Series / Akavet

From left to right: Aske, Elias, Alma, and Tone.

Akavet (en. "Awkward") is a Danish youth series that has been produced for the national broadcaster DR and airs online on their Ultra subsidiary.

It features an Ensemble Cast of the 14-year-old twins Alma and Aske and their respective best friends Tone and Elias. As a Slice of Life series, it focuses on all the typical embarrassing and - as the title may imply - awkward episodes that a typical teenager will have to endure during early adolescence, usually told from a comedic point of view.

The first season which aired from January 2020 to May 2020 focuses on the four kids' life from late fall to early spring. The second season which aired from August 2020 to October 2020 focuses on the summer holidays and adds the skater boy Ollie to the main cast. The third season which aired from March 2021 to May 2021 focuses on a new school year and adds four younger kids (Elias's younger sister Silke and her classmates Otto, Julle and Alex) to the main cast. A fourth season aired from September 2021 to November 2021 and focuses on Silke and her friends preparing for their confirmation, with the original four main characters being written out of the series. The fifth season, airing from March 2022 to June 2022, has Silke's classmate Molly replace her as a main character and concludes the series with no further seasons planned.

Tropes:

• Aerith and Bob: "Alma" and "Elias" are extremely common Generation Z names in Denmark, and "Aske" is also relatively common... but "Tone" as a name is almost unheard of.
• Ambiguously Bi:
  • Tone is usually shown to be exclusively into girls, but there's one scene where she spontaneously kisses Ollie (and the following episode is about her refusal to talk about it). It's not made clear if it was a case of frustration and/or confused feelings, or if she genuinely felt attracted to him.
  • Ollie himself is shown flirting and kissing with girls several times, but the details of his first time are deliberately kept in the dark and there are some suggestions that it might have been with a guy. In the following episode, Aske thinks Ollie has a crush on him, and while the episode ends with Aske and Ollie agreeing that they're just good friends, it's never made clear whether Ollie did have a crush on Aske.
• Annoying Younger Sibling: Silke is constantly cheeky and rude towards Elias, meddles in his affairs and often shows him No Sympathy.
• Beauty Is Never Tarnished: The gross-out part of the trope is very much averted with Alma. It's a Running Gag that she vomits very easily, and there's even a whole episode focusing on her attempt to save face while shitting on the school toilet.
• Beta Couple: Sofie and Carl serve as this to Alma and Elias in season 2. They get together with a lot less hesitation than Alma and Elias did, and their relationship seems to have a lot less drama (in fact, the only falling out they have is directly caused by Alma's Operation: Jealousy).
• Casanova Wannabe: Elias talks a big game, but when he actually approaches girls, they are often grossed out by his immature and male-chauvinistic behavior (though his self-confidence occasionally makes him more attractive to girls than the insecure Aske).
• Caught with Your Pants Down:
  • In season 1, Aske forgets to lock the door while masturbating in the bathroom of the camp school. He's caught by his (female) teacher who thought the moaning and bumping sounds were another student having an epileptic seizure.
  • In season 2, Alma masturbates in the shower and is caught by her mom - this leads to a very embarrassing mom-and-daughter talk.
• Cringe Comedy: Naturally a stable trope for a series titled "Awkward". Almost every episode has the characters deal with things such as unwanted erections, period leaks and clumsy attempts to approach your crush.
• Demoted to Extra:
  • Several characters in season 2: Aske, while still part of the Ensemble Cast, has fewer focus episodes and takes a backseat to his best friend Elias who becomes an Ascended Extra. Jan, Aske's and Alma's dad, only makes two appearances at the very start and very end of the season. Sara only makes very short and sporadic appearances compared to her relatively large role as Aske's Love Interest in the first season. Downplayed with Sofie who appears in fewer episodes than season 1 but still has a relatively large role in some of the episodes she appears in.
  • Exaggerated in season 3: Among others, Sofie and Carl only have speaking roles in one episode each, Sif only appears very briefly in an Instagram story, Sara only has two non-speaking cameos, Ollie only appears in two episodes, and Tone's dad only appears in one episode. Even Aske is almost completely absent for the last 10 episodes. This is to make room for Character Focus on the four new main characters.
• Divergent Character Evolution: At the start of season 1, Sofie and Sara only ever appear together and are both known as the popular and snobbish girls of the class. However, once they start interacting with the main cast separately, they are shown to have different personalities; Sofie is the most outgoing and overbearing one, while Sara is more soft-spoken and sometimes a bit shy.
