Okay now before I get into the first episode a few matters to cover, firstly the length as this is my first ever two-part review and it might seem like I’m just in love with my own writing. I do apologise for the excessive length of the story but feel in order to give full perspective on the orgy of issues I have with Skins it’s a necessity. Secondly I want to talk about why I returned to a show that has previously left me feeling so disappointed. It happened a few weeks before Christmas when I heard from a friend of mine who works in counselling and was asking about Skins. Why? Well it seems that at work she met a girl who was there for therapy and was something of a Skins fan. Now she had very deep-seeded emotional issues that warranted a need for counselling but one of those problems was she was actually afraid of growing older. Seems she had viewed Skins as an accurate portrayal of adolescence and did not want to go through a time in her life where she would be subjected to violence, emotional abuse and drugs. Skins has actually reached a point where it is PSYCHOLOGICALLY DISTRESSING to young people, actually making them fear their inevitable adolescence. So I returned to the show, whiskey in hand, in the hope that something might have changed, something might have made this show not as damaging as it once was.
Well the title sequence isn’t damaging to anyone save epileptics, though frankly I feel like I’m having a head-on collision with the collage dimension. The show itself open on a veritable pit of despair, a party girl who look like she’s been though a saw mill. She proceeds to clean out her teeth with cocaine and return to the club which is in full swing with indie-kids bouncing around struggling the hear each other. One by one she passes the rest of the second generation before finding a high enough ledge and throwing herself off crashing onto the floor in a pool of blood. Are we having fun yet kids? If this was any other show I’d assume this was a precursor to the main characters slowly realising the dangers of their lifestyle but who’s gonna give them that much credit. This scene is only meant to shock you into paying attention and indicate a darker tone for the rest of the series. So the police are called in and it’s up to Pauline Quirke to play detective and she does give a pretty menacing impression. The club owner denies any knowledge of what happened and so does Thomas who apparently runs the night and DJ. Now because I stopped watching series three Thomas is an entirely new character to me despite being one of the main cast. This means I can take a fresh perspective to his role in the series especially as this episode is centred around him. Thomas chastises the owner about letting underage kids in and the owner offers him a little extra money to keep his mouth shut. Thomas takes Pandora to his home (apparently they’re dating), but before they can get to bed they’re caught, Thomas’s mum is up taking care of his sick little brother, Daniel. She yells at him for being out so late and for bringing Pandora home and Pandora gets a little too defensive. While the rambling about her and Thomas’s sex life is amusing its so sitcomesque that I struggle to believe anyone would be so stupid in real life.
As Thomas takes care of his brother he tells his mum about the girl before showing her the bribe but naturally she doesn’t want it, she then slaps Thomas, yes seriously, she slaps him. For what exactly? I know she doesn’t want the money but that’s hardly Thomas’s fault, he’s just trying to take the one good thing from this and use it to help his family. It’s a little misguided but hardly worth a slap over. But Thomas puts his brother to bed says his prayers (I guess he’s the new moral voice of the group, God help him) and tries to go to sleep but first Pandora want some sexing. I know when I’ve just seen someone dies horribly and painfully that’s just what I need. The next scene is set at a nearly all-black gospel choir which I always find fun to watch as I genuinely wonder if such places exist in Britain. After the service the Reverend greets them and Thomas’s mother immediately goes back to her stream of irrationality complaining that he’s falling because of his friends and girlfriend. Which is stupid because the only one she’s actually met is Pandora and while she’s retarded that’s hardly bad for Thomas. Instead of dismissing these as the rantings of an overprotective mother the Reverend actually agrees encouraging to leave his friends and come back to the fold. Huh, guess on top of homosexuality, pre-marital sex and abortions the church also forbids socialising.
