In her work, Alexandra Plakias explores ‘the way awkwardness emerges from discoordinated interactions’ (p20), arising from situations where there is a discord between those interacting which leaves one (or more) uncertain how to behave. This brought to mind that character of Doris from Gavin and Stacey, who often sparks awkwardness in her interactions with others who do not know how to respond to her informality and unpredictability.
This is most evident in her interactions with Gavin, with whom she flirts despite his relationship with Stacey. Doris’ character stands to reject many stereotypes of older women as mild and unassuming, and a lot of the humour of her character arises from the incongruity between societal expectations of older women and how she behaves; this is especially true in her shameless flirting with Gavin. However, for Gavin, these interactions epitomise how Plakias describes the ‘awkward’.
For Plakias, awkward situations are those in which ‘we find ourselves without a script’ (p24), times when we do not know what to say or do and have no commonly accepted social ‘script’ to rely on. While she explains that there are several reasons we can fail to coordinate a script to our situation, in the case of Gavin and Doris this is most accurately described by Plakias as ‘a behaviour so unexpected that it makes us question the script in play’ (p26). For Gavin, being shamelessly flirted with by his girlfriend’s elderly neighbour is a situation so out of the blue he doesn’t know how to respond- his feelings of ‘discomfort, uncertainty and self-consciousness’ (p24) are indicative of the awkward situation he finds himself in.
However, what I find especially interesting about the example of Gavin and Doris, is that it highlights something Plakias briefly touches upon, that ‘it’s not necessary that all parties to the interaction have those feelings’ (as mentioned above) (p25). For, while Gavin often finds himself frozen by his awkward feelings when interacting with Doris, she is unaffected at all by his awkward feelings and continues as normal. I found this an especially interesting aspect of the awkward, as often it seems that awkward interactions can arise from a compounding of awkward feelings from all parties to the interaction, but so much of the humour of Doris’s interactions with Gavin is because she is so un-awkward in the face of his awkwardness. Furthermore, I would have been interested to see Plakias discuss more the role of the audience in the awkward- how the interplay between comedy and the awkward looks different when the awkward situation on screen makes the viewer feel uncomfortable, compared with when the viewer can look with separation at the awkward feelings a character is having without feeling them themselves (such as in the case of Gavin and Doris).