SKINS 6x03 & 6x04 --The final descent

[doreah]

I'll preface this by saying that this will possibly be the last one of these I do. I can barely be bothered to watch an episode of this terrible programme, let alone spend an hour+ talking about it afterwards here

Comments

[doreah]

I can't even be bothered live-blogging lol.

That's true, there's a shitload of girls who don't have dads. But I think those could technically be under asshole/neglectful type lol. But yeah, point.

Exactly. Not only was the depiction of it in of itself awful, but Alex's reactions weren' real at all. I think the father's were moreso. Some people do just think "oh lost cause." and also get really angry at the older person for being that way. i've seen my uncle pretty much disown my nana when she started to go. he just didn't know how to handle it properly. and if a 40 yr old man can;t, how on earth is a child?

Yeah, I think BE suffers from like some sort of mental block. Like those people who are like "OMG high school was the best time of my lifeee!!" even tho in reality it was pretty crappy but they've built it up so high in their heads and made up so many stories that they've kind of convinced themselves and truly believe it was so amazing. even tho most of what they're remembering isn't real. i fell into that for a few years. i was like "oh no. i LOVED high school. it was SO GREAT!" but i had blocked out all the horrible shit and exaggerated the good in my head so much that i honestly didn't recall reality. i sorted it out later on tho... now i recognise the good and the bad.

granted he does pretty much ramp up the BAD to ridic levels. it's not like it's all happy fun times. but it's just... so... UGH. i don't even know how to explain it. but the drama isn't real. it's pure fantasy. so it may as well be happy fun times for the amount of sense it makes. he's totally just vicariously reliving his teenage years as he wished they were (or as he genuinely believes they were... which is about a million times worse.)

and yeah exactly. i mean first year uni was a shitshow. i had no money worries really and loved to drink but fucked if i could afford that shit all the time. remember... it was them IJ boys who lived like that... and then ended up in MASSIVE debt cos of it. yeah and they started off with heaps of dough. it's so ridic for teenagers. i mean i'm still uni now and i walk into the off-license, look at the prices of vodka and turn around and go to sainsbury's for the cheapest shit possible. and i love my grey goose and crap. just cannot afford it on a constant basis. ffs. and going out for drinks is even worse.

yeah lol no kidding! he should be tbh. but skins must have been majorly skint this series. no other series has had the regulars cut so drastically. rich missing from 2 eps? nick not even speaking in some? grace as a cameo? pretty much each ep is ONE MAIN CHARACTER, with ONE OTHER MAIN CHARACTER guest starring -- and the rest are just extras and cameos. these poor kids must not have earnt much money. not to mention it makes the episodes as terrible as S4 with the drastically insular stories.

[elizalavelle]

They just played the whole disease wrong. Alex saw it as a fun game and the show let it be shown that way rather than showing that it's scary. Someone like that will often wander out of the house if left unsupervised or turn the stove on and light the house on fire... it's not cruel of the father to want her to be in a home. No idea why he couldn't just be home and pack her up himself since a kid shouldn't be home alone with someone who's ill like that anyway unless they're homeschooling or something because leaving the house for the entire day and randomly at night can't happen.

BE could definitely be thinking like that. Or he was such a loser but has decided that the kids who party had the best time ever. I feel like he was never a part of the world that he's portraying since he doesn't seem to show anything right at all.

They must have blown all of their budget on Morocco and then could barely pay for filming for the rest of the time. Dumb. And yes there's so much less continuity when the characters don't even speak to each other!

[doreah]

"I feel like he was never a part of the world that he's portraying since he doesn't seem to show anything right at all."

This is true. But that's not in conflict with my view. I tend to agree that he obviously did not experience this ~world he insists on exploring so terribly. I think tho, it's not like he was a complete loner loser in college, just that he's made up an alternate reality that he either believes happened (cos he insists that Skins is ~real, which anyone who is a relatively recent teenager would scoff at so that implies that it's real to him, and thus what he knows through his experiences/what people tell him. Ugh.) or what he thinks actually happens. I mean, there's no way to know without asking him but since he cowardly fled from Twitter to avoid facing any criticism at all, it's impossible. I guess on that side of things, he is still stuck in the mentality of a child. So, yeah, lol. Congrats BE. But yeah, he seems to have the same immature, ignorant view that the party kids were just the coolest ever and lived the best, most exciting lives.

