TV's new brooding male anti-hero is the awkward teen girl

How the earnest coming-of-age story supplanted the anti-hero drama

A scene from PEN15.
(Image credit: Alex Lombardi)

Towards the end of the first season of the wonderfully funny and heartfelt Pen15, we see a teen girl get her period for the first time. She cries tears of frustration and disgust when she sees the splash of red on her underwear. She doesn't tell anyone — not her best friend, who she just had a major fight with, or her mom, who earlier in the episode had responded to a temper tantrum by her to grow up.

"When you said that I'm not your little girl anymore, did you mean that?" the girl asks her mom through tears.

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Arielle Bernstein

Arielle Bernstein is a writer and cultural critic. Her work has been featured in The Atlantic, The Guardian, AV Club, and Salon, among other publications. She is a professorial lecturer at American University in Washington, D.C.