I do not get MTV, and I most certainly don't get Channel Four, so for other people in a similar situation, allow me to introduce you to the genius that is Skins.
Skins is more or less a Teen Drama set in Bristol, England. Like other Teen Dramas of its kind, it features a ragtag cast of characters with very different personalities who all seem to have found each other and hang out together. What really separates it is that the show is directed at mature audiences, features mature content, and its storytelling and continuity are far stronger than weaker shows of the genre. It's kind of like Entourage with teenagers. The dialogue, acting, and cinematography is fantastic. Oh, and at times it's downright hilarious.
Based on previews I initially thought that the show would be pretty much a plot with porn. The show is far greater than that, even though there are still generous amounts of nudity (gratuitous male nudity included). Drug use and sex are rampant, and British swearing is second-to-none. If you want to watch the show for less than noble reasons, you'll almost get what you want, but hopefully you'll end up with something far better.
Each episode of Skins tells the overall story with the lens focused on a different character. The episodes do not make the common mistake of focusing only on that character; you just see a little more of how they contribute to the plot. Regardless of the main arc, each episode is a neatly wrapped short-story that adds some development to the character that it focuses on, and we learn to love them a little more (except Tony).
One of the show's central themes is how self-involved the adults in the community seem to be. Many of them are downright oblivious to the goings-on of the kids, while others are aware but just don't care. This is extremely damaging to the kids, because a lot of the problems on the show seem like they would be avoidable if someone older and wiser just gave a shit. A few of the adults do care, but they have a pretty hard time getting it across.
I'll break down the characters whose episodes I've seen so far and also those whose are yet to come in the series I'm watching.
Tony: [Episode 1] Tony (Nicholas Hoult from About a Boy) is pretty much the nucleus of the group. He is a super-confident ladies' man whose actions put the main plot in motion. Already tall and good-looking, Tony can also sing, and he happens to be dating one of the hottest girls in the school, Michelle. Since Tony seems to have everything going for him, he tends to take it all for granted, and doesn't really care about anything.
Sid: [Episode 5] Sid is Tony's best friend. He's with Tony so much that they're pretty much a package deal. Sid is very much in Tony's shadow at school, but he enjoys equal treatment from other members of the group. Sid is a virgin and his quest to lose his virginity is part of the main plot. This would be easier if he wasn't in love with Michelle (something we're made aware of very early on). Sid is also a bit of a butt-monkey - he seems to take a lot of shit. He's kind of like the Ron Weasley to Tony.
Jal: [Episode 3] Jal is a fantastic clarinetist and one of the more level-headed members of the group. She comes from a musical family, and by 'musical' I mean her father is a successful Jamaican rapper-turned-producer. She often struggles to keep everyone else from completely cocking everything up, and also has to deal with her own problems.
Cassie: [Episode 2] Cassie is out of this world. She's an obsessive-compulsive anorexic who's recently finishing up treatment for her disorder. Initially she's only Michelle's friend but she quickly becomes part of the group. Cassie finds everything fascinating, and she is always smiling, although you get the sense that there are other emotions behind her facade. She is a big fan of pills, too.
Michelle: Michelle is Tony's super-hot girlfriend. This seems to be her primary skill - being hot and having sex. She really loves Tony, but until I get to her episode her character has not received much development yet.
Chris: [Episode 4] Chris is a deep character who on the outside may seem very shallow. He seems to care only about ladies and popping pills, and is a total goofball most of the time. Chris has an odd relationship with the psychology teacher at their school, Angie, who seems to relate to the students better than any other adult in the show.
Anwar: Anwar is the Token Muslim kid on the show. He gets along with the group pretty well and parties as much as the rest of them. Despite this, his Muslim faith is still very strong. Anwar is one of the more humorous characters along with Chris. He and Maxxie are also best friends.
Maxxie: Maxxie is the gay kid in the group. He fills much the same role as Anwar has so far. Maxxie is an exceptional tap dancer, but we don't know much about him yet.
Angie: Angie is not a group member but the young psychology teacher at the technical college that all the characters attend. She gets a special mention here because she is by far one of my favorite characters in the show. While only a side-character, Angie has a good rapport with the group. She is also one of the only adults who seems to care what happens to the kids.
If you have some spare time this summer I implore you to watch this show. I'm only 5 episodes and I'm absolutely loving it so far. Please use spoiler tags if you want to talk about it below.
I'm just going to say, Skins is amazing. Every single season is pretty damn good. Albeit, the original cast, which are the focus of the first 2 (?) seasons, are far superior.
