Skins: Season Three, "Everyone" and "Cook"

Series Three, Episode One, “Everyone”

The ability of reinvention is Skins’ greatest gift. Things that may have felt fresh in the first season began to feel uninspired in the second season. The show’s greatest ability to reinvent comes in the series's decision to scrap its entire cast after two seasons. As much as I might miss some of the first generation’s characters, I was hesitantly excited about what a fresh start might look like, especially if the show were to take full advantage of the conceit. 

The first time I watched the premiere of the third season, I was looking for parallels between the two generations. Part of me suspected that Skins would simply do variations on the same stories. While to a degree, the show does tend to lean on certain types of stories, it doesn’t fall back on familiar characters. There are comparable character traits here, but not so much so that it feels like these are straight carbon copies of the characters who came before. 

Effy and Pandora’s relationship has shades of Tony and Sid, but it’s a healthier relationship. Pandora is a very different person from Sid (a happy-go-lucky, wide-eyed goofball), and Effy feels protective of her (as opposed to being intentionally manipulative). Effy may be a mischievous savant, but she’s more transparent than Tony ever was. She also recognizes good, put-upon people and sympathizes with them (i.e. Pandora, Emily). The love triangle is in place, but it’s a more earnest take on the trope. Effy has feelings for both Freddy and Cook. But she’s also too self-destructive to not let this play out (More on that later). 

There’s also other stories here without clear precedents. The story of the twins Emily and Katie is the first. The other is that of the self-righteous Naomi. While the show doesn’t have the greatest handle on what it’s doing with Naomi yet, it does with Emily and Katie. Emily and Katie is the trope of twins who are very different individuals. A trope the show is going to get a lot of mileage in both playing to and upending. The show also does great work into turning Emily into another of its great tragic figures. Katie has her so thoroughly under her thumb that it seems that Emily scarcely has a spine. “So you’re the door mat?” Effy asks her. Emily doesn’t bother denying it: “I guess so”. 

The transition between the second season and third season has brought with it a new confidence. The show feels like it’s learned a lesson or two from telling its first generation stories and is willing to use them to improve its stories going forward. The filmmaking is more assured, and the writing is consistently subtler. That might seem strange to say about an episode where a centerpiece features several far jokes. But Skins has gotten better about tamping down on its worst tendencies. The ludicrous and truly dumb are minimal or at least well-integrated into telling episodic and long-term narratives in a way they rarely were in the first two seasons. 

Compare “Everyone” to the season one premiere “Tony” and you’ll get a clearer sense of what I’m referring to. “Everyone” is a much better constructed episode. It spends its time introducing all the main characters and establishing conflicts for them that will drive the season going forward. It splits its time amongst them fairly equally, and it only occasionally feels like it’s dragging its feet or that it’s uncertain of how to manage all its moving parts. 

This isn’t Skins finest hour, but it is a necessary one.

Grade: B+

Series Three, Episode Two, “Cook”

“Cook” is less easily defensible than the premiere. Jack O’Connell is terrific as Cook. What the show is aiming for with that character is truly, incredibly sad. Yet the story used to deliver this is silly and puzzling.

Cook is celebrating his birthday. He invites everyone at school, but practically no one shows (in one pathetically sad note of many, he sends away a group of male classmates because he only wants girls for a potential hookup). When the handful of arrivals complain that the gathering is lame, Cook convinces Freddy to let them crash a party his sister is attending. 

And this is where it goes wrong. See, the party is for an infamous mobster who’s marrying off his daughter to settle a dispute to rival gangs. Cook proceeds to stir up troubles that leads to what amounts to a gangland war. 

After this disaster and all-around rejections from his female party-goers to sleep with him (the best having to be from an indignant Katie; even she has standards), Cook heads to a brothel. Thus ridiculous, senseless plot point #2 arrives. 

But the episode can’t be dismissed wholesale. What underlies much of this is a painful sense of sadness. Freddy confronts Cook about his self-destructive streak (a trait he has in common with multiple characters from this season, including Effy) and he tries to play it off as just birthday shenanigans. But drinking at five in the morning isn’t the behavior of someone celebrating their birthday. The sex, drugs and drinking are symptomatic of something deeper. Skins delineates here between the partying of the other characters, which is an occasional fun activity, and the partying of Cook, which comes off more like a chronic disease. 

Cook has his excuses. He’s been abandoned by his parents, and while his uncle genuinely has affection for him, he’s not a suitable guardian. He encourages Cook’s bad behavior, which only exacerbates his worst tendencies. The working class background to the character comes through strongly. Even Cook’s attitude towards women and sex feels conservative and narrow-minded in ways defined as much by economic struggles as adolescent ignorance. 

