feeling a bit random (like school as a younger person can often feel).

In this episode

Maya is at Anna's house, watching “Are You Afraid of the Dark?,” when they hear Anna’s parents fighting in the kitchen. They sneak over to find that this fight is actually quite violent (things are broken and thrown). They run from the house and enter a semi-real world filled with coincidence, absurdity, and childish play from this point, which on the second viewing highlights the question “how much of this is happening?”

In a clearing, far from Anna’s house, Maya tries to lighten the mood - to distract Anna from her reality - by pretending there’s a little green man who steals sticks when she’s not looking. They find a business card in a tree they are climbing on, for Wendy Viccany. Maya quickly transposes the name to create WICCANy. Wendy is the Witch Mother that now guides them and gives them power.

What follows is a great scene of character-revealing dialogue. They voice wishes to their new Witch Mother aloud, yelling to no one:

Maya (who is Asian American and struggles with her appearance and body hair): “I wish for blond hair!”

Anna: “I wish for more money!”

Maya: “I wish for my dad to be home!”

Anna: “I wish I wasn’t a problem!”

Maya: “I wish for a bigger house and no body hair!”

Anna: “Only one at a time. I wish for white jeans and that the closet never happened with Brandt!”

Maya: “You just said one at a time. For Omikochan to smell better!”

Anna: “I wish I had my period!”

Maya: “I wish for a group of friends that love us!”

Anna: “I wish for peace everywhere!”

Anna (Hulu’s PEN15, S2E3) — Anna (Hulu’s *PEN15, S2E3)*

In this moment, again, reality seeps through. Maya, who is insecure about her body and appearance, focuses on herself but also the root of what she believes are her family issues. Her father, who is a traveling musician, is away. He only visits every few months. Her parents are together, but her dad is away. Maya believes if her dad were home, and they had a bigger house, things would be better. Blond hair and no body hair describe her ideal appearance. What she sees in magazines and at school (even in middle school). What she perceives as normal. A group of friends that love us admits that even though they have each other, always, they want to be popular (at least with a group of friends).

Anna, understandably (and central to the episode plot), focuses on her parents’ impending divorce. If there were only more money, her parents wouldn’t be stressed and maybe they wouldn’t divorce. She sees herself as a problem, getting in trouble at school, or in life, creating more stress for them through her teenage ways. If only she wasn’t so much of a problem, they would stay together. Anna wishes for white jeans (to be popular in fashion), and that she hadn’t been felt up by Brandt at the end of season one because it caused problems between Maya and her. She wishes for her period, something hanging over from last season that she never got. A first. Something, although she doesn’t know it for a few more episodes, that Maya has already gotten without her. I wish for peace everywhere. An end to problems.

As a quick aside before we get back to the plot of this episode. There is a great interruption in this set of wishes that breaks up the monotony of the format. Instead of “I wish...” ten times in a row, the dialogue is interrupted by the brief exchange about doing two in a row. This causes a very small disruption in the format, which makes it more authentic but also less monotonous.

After wishing, things start to happen. The real gets further away for a moment. Maya’s dad does come home, fulfilling her wish and solidifying that she does indeed have powers. She calls Anna and asks if any of her wishes have come true. The truth is, not really at that moment, but she stretches to look anyway. Later that night, Anna hears her parents have sex through the wall of her bedroom - hope. This hope drives Anna to create a book of spells.

In a greenhouse at school, which we learn they’re not supposed to be in, they set out to perform the ultimate spell casting - a crazed prayer to Mother Witch filled with the kind of wonderful gibberish teenagers make up and assign meaning to. They are discovered by some kids playing soccer nearby, who can see through a small opening in the greenhouse wall. One of the kids gets the principal and after a truly absurd and great speak-in-tongues/manic episode, they are both in trouble. Their parents are called. (This, in story structure terms, leads us into the Turning Point complication for Anna - her parents, who are already on thin ice with each other, fight more about how it is unclear to Anna what they are doing. They decide to fully divorce and live separately.)

While waiting for their parents to pick them up, Maya and Anna sit on the curb. Anna notices her crush from last season, who she performed a fall-out-of-love-with spell on, sitting on a bench. It worked! The lovey music that plays when he is around isn’t present and she doesn’t love him (as much). A girl sits next to him on a bench and she is forced to admit that she was wrong, it still kind of stings to see him with someone else.

