I'm confused about the time span.

She finished high school by getting her GED but I still can't figure out her age. Season 1, I think one of Tara's alters (Alice, maybe?) made a comment about Kate losing her virginity at "only 15" to her douchebag boyfriend...but then in season 2 Max mentions being disappointed he won't get to see Kate walk across the stage on graduation day, since she "graduated" by getting her GED.

Yes in season 1 she's 15. She'd have to be anywhere between 19 and 21 by end of season 3 because we see her and Evan drinking wine in the airport lounge.

I'm on season two, I was actually confused about her age too. What's up with men in their late 20s trying to get with this girl. I'm not going to pretend that some men are not attr attractive to under age girls, but in this day and age most see them as jailbait and stay away.

It's like they wrote her out of highschool and explained it away in the S2 premiere, and they also decided that she would just be 5 years older because it was convenient for them somehow. I think that having more storylines related to her being in highschool would have been great, but the writers wanted her out. She was 15 in the pilot and Marshall was also in HS (they went to the same school). But how could they age her 3-5 years and keep Marshall in highschool for all 3 seasons? And each season does not equal a year. S2 begins where
S1 left off. Charmaigne got pregnant in s2, had the baby in s3, and based on her storyline, the baby is not even a year old by the end on s3. Lol. Kate would have to be at least 18 to be a flight attendant.

And yea they liked to put her with age-inappropriate men. But that part makes sense for her character because she has always been yearning for a way out. The manager at the gross restaurant was a distraction. The rich guy offered to buy her a condo 5 minutes into meeting her. The guy on the plane with the kid, she genuinely liked him, but he represented the same thing.

It's a good show but every time I re-watch it, the writing comes across more and more shoddy. I'm like "that makes no sense".

Despite Kate's aging not working with continuity--which seems to be a staple of teenage characters in Showtime shows--I got the impression the series takes place over the course of a year or a year and a half.

I'm not sure on specifics, but season one, I thought, started in the fall of one year and some comments in the episode with Chicken in the corn maze made me thin about a year had passed--but it's been a while and I'm not positive.