Cook is another instance of a character who’s much better in performance than writing. This is primarily a messy episode. Its mid-stretch is full of moments of implausible nonsense that distracts from the more well-observed character and emotional work. And yet, O’Connell is an actor that I could watch do just about anything. He’s probably the most expressive actor of the second generation’s cast. There’s subtle work being done in the margins here (Kathryn Prescott is doing lovely, understated work, especially for those who know where that story is headed), but O’Connell is able to liven up this early going when the show still feels uncertain of the direction the season is headed in. 

Grade: B-

Stray Observations:

-The opening scene to the premiere brings about the grandeur of the melodrama the show is aiming for. The moment when Effy first appears is over-the-top, star-crossed lover romanticism. The scene is also an effective deployment of the show’s off-brand sense of humor. 

-I appreciate just how extensively the writers are willing to break from the previous generation. Besides an overly cute moment where Cook becomes the proud owner of Sid’s former locker, the show avoids drawing connections between this generation and the last one. The exception being Effy, which is unavoidable since she’s related to one of those characters and we’ve already spent extended time with her.

-Freddy, to some degree, slots into the Jal role for this generation. He’s a solid, dependable, generally “normal” guy with more outsized personalities surrounding him. 

-Katie tries to befriend Effy because Effy has already gained some popularity (due to her brother Tony), and Katie is desperate to be cool. This along with Katie’s dismissal of Naomi for apparently being gay demonstrate just how desperate Katie is to appear “cool” (Although, homophobia isn’t really an appealing look in my book). She also does drugs in the second episode to impress Effy.

-Katie’s boyfriend is also way too old for her. That’s not me moralizing or anything. She’s in the equivalent of high school and dating someone in like his thirties. It’s strange. 

-Also strange: Emily and Katie’s young brother peeping on them while in the bathroom. Puberty creates an interest in the opposite sex, but not like this. 

-Notice just how clear of a sense of all the major characters we have by the end of the first episode. With the exception of Naomi (who feels oddly shoehorned in, especially considering how important she’ll end up being), we’re given introductory moments that crystallize who every character is. 

-It’s worth noting that anything that Naomi does that resembles “bitchiness” is an intentional facade. This will become more apparent in later episodes. 

-Part of the reason the storytelling works more in the third season is because the core group of characters weren’t already close friends like the first generation. That gives more room for character interactions and stories to develop. But it also creates instances where it doesn’t make much sense as to why they’re hanging out. Case in point: Cook’s birthday party. Most of these people don’t know each other, or even like each other. 

-JJ choosing to make out rather than have sex at the brothel is an on-point character moment and simultaneously sweet and sad (and oh-so weird). 

-JJ has Asperger’s, a characteristic the show is completely open and sympathetic about (which is pretty unusual for a show to do). Freddy and Cook may be occasionally dismissive of JJ, but they also possess a sincere feeling of brotherly protectiveness over him. Along with Pandora and Emily, JJ is on the side of the character ledger of mild-mannered, essentially decent, non-self-destructive individuals who are brought into the all-consuming crossfire of their toxic friends. 

-JJ’s crush on Effy feels just a tiny bit cruel, especially because the show doesn’t take it seriously. 

-Freddy disowning Cook is a major conflict for the season going forward. The show backpedaling on the rupture between them feels a little like a cop-out because of just how believable Freddy’s dismissal was. It works though because it feels like brothers, or even fatalistic lovers, whose lives are so intertwined that they can’t extricate themselves.  

Skins: Season Two, Episode Ten, "Final Goodbyes"

Series Two, Episode Ten, “Final Goodbyes”

Skins is bad at finales. Don’t get me wrong: It’s not spectacularly bad at them, but it definitely struggles with them.

Why is this?

Well, Skins struggles with its big picture narratives. Its deep-dive stories are its bread-and-butter, and having to tell the stories of all its characters at once slightly forces its hand. 

I should probably backpedal here a little bit. This isn’t a terrible episode, even by Skins’ standards. It’s solid and mostly dependable, but it feels unsure of itself and it dawdles on subplots of little value (See that story of Tony and Sid stealing Chris’s casket) 

There’s a steady, powerful through-line provided by Chris’s death and his impending funeral. There’s even a good conflict created by Chris’s father shutting out the characters from the funeral. It’s just that that conflict feels unnecessary and the drama it stirs up fails to focus on the crucial emotional element here. 

See Skins is telling a story about the loss of innocence. Cassie witnessed Chris’s death not just because of her questionable emotional state, but because Skins has always seen her as an innocent (It’s not a coincidence that her season seven reunion episode is called “Pure”). And Chris was the closest the show had to a wounded heart, which only served to make his death all the more tragic. 

This might seem slightly strange for a group of sexed-up, drug-addled scalawags. But it should be clear by now that the partying-lifestyle is a bunch of bluster for a group of scared, confused teens who have no idea what they’re doing.

Most of the sendoffs here are ellipses, not periods. Maxxie and Anwar go off to London and have no clue what the future holds. Tony and Michelle are uncertain of where their relationship, and their future in general, stands. Sid may or may not find Cassie. It’s the bitter uncertainty of adulthood that they’ve begun to taste. 