For Maya though, who wished for Brandt to love her back (solidified by the spell in the greenhouse), the outcome is much more devastating. Anna notices him on his bike, behind them. Maya goes up to him and tries to find a way to tell if the spell worked. He calls her a freak and very loudly, very publicly, tells her he doesn’t love her and that Maya needs to leave him alone. The knife is plunged deep. (This is one half of Maya’s Turning Point complication. The other comes a few moments later when, after slamming her bedroom door in a fight with her parents about her weird school behavior, her brother comes in to tell her that she should just leave and that she sucks.)

Anna calls Maya at this moment, when things are the lowest for both of them, and says she found a spell to disappear forever. Anna is scary serious about this and tells Maya to meet her at their spot (the clearing, by the tree where the Wendy Viccany card was found).

When Maya arrives, Anna is already starting the ritual. She’s cut her hand, adding blood to the spell, and tells Maya to cut hers too. She’s found a way to disappear forever.

Here is the crisis: Should Maya go along with Anna, embracing the lowest point in their teenage lives, and “disappear forever”?

Anna’s ritual to disappear (Hulu’s PEN15, S2E3) — Anna’s ritual to disappear (Hulu’s *PEN15*, S2E3)

The climax: Maya stops the ritual with Anna and says that she can’t disappear because she needs Anna. She is her family. They are each other's family. Anna breaks down and reality, once again, sets in. Maya holds her crying friend, comforting her.

Resolution: The shot cuts to the same position in Anna’s yard - the same ritual items, the same crying friend in Maya’s arms, etc. - implying lightly that there was no clearing with the tree. There was no magical adventure. When they escaped the house in the beginning, they were/may-have-been always in the front yard of Anna’s house. Anna’s mom calls for her, it’s early morning, barely dawn, and Anna goes back home. Back to reality, stronger with the support of her friend.

While only a half hour, this episode feels like such a dense and complete look at these two characters - so much so that I would recommend it as a standalone view. I believe someone could watch this episode, having never seen the show, and enjoy it fully. The moments where reality seeps into play and surrealism are packed with authentic worry and devastation. The writer, Anna Konkle (the actress and character Anna), was very aware of when there needed to be truth and the real. While it’s not explicit, the moments when Anna is determined to “disappear” are heart wrenching and so accurately speak to those moments in early life when you don’t quite know if someone is serious or if they are being dramatic without serious consequence. Would Anna have really taken her own life and implied that Maya should too? Maybe! I believe maybe that could have been a real alternative to this climactic scene. The moments of Real support this. I wish I wasn’t a problem. The ritual to disappear isn’t playful or absurd or heightened in any way. It’s deathly serious.

The beauty of this show is in its authentic self. Anna took moments from what was either her own personal emotional journey, or that of many people she knew, and made it into the deep feeling of wanting to disappear forever. Seriously. Not as a joke, not as a dramatic reaction to something mundane - but in a way that reinforced the negative. The lowest of the low. Something has to change - either I die or I accept that this is life and seek to make a positive happen somewhere else. It’s the root of Being couched in a middle school girl’s spellbook. Anna casts the spell as “Presence is too much for those around…or those around too much... surely pretend we are gone… and never did exist.”

PEN15 sits on the razor sharp balance of awkward pre-teen emotions and the surreality of trying to become “adult”. There are moments of hormonal outburst (“stay out of my room, mom!”) paired with the effects of divorce on children - the breaking up of a family, the self-blame that follows, etc. There are moments of stark social truth; the insecurity of young girls, romance, and the bad behavior taught to young boys in culture. For a show set in the 1990s, it accurately highlights what is still very much a problem in our young people’s education and social capital. Divorce isn’t any easier now than it was twenty years ago, it’s just different. This separation of time, though, allows PEN15 to thrive in the authenticity of its author’s experience. Divorce and the end of family are not new to plot (or life), but the way it affects Anna’s relationships with young boys, and her best friend, are distinct. As an audience member, these moments feel like memory and not fabrication, which is hard to do - especially in a show that also has middle school sexual innuendo and a name like PEN15.

The first half of PEN15’s second season is out now on Hulu (along with the first season). The second half of the season was put on hold due to the outbreak of the COVI-19 pandemic, but is still planned to be finished in 2021. Please watch this show. I would love for it to continue.