Back at school there’s been a change of staff, an old teacher has been replaced by Chris Addison of In the Loop fame. Now often a criticism of Skins has been that it presents parents and authority figures as almost entirely impotent, Tony’s dad is a buffoon, their principal is too soft and Thomas’s mum is clearly insane*. Chris Addison seems to be a subversion of that promising the expel anyone he deems a threat to progress, the problem with this is that it’s so over the top that it just feels ridiculous. Their principal informs them that the police want to speak with the whole college about the girl who died and they want to do it one by one, which is perhaps the biggest waste of police time I’ve ever seen. The kids are quite naturally annoyed by this and discuss it for a while before the subject moves to Effy, seem she’s been missing for some time. Presumably she’s trapped in a deep dark room, naked, bound and gagged, quaking in fear at the thought of the writers returning to fuck her in the ass yet again.
Anyway Thomas goes to the bathroom to find Cook dumping his stash, he thinks Cook is the one who gave the dead girl some drugs and pretty soon they kick off. However before Cook can get the beating he so desperately deserves Freddie intervenes, shooting Thomas a disdainful look as he goes, and rightly so. After all Thomas who are you to kick off at a known antagonising prick, at someone utterly devoid of moral boundaries, at someone who shagged your girlfriend then threw it in your face relentlessly. How dare you try to be moral, upstanding…good, this is Skins Thomas and here evil has won. Next Thomas is working by himself and Pandora comes in to bother him and although she does so in her typical annoying girlfriend manner, honestly I’m not annoyed. Am I amused…perhaps, am I drunk…definitely, but not annoyed. Like with Freddie, Pandora is written with very basic character traits (clue: she’s stupid) but manages to convey them with enough subtlety to feel like a person. Which brings me to wonder if it’s the writers or the actors who are responsible for these occasional good turns, while I despise Cook as a character I honestly don’t put that onto Jack O’Connell, he’s just playing the character he was given. I don’t want to unjustly criticise the writers too much as I’m very supportive of people who’ve succeeded in a difficult industry at such a young age but it has to be said that their writing staff has an average age of 21 and its possible that some of the poorer aspects of the show come from a lack of experience. But I digress, Pandora and Thomas start making out and pretty soon she’s eager for more post-trauma sex. Thomas refuses, but on his way out he does spy on a young, attractive girl singing gospel, it’s the Reverend’s daughter and a trashy romance writer can see where this is going.
Next Thomas is stuck taking care of his brother and sister so he’s taken them to prayer group. Not much happens except the kids sing hymns and Thomas has a little sexual tension with the Rev’s daughter. But sooner or later Thomas’s brother forgets how to breathe again, Thomas helps him and quickly takes him to a doctor. Their mother comes in and immediately blames Thomas for the whole thing, but the doctor is more concerned with…y’know the dying kid. He asks if there are any environmental factors, damp or dust to which she get offended insisting she keeps a clean house. Thomas reveals the damp in their house at which point she goes batshit yelling at Thomas about how he dares to question her parenting. Again, I can see why she’s upset but it takes a real stretch of the imagination to see why she’d blame Thomas when he’s done everything right so far. He took Daniel to the safest possible environment, got him breathing and took him to a professional to help. The only reason she is angry with Thomas is because the plot needs her to be, it needs us to sympathise with Thomas right now. So Thomas storms out, the Rev’s daughter tries to talk to him but he just passes her by so she bangs his brains out in a laundry room. What the fuck is it with the girls in this show and traumatic events? Do their brains have some sort of default setting, something bad happens so they shut down and revert to base instincts? Seriously if I’m every really desperate I’m just going to drive into Bristol find a suitable girl and kill a puppy in front of her. Incidentally this is the point where I lose all respect for Thomas as a character, this may be setting the moral event horizon a little high but really he can’t expect to be a moral voice, critiquing the characters decadent lifestyles and then engaging in it himself, especially at the expense of someone he loves.
