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+