TV/DVD: SKINS SERIES 4

An Amazon 4-star review

Whatever happened to the greatest drama series on television ever?

I am, as you all know, referring to Skins series 3, a program I have watched more than any other and even written a 16000 word review/recap of it. It was a series that reached out and touched people. Like Glee, it transcended its target demographic. It was important television and Series 4 was the most anticipated (by me anyway) program ever since the moon landing.

And then we got Skins series 4 which was like being slapped with a wet piece of cod. It wasn’t all bad, not by a long way, and did have some good stuff. But what it didn’t have was the magic of Series 3. So, what happened? And I should add that in my attempt to find out, we’ll doing serious spoilers, so if you aren’t already familiar with it, you’d be best off reading another review.

It opened promisingly if grimly. Sophia, a girl unknown to us wanders through a heaving club, walking by or bumping into our friends. After walking past a snogging Naomi and Emily  she climbs onto a balcony and jumps off. The first two episode are about the aftermath. When Naomi lies to the police in front of Emily, Emily starts digging into what really happened. What she finds out shatters her relationship with Naomi, even though they’ve just moved in together, and they spend the rest of the series in a living hell as Emily is full of anger and resentment and Naomi is full of guilt and self-pity.

Thomas, who had been running the club night is expelled from Roundview by the new ruthless head who speaks softly and carries a bull-pizzle whip with which to lash recalcitrant students. Actually that’s a metaphor, or maybe just a fantasy of mine. Thomas then undergoes his own journey into the heart of darkness by foolishly if understandably (she’s hot, she’s talented, she’s from the Congo, and she wants him anyway) having sex with his minister’s daughter and then, stupidly, tells Pandora who won’t, at Effy’s urging, forgive him.

So far, so glum.

On the other hand, Katie 4king Fitch comes up trumps. When her family starts to collapse around her due to her father’s incompetent financial dealings, it’s Katie who holds everything together even to the extent of getting them to movie in with Naomi and Emily. What do you think, Mysterious Voice-over from The Weakest Link? “Well Ian, from the weakest player in the last round, Katie has become the strongest in this one.” Thank you, sir. Katie, unlike some of our characters, is growing up and doing a good job it it.

The next biggest surprise is Cook. An even bigger one is his mother who is just as selfish a monster as his father was in series 3. Except she’s a millionaire conceptual artist who has loud sex within the hearing of Cook and his 10 year old half-brother. Cook comes to learn that his actions have consequences which he finally faces up to and it appears that he too is beginning to grow up. Sadly it doesn’t last.

Thank god we get some well-earned light relief with JJ falling in love with a single mother who cute and pretty and bright enough to realise that a gentle 18 year old who flirts with old ladies at a checkout is a better bet than her chav ex-boyfriend. There are lots of funny scenes and painful ones too, plus an encounter with JJ’s quiet father who has always thought that JJ would do just fine even while he tolerates JJ’s mum dragging him to see dopy shrinks. And it has a happy end.

Meanwhile, Freddie and Effy (my two least favourite characters) are living in a haze of drugs, sex, and madness. Freddie blames his father for his mother’s suicide and when Effy develops similar symptoms he can’t cope. This leaves Effy at the mercy of an obsessive psycho-shrink who makes her even worse and who, when it seems she’s out of his clutches, murders Freddie and Series 4 jumps the shark. Madness is a serious and important subject and it was right to tackle it in Skins. But what they should not have done was to introduce a genuinely homicidal psychologist into the mix and reduce it to cheapest and crudest of melodrama. More than anything else, this ruined series 4 for me. And getting his comeuppance from Cook didn’t help any either.

And so to the last episodes when loose ends are tied up and relationships are resolved. Like you, I desperately wanted Naomi and Emily to get back together properly and if they hadn’t I would probably have destroyed the television set and stalked the writers with a baseball bat. That’s another metaphor; I wouldn’t really. So, no surprise, they did get back together with lots of crying and some kissing (not enough). Thomas, in the space of five minutes is seen running by a coach who tells him he’s international class and fixes him up with a sports scholarship at Harvard. Wow! And they say fairy tales don’t happen. Pandora, who was always cleverer than she admitted to be, has got several squillion A*s and a history to scholarship to- Oh, you’ll never guess.