Later Pandora comes all set and ready to have her heart crushed, and they shoot the breeze for a little while before Thomas finally comes clean. He confesses he had sex with a smoking hot African princess and his only defence is ‘you did it first’. Yes that’s right Pandora is the second cast member who was just unable to resist Cook’s sexy potato head. This scene is one that tries really hard to be emotional and it would have succeeded if it didn’t contain fucking J.J. why in God’s name is he in this scene? This isn’t just my hate talking, this is a scene that develops the relationship between Thomas and Pandora so really it should only contain those two characters. Was the guy who plays J.J.* just hanging around for the day and they thought they’d use him? The only thing I can fathom is that J.J. is here to provide comic relief, but he’s can’t provide comic relief, he can only annoy. Thomas mopes for a bit at school before he’s taken to Chris Addison to be expelled, which…I guess is supposed to mean something, though what I couldn’t tell you. Why is he being expelled, because he’s was there when the girl died? But the entire main cast was there too so why aren’t they expelled. Is it because he works at the club, but all of eight people know he works there so I doubt there’s much of a link to the college. And if Chris Addison’s taking this much of a stand against troublemakers why isn’t he expelling the people who committed the atrocities of the last series? Like Cook who ran a full riot and trashed the school while all Thomas has done is get a job. Again this is something which only exists to manipulate us into feeling sorry for Thomas, the word of the day is contrived.
So sinking into depression Thomas drinks and drinks and who should be sat on a nearby table, why it’s Cook ready to unleash his stream of verbal abuse yet again. Thomas knocks him to the floor and starts beating the crap out of him, ranting about the dead girl who no one honestly cares about anymore. But for the sake of false drama Naomi drags Thomas off Cook and admits she’s the one who gave the girl the drugs, which…I guess is supposed to mean something. I mean it turns out Cook gave Naomi the coke in the first place which means they’re both indirectly responsible and it still someone in his social circle here only now it’s someone he can’t knock out over it and personally I wouldn’t care if he did. So Thomas talks with Rev’s daughter again, bitches for a while then goes home. His mother finally agrees to use Thomas’s money and they put down a deposit on a cleaner home. I would rant about the lack of logic here like: exactly how much of a bribe did he get or how did they manage to move house in the space of ten minutes? But frankly I don’t care anymore, I give up, Skins you’ve won, I promise I won’t watch anymore!
Now living in middle-class paradise all is well and Thomas goes to apologise to Pandora but she’s not taking him back and closes the door on him. Just to show I’m not entirely filled with venom let me say that scene was perfect! It lasts for all of 53.74 second and is possibly the only time that I wasn’t annoyed, appalled or bored. It contained a strong balance of genuine emotional development with dramatic plausibility. Pandora is doing something radically different here in rejecting someone she clearly cares about but is completely in character as Pandora. Likewise Thomas conveys an air of solemn contrition, while he obviously wants Pandora back I don’t believe that’s why he’s apologising it’s simply because she deserves it. They both return to their homes and Pandora says to someone ‘I told him no like you said.’ Wait, what? No, you told him no because it was the right thing to do! Sigh, so who’s she talking to, it’s DUN, DUN, DUN…Effy. Which…I guess is supposed to mean something. Although it’s kind of a disservice to her character that she’s been completely absent and even the viewers didn’t care. Besides all this does is completely undermine the strength of the last scene, Pandora didn’t reject Thomas because she’s growing as a person but because she was told to. Well done Skins, well done. The episode ends quite aptly with a shot of Thomas crying, probably to reflect how the audience is feeling.
So there we have it, Skins series 4, a contrived episode which largely made no sense and while there were some strong moments frankly all I see here is Channel 4’s eternal love letter to the Asbo generation, like Hollyoaks with Cumshots. It wasn’t until recently it clicked as to how the series could have fallen so far, yet insists on carrying on. It was in WHSmith when I spied a copy of Skins: The Novel that I realised that between the DVDs, the music, the clothes, the Skins-themed club nights and now talks of a movie Skins had officially become a franchise. A cold, lifeless machine designed to produce a product and make money and like Star Wars and the Pirates Trilogy, Skins was doomed to stagnation. But it would be a long time before Channel 4 would finally put its prized cash cow out to pasture and in that time a lot of damage can be done. I only hope the youth of today is smarter than I was, to recognise this as pure fiction and not the life that awaits them.
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