I love this show, was quite disappointed with the most recent cast/series, but overall its a great show thats very different my favorite is definitely the original 2 series though.
I personally loathe it with every inch of my body, but I can see the appeal. I used to watch and *genuinely* enjoy The O.C. for example. I might have enjoyed it when I was younger, when all adults are mental and all sex must be like porn sex and life's so hard for all these reasons.
When its hordes of teenage fans realise that a British party consists of everyone sat on the sofa drinking warm Carling, and the most dramatic part of the night is watching that girl be sick on next door's Megane, and teenagers have genuine, tortuous troubles not covered in the canon of Skins, I fear there will need to be a public enquiry.
(Sorry to be the devil's advocate but this is the internet after all!)
The point of these shows is not to convey the reality of teenage life to people. The whole purpose is to engage the writer's fantasies while also telling a story. That's why I compared Skins to Entourage. Entourage is not supposed to be about major relationship troubles or real-life situations; it's supposed to be about how awesome Vince's life is and how cool it would be to live that life. That is why everyone fucking hates the last two seasons. We do not give a shit about Vince's drug problem or Medellin; we just want to see Vince, E, Johnny, and hell, even Turtle, get laid.
The OC is the same thing; how many parties have you been to where there's been hordes of hot chicks dancing? None? Well wouldn't it be cool if you were Ryan and you could go to a party just like that? How many of you nerdy guys have pined for the hottest girl in school and been ignored? Well wouldn't it be awesome if you were Seth and you GOT the girl? Didn't you hate the OC when things stopped slowly going Ryan's way? Sucked didn't it?
Skins is basically what you wish your teenage life was like, but it adds deeper characterization to the characters to make it interesting. Don't you wish you had a girlfriend whose sole interest seemed to be having sex? Don't you wish you could have an entire all-girls' school fawning after you? Don't you sometimes wish your parents took no interest in your life and you could go out and do whatever you want? That's what it's all about and that's why Skins is such a surprise. It manages to fulfill those wishes while also presenting an interesting story.
Lastly, I really don't see what 'genuine, tortuous troubles' teenagers could have that aren't covered by this show. I could go through my high school and pick out every character's problems and assign them to someone who had the same issues, albeit it would be spread out over more than 8 people.
Like I said, I might have enjoyed it when/if those fantasies were mine. I personally never wanted to be anything like the characters in Skins but obviously you do, so enjoy.
As far teenage troubles, a cartoon like Skins can't offer any comfort to normal teenagers. Here's alternative comedian Stewart Lee to explain more:
lol I decided to check out this show because I saw this thread. In the end I saw the US remake of this in stead of the UK one which is the one that's being hinted at here. So basicly Im stuck after the first season :D The characters are kind of completely different so it's definately worth checking out if you liked the uk one.
On July 26 2011 00:32 KT s0ng wrote: Like I said, I might have enjoyed it when/if those fantasies were mine. I personally never wanted to be anything like the characters in Skins but obviously you do, so enjoy.
As far teenage troubles, a cartoon like Skins can't offer any comfort to normal teenagers. Here's alternative comedian Stewart Lee to explain more:
I'm probably alone in that I liked the 3rd and 4th seasons the most in Skins. I actually loved the 1st and 2nd season watching them, but rewatching them I realized that I absolutely hated Sid, Jal, Chris, and Anwar.. I was really only watching it for Cassie and Tony, as well as partially Maxxie, so I hated it when they were absent in favor of sid-michelle tension, and 90% of the Jal-Chris scenes in the second season were unbelievable in my opinion. That said.. Spoilers..
I'm an avid believer that Cas should have killed herself at the second season. She tried early on in season one, when she had much more to live for, but when everything goes wrong for her at the end of Season 2 she is just like "well. whatever." I don't think it's in her character to brush it off, and in the very least she would have never taken Sid back on the final episode because Sid was the source of most of her problems (plus he was a total douche).
I also didn't like Tony getting hit by the bus, but I started warming up to it after it came into play for season 3 and 4 with Effy, where I felt it had more effect than in the first 2 seasons where no one really cared and Tony just got better over time, and it was forgotten.
On to Anwar, the saddest of the main characters in my opinion. Not only does he ever get a spotlight, he starts fucking Maxxie's stalker, then fails his A levels, and has no future besides staying with Maxxie for a few weeks. I never liked him as a character (he was so hypocritical about being a muslim but smoking/drinking all the time), and I felt the ending suited his character. He was just boring for me to watch a 2nd time through.