That’s all great thematically, but it plays less well in the actual telling. There are terrific moments here: Jal’s speech at the funeral is powerful stuff. Tony saying goodbye to Sid is the most human that character has ever seemed. Michelle and Jal’s conversation at the aquarium is beautiful and moving, while losing none of the show’s off-kilter sense of humor. Even Anwar gets a nice little story arc about him failing his exams and having no clue what to do with his future (It’s the most substantial story Anwar has had in ages).

There’s also less terrific stuff. I could have done without the Sketch scenes. Chris’s dad’s scenes are also far more extensive than they ought to be considering this is the finale. The car chase is ridiculous. And because Cassie is in New York, we don’t get nearly enough time with that character. 

Skins biggest problem is not its goofy antics or its unnecessary flights of fancy, but its inability to earn a lot of its dramatic moments (This is, for instance, why Jal’s episodes have failed to land). I like what’s going on with Anwar but have been given no reason to care because we’ve spent so little time focusing on Anwar. This similarly makes it hard to get invested in Maxxie’s big trip to London. By contrast, we’ve spent a lot of time dealing with Tony and Michelle and I feel nothing for their ambiguous future. Their story just was not interesting enough this season, and the writers didn’t quite seem to pick up on that. 

This was an uneven season. There were some standout moments but the show lacked the vivacity of its first season. Skins’ second seasons have the quality of “our heart just wasn’t in it” to them. The show is good at beginnings and ungainly at endings. Its ability to reboot is a blessing. I’m not sure I could have dealt with another season of the stories of this set of characters. 

Grade: B

Skins: Season Two, "Jal" and "Cassie"

Series Two, Episode Eight, “Jal”

In every generation of Skins, there’s one or two characters who aren’t particularly well-serviced. For Skins, Jal is by-and-large one of those characters. Anwar and Maxxie are even worse offenders of this, but Jal feels like an even more disappointing instance of this because she actually has far more untapped potential. She’s a straight-laced band geek overshadowed in her personal and familial life who then gets burdened with an impossible life choice (namely that unwanted pregnancy). The pregnancy feels like a cheap plot device until you realize what Skins (admittedly haphazardly) is trying to use it for: to push a nebbish character to be bold and decisive for once in her life. And yet, she resists even this.

That’s all great on paper, but I’m not sure Skins knows how to tell this story. It’s glib about the pregnancy, and it’s equally glib about its treatment of race, a central fixture of Jal’s episode. It’s even facile in in the reintroduction of Jal’s long-missing mother. Its reductiveness is all the more startling when one remembers that she’s asking Jal to abort her child when she also abandoned Jal. It’s not like this narrative point isn’t apparent, but it all feels rushed and careless. 

Skins is many things, but a consistently written show is not one of them. Even its best efforts feel like the writers stumbled upon them accidentally. I love those better moments because a slew of them would never make it in almost any other show. That’s because Skins more frequently aims from its gut rather than its brain. It’s more interested in making you feel something (whether that’s puerile giggles or bone-aching sadness). 

It’s not like “Jal” doesn’t attempt this (and occasionally succeeds beautifully, as in the scene where her brothers comfort her). But it feels jumbled and overstuffed, and only rarely does it cohere into something more than the sum of its parts. (This is a big picture problem for the show as well, but more on that when I discuss the finale). 

Grade: B

Series Two, Episode Nine, “Cassie”

By contrast, in every generation there are a handful of such vividly realized, singularly original characters that even the lowest storytelling points for those characters are beside the point. Cassie is one of them. She’s a legacy character. By which I mean, she’s one of those characters that will endlessly generate goodwill for the show because it’s such a daring character and story to tackle. 

Cassie is a volatile character and the penultimate episode takes her perspective because even though the dust has settled on most of the major narratives, Cassie is sneakily dissatisfied. That’s because Cassie will never be truly content. She got the boy. She escaped her lousy parents and she’s about to pass her exams with good grades (although at a specially designed make-up session).

Cassie, however, always assumes the worst is just around the corner. The decline and fall of Rome is inevitable. It’s only a matter of when. She’s looking for excuses to ensure that this will take place (and Chris’s death acts as the trigger, but only serves as a very compelling, albeit devastating, excuse). 

Cassie’s behavior only becomes understandable when seen this way. Otherwise, she seems to be stirring shit up just for the sake of it. But that ignores the mental and personal problems Cassie faces. In one way or another, she’ll always be dealing with them. 

Her solution is to run away from her problems (drastically so, all the way to a very underwhelmingly conceived New York City). That’s the behavior of someone with unresolved psychological issues. It should be a bracing development but the series plays it for whimsy and humor. That is until the final, heartbreaking moments where Cassie break down crying. Running away hasn’t solved anything. She thought location was the determinant of her unhappiness, but we all carry our burdens with us wherever we go. 

Grade: B+