Awkward.

While it's combination of almost surreal humor and real emotion can sometimes be… well… awkward, the first season is still among the better and more honest series about teenagers I've seen.

I'm a male over 50, so I'm certainly not the target audience for this MTV show about a spunky blogging 15 year old girl dealing with the confusions and absurdities of sex, love, high school social politics, and well meaning but humorously dysfunctional parents and guidance counselors.

But after friends recommended it I started watching and found I appreciated it's frankness, quirky characters and good natured humor. I also liked how it dealt with issues like sex and drinking as simply a part of teenage life, neither preaching morality (kids have sex and no one gets pregnant, they know to wear condoms, and they do sometimes get their hearts broken) nor striving to shock.

The acting is all over the place, often cartoony, and a number of characters are little more than comic clichés, but as the the show goes along a surprising number of them reveal new sides and new depth. If not quite great, Awkward season 1 is quite good and very easy to enjoy... if you don't mind bringing back some of your own awkward memories as you realize the teen years really aren't so different now.

The second season seemed weaker to me, it started to push plot twists over character, and began to feel a little soapy. It still is a cut above average, but in reaching for more tension and 'what will happen?' moments, it lost some of the easy looseness that made season 1 so much fun.

If you consider the first three seasons this show is a 10/10

Everything after that is a slow decline which will make you wish the producers had the common sense to let the show end with dignity.

First season was good and I got impression that this was going to be something original & interesting. Sadly after 2nd season I started to dislike the heroine and it seemed like she was an emotional mess with questionable moral standards. Other characters stayed rather true to themselves but I didn't know where the heck the Jenna Hamilton character was going. She was all over the place and changed her mind about loving someone almost daily. A good portion of the series Jenna was twitching her face all the time while thinking her relationship with Matty. In the beginning it had seemed cute but started to annoy a lot when the supposed strong leading female character was insecure as hell. Someone should have counted how many times Jenna & Matty fell of the wagon & back to loving each other throughout the series. It was ridiculous and ruined seasons 3, 4 and 5 completely and even in the end there was not a happy ending. I was left wondering if this character goes through her life questioning everything. Never settling and never actually having a meaningful long relationship. And she was supposed to be the smart one of the group. Maybe the writers tried to create sex and the city for teens. Or maybe Jenna was what writers want to be or are. It definitely wasn't what viewers want to see & what would be smart to write. So this series goes to the bin with other "too many seasons with nothing to tell" and "cant write a decent ending even if my life depended on it". I liked, with serious intention not to, Jenna's friends Tamara, Lissa, Sadie and Jake, Valerie, Ally & Sergio most. Especially Sadie, Valerie & Ally were great characters.

This show is amazing and while the writing may be a bit over the top, it addresses real life issues not only teens face, but adults as well with a great message. The lead, Ashley Rickards, brings a realism and unique style to the show that makes us all love Jenna and relate to her struggles.

The supporting actors all work great together. The two male leads balance each other well. Each bring depth to their characters and present Jenna with two very different alternatives (physical vs. intellectual attraction). We all are waiting to see if she recognizes this and if so, how will she deal with it.

The rest of the supporting staff, while over the top at times with their delivery and energy, do bring good humor and balance to the show and story line.

Each show ends with me wanting to know more. MTV has finally gotten it right. I LOVE it.

I'm 25, and a straight male, so I'm going to have to fake it here: "Awkward." is one of the best new shows on MTV right now, which unfortunately in this day and age, does not really count for much. After a myriad of repeats of everything from "Teen Mom" to "Jersey Shore," it's nice to see a decent teen comedy show on the air once again.

I really mean it when I say that "Awkward." is a decent show. No, correction: it's an above average show that manages to actually be very funny, in addition to being very raunchy. Think about MTV's other semi-good teen comedy series, "The Hard Times of RJ Berger." Like "Hard Times," "Awkward." has been easily influenced by the recent wave of popular teen comedies at the movies, most notably 2010's "Easy A" (this show's premise borrows a central plot element from that film).

"Awkward." is also heavily influenced by the films of the late John Hughes (1950-2009), that Brat Pack filmmaker behind such classics as "Sixteen Candles" (1984), "The Breakfast Club" (1985) (my personal favorite), and "Pretty in Pink" (1986). Using those movies as an influence for its plot basis, "Awkward." tells the story of Jenna Hamilton (Ashley Rickards), a virtual 15-year-old nobody at a posh Southern California high school. She narrates the show through her online blog postings.

It's clearly established early on that Jenna is in fact, quite wise beyond her years, so obviously that has got to make her a target from the more popular students. Rickards is able to give her character a sense of humanity and vulnerability, and Social "Awkward"-ness, that makes her seem like a real person and not a Molly Ringwald stereotype (a moment extremely late in the third episode really makes this clear). In fact, Rickards's Jenna Hamilton and Ringwald's bright-and-beautiful-but-socially-rejected John Hughes-era characters - Samantha Baker in "Sixteen Candles" and Andie Walsh in "Pretty in Pink," namely - are so close in age (and emotional maturity) that it's entirely possible that Jenna *could* be Ringwald's offspring from those years.

During the summer, Jenna had a brief affair with Matty (Beau Mirchoff), the hottest hunk in school, and said affair ultimately resulted in her losing her virginity. The problem is that Jenna and every other girl in school is lusting after Matty, who does in fact appear to have genuine feelings for Jenna but does not want to take their relationship public, for obvious reasons. As the season begins, the new school year has just started and we're shown Jenna's daily life as a societal outcast at her school, her promiscuous best friend Tamara (Jillian Rose Reed), and her overweight cheer-leading nemesis - and resident mean girl/queen bee - Sadie (Molly Tarlov).

Before you know it, a freak accident one night in her bathroom results in a misconstrued rumor that Jenna had tried to commit suicide, and the rumor mill at her school goes ballistic with the news. A la Emma Stone's social-climbing Olive Pendergast in "Easy A," Jenna is thrust to the top of the high school social ladder - she's the new "it" girl that everyone is talking about, for better or for worse - and she also has to deal with the common trials & tribulations of being a socially Awkward teenager on the verge of adulthood.

"Awkward." is a genuinely funny and entertaining show, if you have a thing for teen shows. Sure it rehashes a lot of what we've seen in the past to the point that it's pretty much overkill. And Lord knows we've seen enough teen comedies over the years to know what to expect from shows like this. But where "Awkward." gets points is, I think, is its knowledge of its influences, namely the works of John Hughes. Hughes was known for complex, yet uniquely human portrayals of teenagers in his films and "Awkward." appears to display some of the humanist complexities that Hughes had made his trademark back in the '80s. You can see it with Jenna and how torn she is between Matty and another popular hunk named Jake (Brett Davern).

With this in mind, this series definitely shows promise, promise that I hope is not squandered on stupid sex jokes, humor, and raunchiness - although there is already plenty of that here.

Awkward.

8/10