• Flanderization: AC is introduced as an Occidental Otaku who happens to also like cats. After some episodes, her fondness of cats grows to an obsession and becomes her defining trait, with her interest in manga and anime only coming up rarely. The cat-eared headband she wears also goes from being a homage to Cat Girls in anime to being a homage to actual cats.
• Guilt by Association Gag: Sif kicks out Tone, Alma and Elias from her party - Tone for playing with her feelings, Alma for stealing her swimsuit, and Elias for puking on the floor. And then she demands for Aske to leave the party as well even though he did nothing wrong - just because he's part of the same friend group as those three.
• Hippie Parents: Elias's parents are revealed to be these in season 3 - being spiritual-minded oddballs who are completely casual about sex and alcohol.
• Hypocritical Heartwarming: Aske and Alma never seem to get along in most of season 1; they spend a lot of their time together bickering and are implied to have become less close with age. However, when Elias starts dating Alma, Aske becomes extremely protective of her.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: All of the four main characters can - as typical hormonal teenagers - be incredibly selfish, surly and insensitive, but they are consistently shown to be good people at heart and usually come around for their friends. Elias is more openly jovial than the other three, but on the flipside he's also the most sexist and conceited one.
• Lipstick Lesbian: Tone is a downplayed example - she's not overly girly, but she does have several Bratty Teenage Daughter traits and she never shows any of the stereotypically butch traits associated with lesbians. The same applies to her (ex-)girlfriend Sif, minus the Bratty Teenage Daughter traits.
• Love at First Sight: Aske becomes infatuated with Trine from the moment she enters the classroom, and Sonja from the moment she enters the gym. With Sara, it at least takes a kiss from her for Aske to get interested in her, though he still crushes on her before actually getting to know her.
• My Sister Is Off-Limits: Despite never having shown to care much about Alma at first, Aske suddenly becomes protective of her when Elias starts dating her, and has a falling out with Elias. It takes a long time before he starts to accept their relationship.
• Only Known by Their Nickname: Ollie and Julle are mentioned during their first appearances to be named "Oliver" and "Julie" respectively, but they're only ever called Ollie and Julle.
• Only Known by Initials: Silke's classmate AC.
• Parent with New Paramour: After being single for several years, Tone's dad starts dating a woman by the end of season 1... Just too bad for Tone that the woman in question is her biology teacher.
• Raging Stiffie: A Running Gag is that this is one of Aske's recurring problems. The second episode specifically focuses on an unwanted erection of his, but the problem also comes up in other episodes. For some reason, it seems to only affect Aske and not the other teenage boys.
• Real Life Writes the Plot: Alma wears braces during the first half of season 1 because her actress wears braces (and it fits well with the character's awkwardness). When her actress had her braces removed midway during filming, the writing team decided to quickly write an episode where Alma also has her braces removed and deals with the (lack of) attention from it.
• Relationship Revolving Door: Alma and Elias go through this after becoming an Official Couple. At the end of season 1, they are on the verge of breaking up because of Elias not being able to read Alma's signals. In season 2, they break up for real due to Alma's Operation: Jealousy, but get together again a few episodes later. In season 3, they break up again at the start of the season due to Elias's refusal to talk about Their First Time, and this time it's permanent.
• The Talk:
  • When Aske is having Sara over for a visit, Aske's dad expects the worst and pulls Aske aside to have a chat about what to do when you have a girl over. However, he ends up not knowing what to say, so he eventually just mutters that consent is important and hands Aske a pack of condoms.
  • When Alma is caught masturbating by her mom, her mom also insists on having a more general talk about sex, hormones and feelings with her despite Alma trying her best to avoid it.
• Teacher/Student Romance: Aske immediately becomes smitten with Trine, the new biology teacher, and this leads to some awkward incidents in the following episodes. However, once Sara kisses him on the camp trip, he quickly gets over Trine and focuses his attention on Sara instead.
• Wild Teen Party: Alma's and Aske's birthday party ends up as one of these, with lots of alcohol, dancing, loud music, flirting, several people vomiting, and Thor making out with a picture. It culminates with Elias trying to light fireworks inside the living room, though he's interrupted in the last moment by Alma's and Aske's parents getting home.