Outside the party in Freddie’s shed where all this has been happening, lurks psycho-shrink who is followed home by Cook who finds, all neatly laid out in the living room, the evidence that his best mate has been murdered. Violence is about to ensue when the credits come up.

Great cast, great acting, great adult guest stars, and some bloody horrible plot developments. Still, we’ll always have Skins 3.

TV: SKINS SERIES 4.8, NAOMI & EMILY

It needed to pull a rabbit out the hat to salvage the mess of this series but, despite some good scenes, it didn't do what was needed. But then what was needed was for most of the scripts to be scrapped and rewritten from scratch before the series started.

It ends with Cook breaking into the home of psycho-shrink, conveniently discovering Fred's bloody clothes neatly folded and bagged in the first room he enters, having a confrontation with psycho-shrink where he declaims himself over the course of a diatribe to be totally worthless climaxing with a screamed, "I'm Cook!" and launching an attack on psycho shrink. Black screen. Credits. The end.

It begins with Thomas running around a track and being discovered by a coach who, it seems, within 24 hours gets him an athletic scholarship at Harvard, though this last information isn't announced until nearly the end.

Pandora visits Effy in hospital, Katie is already there, and sings Effy a song she's written especially for her. It's lovely, sweet, a little bit clumsy and absolutely perfect as is the scene itself and also reminds us how criminally underused this character has been during this series. Later, and before Thomas's revelation, Pandora says she's going away, to Harvard on a history scholarship, shame-facedly admitting that she might have taken more exams tham she let on. This is a lot more believable than Thomas's miracle scholarship as there was always more to Pandora than at first appeared. 

Saving money on paying the actress who plays Lara, JJ appears at one point with baby Albert to let us know that they're still together.

But the key characters this final episode are Naomi and Emily. For a full description, and a more perceptive one than I can provide, I refer you to AfterEllen's recap which is well worth reading for the insight into these two much-loved characters.

Much of the first half of the episode takes place at Naomi's house where several people have been crashing out including Cook (who is fucking an Effy-lookalike) and Pandora. Also Mandy, the tall girl from the previous episode who has designs on Emily and who we find in bed together. Nothing has happened as Emily was, the previous evening, too drunk to fuck as the saying goes and Naomi thinks Mandy is straight,though she is shortly disillusioned of that fact when Mandy says bluntly to Naomi, in a very brief scene where the actress playing Mandy is very powerful, that if Naomi doesn't want Emily, she most certainly does.

Turns out it's Freddy's birthday so the gang get together in Freddy's shed for, unknowingly, a wake and here several things are resolved. Most notably Naomi and Emily's relationship. Naomi arrives just as JJ is asking who's going next in a truth game. I will, she says and does, revealing all the truths and motivations for actions and behaviour since the beginning of Series 3. She's loved Emily since she was 12 years old and it took her three years to get the courage to speak to her; she went with men to convince herself she wasn't gay and failed; she was terrified of the power that loving Emily gave Emily over her and everything she's done was in order to push Emily away so she won't be frightened any more; and its all been for nothing because despite herself she can't stop loving Emily. And, finally, they come together.

And that, really, is the end of Skins. Series 4, I suppose, hasn't been all that bad -there are certainly many good things in it- but it just doesn't come anywhere near the exhuberance and magic of Series 3 when these characters were introduced and really is a massive disappointment.

TV: SKINS SERIES 4.7 EFFY

1. Effy in brief.

So Effy is in the nuthouse and being treated by a psychiatrist who is even nuttier than she is. He convinces her to suppress from her memories all the bad things which have happened resulting at one point in her not even knowing who Cook is. When she cracks up again, Freddie tells the psychiatrist they don't want her treating Effy. At this point Skins moves ludicrously into schlock-horror psycho-killer mode when the nutty psychiatrist lures Freddie to his house where, offscreen so we aren't really sure what's happened, he appears to bash Freddie's brains out. While this in itself is no loss, the act itself is where Skins jumps the shark and just about completely forfeits any pretense at reality, heightened or otherwise.

