5) Faking It – The Morning Aftermath
It sounds weird, but the best episode that exhibits the sheer plate-spinning zaniness of MTV’s newest sitcom is the premiere of its second season. Which happened to premiere the same year that its first season also premiered (MTV’s scheduling dilemmas are issues for another time and place).
Faking It’s first season is hit-and-miss. I actually gave up a few episodes in, despite its promising premise it felt like pretty safe stuff from MTV, a network where two protagonists practically dry-hump their way through the first season of Awkward. But I came back, and discovered a decent, crackling little show. A show with an identity crisis, for sure, but one unafraid of facing that crisis head-on. It should be mentioned that this is perhaps the most niche recommendation on this list. This is a high school dramedy of the highest order, and will win no converts who don’t already know that fetch is never going to happen.
So why pick an episode from season two to start off? Because, honestly, not much that happens in season one’s eight episodes matters. Two best friends decide to fake being lesbians to be popular at their ultra-cool, stratospherically liberal Austin, Texas high school. One is pretending, and one isn’t. There’s an interesting love triangle toyed with when the school It-Boy gets thrown into the mix, but everything asides from the season finale’s final moments feels like a prologue.
“The Morning Aftermath’s” handling of those final moments sets up a season full of revelations and secrets that nimbly balances A and B plots and allows side players, like Michael Willett’s Shane and Bailey De Young’s Lauren, more room in the spotlight. The short ten episode season runs high on the drama that a handful of characters are hiding a devastating secret from another, and perhaps its greatest feat is that when the secret’s finally out, in a terrifically terrifying cliffhanger, the show feels like it’s just getting started and is full steam ahead… again.
Faking It feels like it’s constantly reinventing itself, restructuring its plots and characters and always on the ball, keeping viewers on their toes – something most full-hour dramas have trouble with, much less half-hour high school comedies. Where at once it appeared to be painting itself into a corner, it’s exploded in all directions, like a toddler just coming out of a nap, excitedly clawing at all the toys on the floor, not knowing which to play with first. Its energy and spirit is infectious, but when the story asks for things to stop and get serious, the show’s writers have proven they can handle it with aplomb.
It grasps at low-hanging fruit every now and then (particularly in a subplot concerning Shane’s attempts to out an in-the-closet MMA fighter), but compared to the whimpering-out recent seasons of high school dramedies like Glee and MTV’s own Awkward, Faking It is slowly taking its place amongst television’s most relevant high school shows.