So Awkward is a sitcom series on CBBC. It stars Cleo Demetriou as Lily Hampton, Ameerah Falzon-Ojo as Jas (Jasmine) Salford, Sophia Dall'aglio as Martha Fitzgerald and Archie Lyndhurst as Ollie Coulton.
The show follows the lives of the three socially awkward friends—Lily, Jas and Martha—as they go through school. It starts with them as 13 year olds and follows them through their high school career: trying to fit in at school and deal with day-to-day life at school, boys and parental dramas.
Tropes:
- Absurd Phobia: In "Friendundancy", Ollie decides that due to his fear of clothes he can't take the girls talking about clothes any more.
- Amazingly Embarrassing Parents: Lily certainly feels this way about her mother. Given her mother has a habit of knitting her jumpers with Lily's own face on them, she may have a point. Everyone except Jas thinks of her father as one, due to him being The Klutz. Jas (who is also The Klutz) has never noticed anything odd or embarrassing about his behavior.
- Asleep in Class: The first season had a Cold Open of Lily experiencing something bizarre happening in class. She would scream and then wake up to discover she had been sleeping in class, and had just interjected a screamed comment at a particularly inappropriate point.
- Battle of the Bands: In "The Band", Ollie, Rob, Jas and Sid enter Battle of the Bands along with the tuneless Mr Malone.
- Big Damn Kiss: Martha and Ollie finally share one in the series finale.
- The B Grade: In "A Minus", Martha is mortified when she gets an A- on her test, so she revises so much that she begins to faint all over the place.
- Bridezilla: In "Never the Bridsemaid, Never the Bride", Jas is asked to be a bridesmaid and is worried about being too clumsy to pull it off. Lily suggests staging a mock wedding so Jas can have a rehearsal - with herself and Rob as the bride and groom! Lily goes all Bridezilla. As she plans the big day she gets so carried away that she actually has no time for Rob and snubs him, just when he's ready to take their relationship to the next level and ask Lily on a romantic meal out
- Can't Get in Trouble for Nuthin': In "Parentology", Martha feels abandoned by her workaholic mother, so she tries to get into trouble at school to be noticed, with the help of Jas. Unfortunately, this is not as easy as it seems, with Lily—who is usually just standing on the sidelines—usually copping the blame.
- Disguised in Drag: In "Girls & Boys", the girls are mistaken for boys when dressing up for drama, and Lily keeps up the pretense in order to get closer to Matt. Ollie, without his contact lenses and trying to avoid wearing his old glasses, strikes up a friendship with Lily's alter ego 'Liam'.
- Doom It Yourself: In "Science Chic", Jas accidentally wrecks the shelves in Mrs Rennison's office, and Mr Salford is roped into repairing them. Jas mistakenly thinks her dad is a DIY expert - he is actually hopeless but has never had the heart to tell Jas.
- Dreams of Flying: At the start of one episode, Lily is Asleep in Class (as usual). She notices a lot of weird stuff happening and realises this must be a dream. Matt then says that if this is a dream then he should be able to fly, and promptly flies out the window.
- Egg Sitting: In "A Room of Her Own", in Life Lessons class Martha and Ollie volunteer to be parents to a new 'baby app', thinking it'll be an easy task. Utterly defeated by the baby app's constant crying and demands they palm 'baby' off on Cassie and Maxwell, who in turn are soon at their wits' end.
- Embarrassing Cover Up: In "Bug Brooch", Lily is delighted when Rob buys her a present for the first time - only it's a horrible bug-shaped brooch! Jas offers to break it accidentally-on-purpose so Lily won't have to wear it, but Rob catches Jas trying to smash it. Not wanting to drop Lily in it, Jas tells Rob she stole the brooch because she's in love with Rob herself and is so jealous of Lily.
- Embarrassing Relative Teacher: One episode starts with Lily being horrified to discover that her amazingly embarrassing mum is the new substitute teacher, and will be teaching on 'the Psychology of the Teenage Girl' by reading from Lily's diary, Fortunately (?) this turns out to be another nightmare caused by Lily being Asleep in Class.
- Everyone Can See It: By season 5 everyone but Ollie and Martha know that they have romantic feelings for each other.
- "Everybody Laughs" Ending: The Grand Finale ends with everyone laughing after they share one last awkward moment together and go dance.
- Friend Versus Lover: During season 5 Ollie often finds himself in between Kat (lover) and Martha (friend). Kat and Martha's rivalry continues after Ollie and Kat break up.
- Grand Finale: The series finale has the friends attending prom and promising that even if they are apart, they'll always find their way back to each other.
- Girls with Moustaches: The strict head librarian Mrs Jones has a moustache; which Lily puts to use when she makes up the name Clementine Moustache for a fictional pupil after accidentally leaving her books behind in "Everybody Loves Clementine".
- The Good Old British Comp: Cranmede Upper School is the setting for most of the action.
- Halloween Episode: "Scary Movie". It's Halloween and Jas goes to extreme lengths to cure Lily's many fears before her scary party, while Ollie falls in love with new girl Em.