2. What else happens.

They get their exam results. Naomi gets 3 A's, Emily gets BBC (a joke?), JJ does good, etc.  Effy, who hasn't even taken her exams, fails the lot. But no. Wait! Here's the oh so kind Principal  (yes, I know, we all thought he was a total shit) has given her new results -all A's. Hurrah! The fact that she might otherwise have the college's new improved results plays no part of this. I was a little amazed that he could do this given that the exams are externally set and marked. But this is Skins land where psychiatrists can be psycho killers.No sign of Lara, not much else happens.

3. Why this series is the biggest disappointment in the entire history of television (a slight exaggeration, but not much).

I absolutely adored the previous series (see my extended essay/recap at the start of my blog) and probably repeat watched it more than anything else. Then, even in solo episodes, members of the group played a large part. Here one or two of them might appear in glorified cameos and that's about it. There is no group. Bluntly, it's gone completely up its own arse. I'm so disgusted I've even cancelled my pre-order for the DVD.

In between writing bits of this, I've checked the recap over on AfterEllen and the writer thinks the same as me about the nutty psychiatrist and Freddy's death. We don't usually agree -she recapped JJ's episode and seemed to spend most of it talking about Emily's & Noami's extended cameo- but we're as one on this. The last episode has a hell of a lot to do to redeem itself.

Oh well, Channel 4 have just authorised another two series with a new cast. Please let them be better than this one which has gone from brilliant to crap.

TV: SKINS SERIES 4.5 EFFY & FREDDIE

Good grief, but this is a bleak one, I'll keep it short though because it is relatively easy to describe.

Effy and Freddie are lost together in a haze of love, sex, and drugs. Freddie tries to get it together when threatened with expulsion but Effy doesn't seem to care and continues on a downward spiral.

We learn more about Freddie's background when he visits his grandfather (character actor Dudley Foster)  in an old people's home. Apparently his mother, who suffered from mental illness, was put in a hospital by his father where she committed suicide. Freddie blames him for her death which, in part, explains the distance between the two evident in the previous series.

Freddy tries to help Effy, who likes vodka with her cornflakes, but she isn't having any. While he's out she organises an impromptu party and he finds her hiding under their bed. Later, after he's cleared everyone out, he finds Cook who has escaped from prison. By now it's clear that Effy is also mentally ill and she completely freaks out when, running away from Freddie, she encounters a carnival where she is rescued by Cook dressed as a devil and Katie in angel's garb, echoing the bi-polar illness Effy is suffering from.  With Freddie, they take her to the home where his grandfather lives and where she cuts her wrists. At the hospital with Effy and her mother, a despairing Freddie, finding himself in the same position his father once was, can't deal with it and runs away.

I thought earlier episodes were bad but this is the most painful yet which is why I'm writing such a short piece and haven't watched it a second time yet. It's also one of the most focussed episodes with other characters being little more than cameos. The only light relief is singer Will Young as an eccentric school counsellor who attempts to solve problems by asking what would Michael (Jackson) do and finds the answer (or not) in lines from his songs.

Next week's episode should be lighter as it focusses on JJ who is suffering from unrequited love and the trailer looks very funny. Let's hope it is as we need a break.

TV: SKINS SERIES 4 (SLIGHT RETURN)

I'm not doing a recap/review of last night's Skins, not yet, not until I've watched it a second time. A couple of days ago I read a similar piece on last week (Cook's) episode on the After Ellen website (see sidebar) which was far more perceptive and better written than mine and almost made me want to stop doing them. The extended pieces I did on the previous season were written after I'd watched the entire thing more than once and had a much better perspective on it, so I'm going to watch Katie's episode again before presenting my view of it.

While I'm here, I should note something I've so far omitted which is the continued and effective use of quirky British character actors and comedians in supporting roles. Pauline Quirk played, and did it well, the police detective investigating the girl's death for the first three episodes. Playing Cook's laid-back lawyer last week was Paul Kaye (an understated role is unusal for him) and last night we had comedienne Jenny Eclair in the role of the monstrous mother of a pregnant bride to be.