Like Raising Hope, PramFace addresses teen pregnancy realistically without glamorizing the personal, familial or school backlash. It casually shows the financial responsibility and time required. However, in PramFace, the characters always surprise you. Meet Jamie, the average 16-year-old boy next door, who crashes a high school senior party and hooks up with Laura, the university-bound 18-year-old pretty girl. In most high school universes, average, working-class Jamie would never have met posh, upper-middle-class Laura, but through a quirk of fate, alcohol and a torn condom, they’re thrown together for better not worse. Before meeting Laura, Jamie would’ve served as a punching bag for his horny best friend, Mike, or his didactic, liberal proselytizing best friend, Beth. He was the nice guy who always did what they wanted, to his own detriment, rather than raise a fuss. However, his relationship with Laura forces him to step up, take responsibility and place his child before his friends’ selfishness.

The pregnancy similarly matures 18-year-old Laura. Like the average pretty girl whose doting parents give her everything, she acts out by drinking and sleeping with whoever, whenever someone confronts her. However, with a baby on the way, she no longer acts out in the usual means and faces her responsibilities. Surprisingly, Jamie’s family relaxes her. Because her uber-ambitious, successful attorney parents push her, Laura receives above average grades and appropriates their career plans as her own. But, with a baby possibly derailing her plans and a failing parental marriage, she camps out on Jamie’s couch, plays video games with his “loser” friends and finally discovers comfort with herself.

PramFace consistently surprises me with its intelligent self-awareness. I love each character’s individual arc that challenges age-based maturity, class hierarchy and traditional gender roles. Although Laura’s two years older, it’s Jamie who continuously stands up to their families for their child. Although Laura’s family’s wealthier and seemingly more stable, it’s Jamie’s family that houses Laura during the second half of her pregnancy and pushes for a baptism while Jamie’s part-time job handles her initial finances.

Although both families start with traditional male-as-wage-earner structures, in the second season that changes. Jamie’s working-class father, Keith, quits his job to find fulfillment while Laura’s posh mother tires of her stay-at-home status. The show even subverts standard high school categories. Season one surrounds Laura as the pretty, popular girl pushing away loser Jamie. But, in season two, Laura enters unfamiliar adult territory while Jamie reaches 18 and starts considering his future.

If you thought you might like Raising Hope, but didn’t, you’ll enjoy PramFace. And, if you enjoyed Raising Hope, you’ll definitely enjoy PramFace. Although Raising Hope is smart-ish, the high-paced energy frequently undercuts the text. PramFace embraces the wacky without reducing the characters’ three-dimensional sides. Like the rest of America, I’m tired of American reality TV stars that glamorize teen sex without displaying the negative tenets. I fear for a world with TV teen moms like Jenelle Evans and Farrah Abrahams. Ironically, fictional TV shows us a more true-to-life picture. Featuring Anna Chancellor (Miss Bingley in the Colin Firth/Jennifer Ehle Pride and Prejudice) as Laura’s mother and Game of Thrones’ Ben Crompton as Jamie’s dad, PramFace is a show to watch.

Check out all of season one on Hulu. Season two currently airs on Hulu with new episodes airing every Monday through June 10. https://www.hulu.com/pramface Teen pregnancy is no joke … unless you watch PramFace.

httpv://www.hulu.com/watch/385089

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Best Kiss – Nick and Jess, New Girl

Of course Nick has thought about kissing Jess. He’s probably spent the last two years on and off thinking about it and cycling through self-loathing and reasons why not to … why it was never the right time, what the right time would be … and so to see him kiss Jess wasn’t just good because it was a great kiss (and it was a great kiss), but because we finally got to see Nick get over himself enough to make that move he’s been waiting to make for a long time. And Nick’s move was perfectly timed and placed; wait longer and it becomes unbelievable that Nick and Jess wouldn’t have hooked up sometime, or that when they did Jess wouldn’t cite their friendship as a reason not to continue. Do it earlier and there isn’t enough of a friendship foundation to make them hooking up high stakes. But have them kiss now, two years in, and the timing is just right.

Also, it was a really great kiss. Have I mentioned that yet?

Best Meta – Raising Hope, “Modern Wedding”
So here’s the thing – I hate Modern Family. I don’t understand the appeal. It’s bland fare that’s been overdone a million times and employs some truly lazy writing. I am so tired of it winning awards that should rightfully go to other, more deserving and innovative shows. And so anything that makes fun of Modern Family is immediately going to be, in my book, superlative. But what was so great about “Modern Wedding” wasn’t just the lampooning of Modern Family, but the fact that it effortlessly displayed what the show is missing: an element of surprise, a sense of tongue-in-cheek self-awareness and heart.

The gauntlet has been thrown, Modern Family. Top that if you dare.

Most in Need of a Steady Job – Wilmer Valderama
Has anyone else noticed he plays basically the same character in both Suburgatory and Raising Hope? Maybe it’s time he got a new gig.

Biggest Tearjerker – 30 Rock, “Hogcock!/Last Lunch”
I can’t discuss this coherently, but let’s just say this finale was everything I hoped for and more. I loved every minute of it, cheered every bit of character resolution, adored Jane Krakowski‘s work more than ever before (where is her Emmy???), sobbed at every goodbye (Hot bowl of bear meat! And did you know Tina Fey hand-wrote Liz’s goodbye to Tracy? Nope, too many emotions. Shutting it down), and adored every last second of it. It was perfect and I will miss this show more than words can express.

Goodbye, 30 Rock, you really went to there.

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