The Drawbacks Of Being A Wallflower

I don't want to say that, with Jenna (Ashley Rickards) in a happy relationship with Matty (Beau Mirchoff), Awkward. producers are having a harder time finding conflict around which to built their episodes, but the latest one was maybe kind of a reach. It's Dramatic Dance Invitation Time at Palos Hills, and though Jenna is thrilled to get a pipe cleaner-festooned "MATTY'S GIRL" pin -- and to be Matty's Girl -- she also decides to feel guilty for her happiness because other perfectly nice girls at the school are not lucky (her word, not mine) enough to have boyfriends themselves, and she doesn't want to seem like she's obnoxiously flaunting her couplehood.

Jenna fixates on Kristy Patton (Nora Sakal), partly because they used to be best friends until Kristy started eating chalk, and partly because, like Season 1 Jenna, Kristy is the kind of very beautiful girl who could be an outcast only in a high school on TV. Jenna interprets evidence -- Kristy sitting alone; some dude loitering near Kristy and not approaching; Kristy dropping an unopened lunch bag in the trash; a red-eyed Kristy being shepherded into the guidance office with Val (Desi Lydic) -- to mean that Kristy is to Season 3 as Jenna was to Season 1, and takes it upon herself to stop Kristy as she leaves the dance alone to assure her that it gets better.

Except, whoops! Jenna has the situation all wrong! She wasn't sadly journaling; she was bookkeeping. She didn't throw out her lunch uneaten; that was a dead drop. She wasn't red-eyed with Val; she was "highballs."

Kristy's not the second coming of Loser Jenna. She's a drug dealer.

And if Jenna really wanted to help her, she could have warned her that she was about to get busted by an undercover DEA agent.

And while Jenna was embroiled in this unnecessary mentoring, she was missing Matty not just dancing in public for the very first time, a skill he learned to impress Jenna...

...but having the time of his life!

And she could have been out on the dance floor enjoying it, but she wasted so much energy on her pointless Kristy project that she got jammed out by Matty's posse.