Can Best Friendship Save Us?
Tags: TV Criticism, Growing Up, Pen15, Childhood, Friendship

PEN15 deals with endless growing pains; everything from puberty, first loves, heartbreaks, masturbation, best friendship, and family dynamics. Though the show follows Maya Ishii-Peters and Anna Kone’s BFF bond specifically, it must also grapple with the relationships that inform their adolescent experiences together and individually. One of the ways it complies is by taking us on a tedious journey of Anna’s parents deciding to end their marriage, and figuring out how to do so amicably. They’re rarely successful, with a multitude of confusing ordeals and rising tensions that compound and expand through Anna and Maya’s relationship.

“Vendy Wiccany” (S2E3) opens with Anna and Maya watching TV at Anna’s while her parents’ voices rise a couple rooms over. The friends try to ignore the argument until the sound of glass shattering has them running to see what’s going on behind the door. Anna stares, engrossed in the visual of her parents’ argument, and it’s not until something else shatters that suddenly Maya takes charge, grabbing Anna’s arm to remove her from the situation. Together they run out the front door and away. They prance through the meadows — Anna with tears streaming down her face — but soon enough her tears fade and they laugh. It’s an escape built for Anna and facilitated by Maya; a utopia both girls can travel together where nothing can harm them. Maya is the distractor; since neither girl knows how to deal with the violence and arguing inside Anna’s home, it isn’t addressed. Maya and Anna enter another realm to avoid the reality that afflicts them — as long as they are together nothing, and no one, can touch them.

By the time we get to “Opening Night” (S2E7), both the latest installment and mid-season-finale (with the rest of the season expected in 2021), circumstances have shifted drastically. Anna’s parents’ divorce is no longer something that the two girls traverse together; it has become something markedly individual for Anna. Her battles shift inward, and because it’s “out of sight, out of mind” for Maya, she doesn’t blink.

“Opening Night” is built around the school play. Maya is the main actress and Anna is backstage manager — each of them have opposing lead roles, conducive to both their individual development but also to major friendship conflict. They can’t resolve their differences, refusing to wish the other luck in their respective roles in the play. It’s not until Maya fumbles her lines in the play that Anna reaches out to help, giving Maya a fresh confidence for the remainder of her performance and in turn reorienting the two best friends. The duo is reunited, this time with a new appreciation of a self that exists apart from one another.

After the play, Anna and Maya go down to the local pizza joint with the rest of the school to celebrate. Maya’s family brags about her to everyone that walks past, and Anna’s mom gushes about how the show could not have gone on without Anna behind the scenes. When Anna’s dad arrives after missing the play, he tells Anna he couldn’t make it because he was buying a new car. Maya bursts with excitement, asking to go see it. Anna, clearly confused as she watches her mom storm to the bathroom in frustration, bottles her disappointment to instead mirror Maya’s energy. It’s a moment where the duo is on different pages but act as one. Anna smiles and follows Maya so as not to discourage her, but she knows inside that something isn’t right.

The girls go sit in the car with Maya’s theater boyfriend until Anna leaves to give the couple privacy for their first kiss. Anna stands in the corner talking to a classmate she hardly knows, and discovers his parents are also divorced. He’s drinking from a flask and offers her a swig — which she takes. While Maya is having her potential first kiss, Anna is having her first drink. The juxtaposition of these moments is heightened suddenly, as Anna’s crush walks past, presenting the potentiality of what could be versus what is. Anna should be having her first kiss with this boy instead of sharing a drink and talking about her parents relationship with another kid. But these are her and Maya’s separate realities now — whereas before the two besties said they would experience all of their “firsts” together, now there is demand for distance. As Anna and Maya age, their lives grow further apart. Their differences become more obvious.

But the duo continuously shows us it doesn’t matter that their life experiences will be different at every turn. What these two need more than anything is each other — and they sustain that. There is nothing that will keep them apart. When Anna looks over to see Maya crying alone in the car, she rushes over to discover that rather than having her first kiss, Maya was getting dumped. Their separate realities turn out not all they’re cracked up to be, but once they’re together again it feels like home. Anna tries to cheer Maya up by making sure she knows what she means to her:

“See that one little star up there? The brightest one that’s a little droopy? That’s you. They’re still bright even at their lowest. Just like you.”

PEN15 S2E7 “Opening Night”

Anna’s tenderness with Maya is emphatic; she bestows an older sister–type wisdom on her. Anna helps Maya heal, and her speech doubles as a self invocation — a reminder that she, too, is bright even when her parents push her into a corner. Anna is learning how to negotiate the disbanding of her parents’ relationship, and maps that onto her and Maya’s in a new way. As Maya confronts her first heartbreak, Anna carries her best friend on her shoulders and into the peaceful night. As Anna’s world falls apart, she does what she does best: loves Maya. The solace they find together is enough in that moment. Just like they wandered through meadows, they now roam the stars. We know it cannot and will not last forever, but at least it will keep them in tandem for a short while longer.

The episode ends with Anna’s dad driving the girls home for a sleepover; Maya in the backseat lamenting the loss of her first love, and Anna sticking her arms out into the night air, feeling a moment of peace. As they ride away, Sam, longtime friend and unrealized romantic interest of Maya, calls out to her, giving us hope for Maya’s future. A moment later, Anna’s dad shares that he’s looking for a new apartment and Anna has to choose whether she wants to live with him or her mom. He turns up the radio, and she looks out into the night, her face contorting as she holds in her tears. As Maya’s potential future with Sam dangles on the horizon, Anna is left hopeless, and reeling, with no one to turn to. The world of adolescence does not give Anna the grace of escape with Maya this time, fortifying that from this moment on, she will have to learn to manage on her own. But Anna’s loneliness need not taint her and Maya’s alliance, as shown just a few moments earlier. Being Maya’s best friend can save her.