TV

No One Can Deal With How Much They Hate Maura, The Sad Teenage Bully From ‘PEN15’

"Watching 'PEN15' and reminding myself that I'm a grown man who shouldn't viscerally hate a 13-year-old"

by Jared Richards  22 September 2020
Marua from PEN15 S2 is really getting to a lot of viewers

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Hulu’s excellent 2000s teen comedy PEN15 dropped the first half of its second season over the weekend, and viewers are being hit where it hurts with the introduction of Maura, a character whose petty bullying and attempts at forcing friendship are reminding everyone of kids they’ve long forgotten.

PEN15, streaming on Stan in Australia, follows the friendship of 7th graders Maya and Anna in the year 2000, played by show co-creators and 30somethings Maya Erskine and Anna Konkle, who are surrounded by child actors. It’s a perfect image for how awkward those years are, how everyone feels like they stand out at all times in all the wrong ways.

Related
'PEN15' Season 2 Is All About Reclaiming The Hilarious Shame Of Being A Teenage Girl

The first season was a cringe-nostalgia affair of AIM boyfriends, Spice Girls tribute groups and all those micro dramas you’ve erased from your memory — the days-long feuds, the sleepovers-gone-wrong, the humiliating nicknames that stuck for a few days.

Season two’s first seven episodes (the second half to come at a later date) dive a little deeper into the double-standards placed on teenage girls, with Maya and Anna slut-shamed for having a ‘three-way’ (it was in no way a three-way) and treated terribly by their peers, crushes, and, at times, parents.

One sub-plot about Maura, a girl who quickly worms her way into their friendship and pushes for them to become three best friends, has really gotten viewers cringing hard. Maura, played by Ashlee Grubbs, is a cruel, quiet bully — a rich but unpopular girl who brings them in with sugar and then tries to pit Maya and Anna against each other for her own gain. The sleepover episode, in particular, is hard to watch.

The particular strain of bullying — spawned from low self-esteem, desperation for friends and loneliness — on display has proved overwhelming for most viewers, who have been thrown back into remembering their own Mauras, or their own Maura-esque moments.

This, unfortunately, means a lot of adults want to punch a child. Find some of the best, less-violent, reactions below, and read our interview with Erskine and Konkle here.