- Homemade Sweater from Hell: Lily's mum has a habit of knitting her jumpers that are both hideous and embarrassing. In "Parentology", she knits Lily a jumper with Lily's own face on it. Then, under the mistaken impression that Ollie is Lily's boyfriend, she knits him one with his face on it.
- Invented Individual: In "Everybody Loves Clementine", Lily invents a student called Clementine Mustache in an attempt to avoid getting into trouble with the Scary Librarian. After inserting the fictitious student into the school records, the lie spirals out of control (mostly due to Jas' efforts) and Clementine wins the talent show and an essay competition. The girls have to invent an unlikely death for Clementine to be rid of her.
- Jabba Table Manners: In "Ms Perfect", Lily is complaining Rob is too 'boy' - she finds his boisterousness and burping gross and decides to give him a dose of his own medicine. It backfires - she eats disgustingly in his presence intending to shock him, but he doesn't even notice.
- The Klutz: Jas is bright, upbeat and endlessly optimistic. She is also incredibly clumsy, to the point where she worries that she might be too clumsy to be a bridesmaid and worries about accidentally demolishing the wedding. Her father Mr. Salford is, if anything, even worse, to the point that the headmistress Mrs Griggs keeps desperately moving objects out his way whenever he visits her office.
- Leaning on the Fourth Wall: In the teaser in the first episode of season 5, the team was looking over a script for a show that the school is doing and Sid starts describing how the opening is going to go...it then cuts to the opening sequence.Sid: I can see it now. The opening titles would go something like this...[cue opening sequence]
- Line-of-Sight Alias: In "Everybody Loves Clementine", Lily creates a fictional student to avoid getting in trouble with the Scary Librarian. After blurting out the name Clementine, she needs a surname. Looking at the female librarian's upper lip, she goes with 'Clementine Mustache'.
- Locked in a Room: In "None of Your Business", Mr. Malone and Lou get trapped in the basement of the café, while chaos reigns above as the power of being temporary manager goes to Ollie's head.
- Love Letter Lunacy: When Jas enters Mrs. Griggs into Martha's compatibility software in "Love Machine", she is horrified to find out that the perfect match is her own father! She becomes worried when Mrs. Griggs gives her a letter to give to her dad, and hides it thinking that it was a date offer. However, when Lily has the same envelope, Jas finds out that it was just a request to help out at the school fair.
- Must Have Caffeine: Geography teacher Ms Parfitt. When she and Mr. Malone are competing to see whose field trip gets funded in "Ms Perfect", he steals her coffee supply, so she's super-sleepy and unable to teach.
- Neat Freak: Martha. In "Mr. Sicky Bear", Martha stays at Jas' house when they both have colds. When she gets there though, she discovers Jas' house is a mess and spends ages cleaning. She also washes a teddy that Jas' dad uses to cheer up Jas when she is sick, which deeply upsets Jas and her dad.
- Platonic Life-Partners: Ollie and Martha are introduced as this but it's ultimately averted as it becomes clear that their feelings aren't entirely platonic.
- Potty Emergency: Happens to Ollie in "Space Over" when he is accidentally locked in the attic of Lily's house, and unable to notify anyone except Martha because he is not supposed to be there. Martha makes multiple attempts to free him which are all unintentionally foiled by her friends.
- Protest by Obstruction: In "Library vs. Tree", Martha is campaigning to get a new library built, but when campaigning works, they find out that Jas' favourite tree would have to be cut down. A fierce battle between Martha and Jas and their parents ensues. Jas' father constructs a tree house in the tree and takes up residence there in an attempt to prevent the tree from being cut down.
- School Play: In "Mr. Sicky Bear", Jas really wants to be Juliet in the play in assembly, but catches a cold. Because Jas is sick, a hypochondriac Ollie really wants Lily to be Juliet in the play. However, she doesn't want to betray Jas even though Romeo is Matt Furnish, her crush.
- Secret Diary: Lily keeps a diary. Subverted in that it is never especially important to the plot, but she does once have a nightmare where her mother is teaching a class on the psychology of the teenage girl by reading extracts from the diary to her class.
- Thanking the Viewer: The CBBC first broadcast of the final episode has one of the anchors thanks the viewers for sticking around with the gang from the very beginning and bids a farewell to the show...not before Cleo Demetriou announcing that a sequel series titled 'Still So Awkward' is in the works!
- Time Capsule: In "Bug Brooch", Mr Malone is in charge of putting together and burying a school time capsule. He happily palms off the responsibility onto Ollie and Martha, who are keen to ensure their legacy lives on for generations to come. There is competition, though, from Cassie and Maxwell.
- Two-Timer Date: In "Friendundancy", Mufti Day is arriving, and Lily doesn't want to wear one of Jas' quirky and weird outfits again. She runs into Natasha Jones, and accidentally suggests they all wear yellow, and ends up trying to change between Jas' and Natasha's outfits.
