BBC Skins

[Spoiler Warning, do not read if you have not seen season one] So I borrowed season one of BBC's Skins from my friend Chelsea. I've been raved at about it for I don't know how long. My friend Nathan even said if he were living in Paris, France, and I called him up saying I wanted to watch the pilot episode he would (assuming he had the disposable income and free time) fly out to me and watch it with me. Needless to say, that wasn't necessary.

I ploughed through most of the first season in a one night marathon, though given the lives of the characters on the show, perhaps a one night stand would be a better description.

I hated it up until about the last ten minutes of the first episode when they accidentally rolled a hijacked car into the harbor (with all the main characters in it). If there were an American version, and I'm completely ignoring the fact that there actually was a shitty attempt at an American version (or so I'm told), it would be full of rich white people problems with one or two tokenized diverse characters who never really get fleshed out or treated to the complexities of their sexuality or race. Much like the OC, Gossip Girl, Sex and the City, and the host of other programs that consumerist America has gobbled up because of the pretty faces and glamor.

This isn't to say that Skins does much better. I lost count of how many cell phones, laptops, televisions, apartments, etc were completely destroyed with no consequences and seemingly no financial hardship at all. The reviews gush that Skins is so authentic and real to the adolescent experience, but I have to wonder what fetishized ideal of adolescence these media groups are playing into. I would poll the majority of my friends to ask how many of them regularly attended ragers where half the party ended up sleeping naked on the floor by the end of the night, but I'm not sure I want to know that about my friends.

But, this is certainly no Glee and I'm willing to forgive some of the social blindness for the sheer intelligence with which the characters are handled.

They play into stereotypes, especially in the first few episodes, yes, but the main cast of eight or nine are really fleshed out throughout the season. Even the treatment of Muslim Anwar and gay Maxxie's relationship is more about how Anwar's religious hypocrisy plays into Maxxie's sexuality than it is the classic TV standard of gay boy falls in love with best friend and drama ensues. That's brilliant is what that is.

See, what seduced me into this show were the Stonem family (and oddball, Cassie, but I'll talk about her later). Our opening protagonist, Tony and his younger sister, Effy. They're easily recognized as supposing to be the most hateable and the most beautiful (and therefore most lovable) characters. They're intelligent and cold and manipulative, the top of their respective social hierarchies, frustrating because you want them and want nothing to do with them at the same time. Their actions come about from boredom because they've never been truly challenged and they're used to getting their way.

A quick Wikipedia search told me that Effy doesn't really gain foreground until the third and fourth seasons when most of the older characters leave, but the setup and fall and reawakening of Tony, which story-arcs the first two seasons goes pretty much as expected. He's a horrible person who causes all sorts of trouble, he's just about to change his ways when something traumatic happens,

He got hit by a bus, how very:

suffers through recovery, changes his ways (with a relapse here and there for tension and to keep things interesting) and gets the girl.

It's satisfying to see him taken down. We want to see the high and mighty whom we hate so much fall so it humanizes them, so we can love them again. And then we can allow them to have what they want so long as they've suffered for it even if they're just as bad as they always were.

Cassie, like her namesake from mythology, Cassandra, is slightly off from the world. Anorexic in the first few episodes, she speaks in riddles and obscurities, it's that very absurdity that drew this character to me, and somewhere in that randomness is a purity of truth. Wisdom from the mouth of babes, but like her namesake she's cursed to be an outcast, people don't believe her.

It's the play on those kinds of tropes that makes Skins so addictive.

Still, I think I'm going to take a break after I finish season two. I can only tolerate so many annoying teenagers having sex and doing drugs and generally being stupid and dramatic for so long, and if they got caught at the end of the episode and promised not to do it again all after-school-special, well then this would be Degrassi, wouldn't it?