Sid.. I HATE Sid. I HATE people LIKE Sid in real life too, they did such a good job with writing his character, it's insane. The no-lifer who hangs out with a popular friend, then eventually turns on his popular friend because he feels he's worth something when he really isn't. Sid had so much infront of him, and he just fucked every single thing up. Relationship with Michelle, fucked up. Relationship with Cassie, fucked up. Friendship with Tony, would have been fucked up if it was IRL (or maybe Tony would have forgiven him to manipulate him, you never know.). The turning point for me hating Sid was on Tony's(Effy?) episode in the first season where Josh drugged Effy up at the yacht club. It started with Sid saying "no one wants you here Tony" when Tony went to Chris's apartment, and then that whole pitiful speech he pulled on Tony right before leaving him beneath the underpass. He is such a scummy character, turning like the tides to ride out friendships.
It's still super well written, these are just personal dislikes I have for some characters. It varies from person to person I find.
I finished these seasons about 2 weeks ago, finishing season1/2 about a year ago. I didn't really have any problems with characters in this series, I ended up understanding why each of them acted the way that they did, and I was able to empathize. I started off not liking Cook, but by the end of the series I liked him a lot because I felt he grew into a "man" rather than the "boy" that he started as. Same with Freddie, although I hated Freddie's ending for obvious reasons.
My two favorite characters by far were Emily and Naomi, who I both started off disliking. I feel like they're such a positive role model for any lesbian couple, they really overcame their adversity to be happy in the end. There was never a scene where they were together that I didn't smile at, I wish I could get a poster of them for my room.
Katie.. She started off as a huge bitch, continued to be a huge bitch, and ended mostly as a huge bitch. I think she was just misunderstood the whole time, having to be an envoy for Emily and her younger brother to her parents must have been a huge pain in the ass. Couple that with thinking you're losing your best friend and sister, being treated like shit from boys (the soccer player and then Freddie), as well as a lot of stress from her parents, and I can see why she would be such a bitch. Effy really didn't help when she hit Katie in the head with a fucking rock, that was really the turning point for me not liking Effy.
JJ was the quietest character of the series, but I enjoyed his two episodes a lot. I felt like I could really feel his frustration with autism, as well as his friends growing apart. I can't believe he actually ended up with the girl with the kid, go JJ. I really don't have much more to say on him, he wasn't that big of a character.
Thomas/Pandora.. These two were so ridiculous the whole season through. Their relationship was always on the backburner compared to Eff/Cook/Fred and Em/Naomi, so I found myself not caring (partially because Pandora was a pretty boring character in the first place). Thomas was really a source of "honor among thieves" in my eyes, up until he fucked the pastor's daughter. Then I stopped caring about him, because he lost his only "interesting" trait (he became a boring Cook).
Effy. The flagship of season 3/4, and partially 1/2. She was meant to replace Tony for the reason that people wanted to watch the show, but she ended up being a really boring character. I don't know what went wrong for her before season 1/2, but she isn't as smart or as devious as Tony like a lot of people like to say. She fucked up so many times in her manipulation, getting her hurt instead, that she became just another character. The allure of Tony in my eyes was that he was angelic, he never made a mistake in his manipulation. Effy lets sex control her, and she ruins everything around her because of it. Then she slowly descends into insanity after her parents split, leading her to nearly kill Katie (then fuck her BF), then spends the rest of her time (season 4) crying in a mental hospital. Boring.
The ending of season 4. Give me a break, if you haven't seen it don't keep reading. Effy's psychiatric turns out to be some mad doctor, toying with Effy making her forget Freddie and Cook so that the psychiatric can fuck her instead? Then he goes and kills Freddie, and potentially Cook. Such a stupid ending to a great set of kids, I would have been so mad if Freddie was my favorite character though.
@Enydmiom: I don't agree with much of what you wrote regarding Series 1, but I absolutely loved Naomi + Emily in Series 2. That dynamic was insanely well acted and written.
Whoa dredging this one up from the depths eh? I do appreciate your enthusiasm for the show though! I especially appreciate your love for Naomi + Emily. That is one of my favorite love stories in all popular culture.
I'm actually pretty ok with what's been going on in Series 6 so far. Sure, Franky and Mini have gotten pretty bitchy, but they will (and did) come around. Nick's episodes are always so random - each one is him getting into totally obscure shit.
But I am VERY EXCITED for Alo's episode next week. By far one of the best characters in the show, purely because he's so fun. Hope they don't pull a Skins and totally break him down or anything, lol. (Dammit, Mini.)
EPT![[image loading]](http://tvovermind.zap2it.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/skins1.jpg)
