'PEN15' is a hilariously painful reminder that middle school mattered

Every once in a while, social media is swarmed by people participating in 10 year challenges, where people dig up photos of themselves from a decade ago and juxtapose them with a more recent picture. These challenges are meant to show how much time has changed someone, but to be real — they're really just a flex on how much hotter people are now than when they were teenagers.

10 year challenges often start conversations about how wild fashion was back then, why anyone thought a then-trendy haircut looked good, or how everyone has puberty to thank for erasing the humiliating forms of their younger selves. The "after" picture exists as a thank you, or perhaps a thank god, that the acne and bad jeans of the past don't exist anymore.

PEN15 on Hulu is the opposite of a 10 year challenge. Through its setting in the year 2000, it forces grown people to confront what those younger years were like and flashes back to a time when just wearing a bra or seeing a boob felt like the epitome of adulthood.

It is, like many too-real flashbacks, excruciating to watch at times. The slang and aesthetic of its era is grating, as are the reminders of how petty and irritating life as a middle schooler can be. But in between the moments of cringe is the quiet truth that everyone was young and dumb once, and getting older and smarter doesn't make the emotions of youth any less valid.

PEN15 stars Maya Erskine and Anna Konkle as Maya and Anna, their own teenage selves. Both actors are in there 30s, but use the not-quite-magic of clothes and hairstyling to portray their 13-year-old alter egos, who are as crushingly awkward as they are endearing.

The awkwardness is compounded by casting age-appropriate actors to play every other character in their age range, so Konkle and Erskine play most of their scenes next to real pre-teens. Since Maya and Anna are definitely not cool kids, this setup often leads to the only adults in the room being bullied and belittled by actual children, which somehow makes every insult land harder.

Maya and Anna go through a lot over the course of the season, but their outsized reactions to thongs, makeout parties, awful crushes, and petty betrayals never feel false or stale. PEN15 is transportive, bringing viewers back to a time when whether a 12-year-old with a butt-looking haircut liked you or like-liked you felt like the most important unknown in the world. It's easy to empathize with its stars because literally everyone has been there, even if most people would like to forget.

The fact that PEN15 focuses on the deep friendship between two young girls is another element in its favor. It's heartwarming to see how obsessed Maya and Anna are with each other, and the tenderness of girls in perfect BFF love is something that doesn't often get respect in TV shows about young people.

No one looks back on middle school thinking that they made amazing choices, but PEN15 packs a lot of funny into the idea that being a teen and having feelings is fine and important. Sure, 10 years later the selfies look better, but shows like this remind us that the "before" picture was a person too. And probably a pretty awesome one.