Skins Season 2
Channel 4
So what’s new in season two? Tony is out of his coma, Maxxie has a stalker, the boring one gets pregnant and Sid and Cassie split up causing Cassie to tailspin into a dark night of drugs and casual sex. Illustrating this on the E4 Skins site there is a video entitled "Cassie swaps sides". Click on it and you see "Warning! This clip contains strong language and adult themes". No it doesn’t, fucknut. It contains two pretty girls kissing which is the only reason anybody will be watching. Naturally, this was written because the script writers wanted to see Hannah Murray, the actress who plays Cassie, walking around in her underwear, kissing girls and having casual sex so they can put it on the E4 microsite. And who can blame them? Why, Aerial Telly of course. You’re scriptwriters not pornographers you filthy fuckers.
"Click on Cassie’s video and you see ‘Warning! This clip contains strong language and adult themes’. No it doesn’t, fucknut. It contains two pretty girls kissing which is the only reason anybody will be watching"
Skins has, of course, prided itself on introducing young scriptwriters into the mix. One of these bum fluff cultivating chodes Max Gogarty recently took a prolonged ass fucking from the Guardian blog pod people after his hastily written "Max, 19, hits the road" blog went live. Accusations of nepotism abounded when someone pointed out that Paul Gogarty, Max’s father, also wrote for the Guardian from time to time. Aerial Telly felt a little sorry for Max. He was once 19 himself and he was a stupid bastard then as well. Much of the venom came from wannabe writers whose dream job is publishing their god-awful dribblings on the Guardian website. Nonetheless, the blog did suck quite a lot of cock and reflected badly on Skins.
"One of these bum fluff cultivating chodes, Max Gogarty, recently took a prolonged ass fucking from the Guardian blog pod people"
But Skins has to have young scriptwriters, right? Because they know what’s relevant to the kids. So you sacrifice good drama for that abysmal tyrant ‘relevance’. A lot of the show’s problems stem from this. Skins tries way too hard to be cool and ends up looking ridiculous in the process. It doesn’t know what it wants to be. Season 2 kicks off with a contemporary dance set piece in a church. Then it spends much of its time thinking it’s a farce yet it still wants to deal seriously with issues like bulimia, bereavement and pupil-teacher relationships. Its complete inability to portray a grown-up who is not a grotesque caricature of everything vile about humanity is just laughable. No wonder Harry Enfield is so comfortable in his role as Tony’s dad. Loadsamoney was an understated study of the nouveau riche in comparison. This approach is hugely patronising to its younger audience and hugely sick-making to its older audience. It can’t help feeling like The Young Ones‘ young adult show – Nozin Around. "Hey man, grownups are squares yeah?" Did you ever see that in the great American teen dramas Buffy, My So-Called Life, Veronica Mars? The fuck you did.
"It seems to be a place where occasionally amusing characters intersect, walk around bumping into things for an hour, deal with an implausible crisis with an equally implausible denouement then piss off home having learned nothing."
I’m not really sure what Skins is for. It seems to be a place where occasionally amusing characters intersect, walk around bumping into things for an hour, deal with an implausible crisis with an equally implausible denouement then piss off home having learned nothing. In this, it’s a lot like real life but the day all drama does is reflect real life is the day it no longer matters. If we want real life, it’s all around us. It’s not like Skins is bad most of the time. But when it is bad, it’s practically unwatchable.
The best thing about it: Cassie, walking around in her underwear, kissing girls and having casual sex.
The worst thing about it: The fact that the best thing about it is Cassie walking around in her underwear, kissing girls and having casual sex.
The verdict on Skins Season 2: Needs work. And to grow up a little bit.
Marks out of 10: 6