*sigh*

Then again, some of these episodes aren't written by him at all, but written by "young writers". I'm not sure what "young" means, other than his daughter. Cos like the "teen advisory board" in MTV!Skins, I think it's a load of gimmicky, meaningless bullshit now, where once it was legit.

Whatever. I give up on him and Skins really. I actually saw an advert for Gossip Girl and I couldn't really tell the different between the shows now. So much for ~originality. When Skins becomes the exact UK equivalent of GG, just with more dubstep, I don't see how anyone can argue that it's the same unique, amazing Skins it once was.

[elizalavelle]

Wait what, he actually interviews saying Skins is reality? I think they should have brought in some party kids who are now done partying and interviewed them to get an actual real perspective. Maybe actually do two groups. Talk to party kids and base the first season of a generation around how awesome they think everything is and how immortal they feel. Then for the second season bring in the reality of consequences (not "a random stranger died in the club" consequences but real things like relationships falling apart and flunking out of school... more like series one TBH) then you'd have something dramatized but more real.

I think Mini's ep was written by his daughter which kind of makes me wonder what their relationship is like.

[doreah]

Yeah that's been Skins' partyline since the beginning; writers, cast etc. Some of them were smart enough to be like "yeah it's like a reflection of reality but exaggerated" (lily loveless was one of the cast that was like this. she had brains). i think even a lot of the first gen cast said the same. i recall april saying more than once that the aim was to show the "real" life of teenagers like it never has been before -- but it's obvs exaaggerated for TV. some of them tho have always said "this is what being a teen is really like!! shocking!! watch our show!!". the whole thing with BE circa MTV!Skins was like how ~real it was, and how because he's so brilliant and has ~real teens telling him ~real stories -- that the show will be so authentic to this and be so ~real all round. and i believe on his twitter before it was gone there was stuff about how they just want to represent teens as real people or something. i honestly can't remember. coulda been elsewhere in an interview or something. i just can't count the number of times i recall hearing him or his lackeys spouting off about how cutting edge skins is cos it portrays what it's really like to be a teenager. not to mention the media that touts that around constantly in praise of it.

i think that's totally it. you gotta get "retired" party kids to tell stories. not the ones that are still in it, high on the experience and inflating everything themselves. i find retired party kids have a better perspective on it all -- the good and bad. of course it seems awesome and consequence free whilst you're IN it. everything always is like that. but once you're out of it, you can see more sides to it. and i think that's what's so unbalanced about Skins now. not only are the writers completely out to lunch about what it's like in ANY party scene, but it's like they're only getting stories from the young kids that still think everything is MENTAL AND DRAMATIC AND AWESOME. which is fine... in moderation. (haha clone high reference!) but it needs that other side which apparently the adults can't provide either cos they're too old to remember the downside of things, just looking back (and imagining things) with such rose-coloured glasses.

[elizalavelle]

Clone high is awesome!

Also, I agree with what you're saying here. I think you should make the next Skins - I'd watch :)

[doreah]

really when i see the portrayal of even drug use/drug culture on this programme is just rings SO FAKE, like someone's wetdream about drugs, like someone who has very limited experience in it. like one of those 15 yr olds that has just tried MDMA for the first time a few weekends ago, you know? of course it seems like nothing could ever be wrong! hell, we spent most of first year uni in blissful ignorance (and purposeful ignorance haha) about the bad shit than came with partying so hard. and even like with raving. it seemed like the perfect life... until it didn't.

everything's fun and games until your friend ODs, pretty much. just like drinking's so much fun until you nearly fail school, puke blood and ruin relationships.

and i mean, fine, don't be preachy. but i find any "consequences" the skins kids this series face are never related to their actual behaviour anymore, or if they are, they don't even realise it so it doesn't matter. it's just dumb luck that bad shit happened. like you said a lot of it is random, with very thin ties to any of the characters' actions, if any. unless it about girls having sex cos apparently you can't be a girl and enjoy sex without either getting pregnant or raped or die. but even then, i feel like neither franky nor mini really have taken stock of the fact that the consequences they experience are partly related to the poor choices they've made. it's just like "shit happens oh well not my fault!"

not to mention i don't think i've ever seen a single one in any generation ever have a hangover or a bad comedown.

that is truly magical.

even cassie ODing in 1x01 was like all fun and games. WTF.

yeah. jess brittain -- the girl who can't even have continuity within her own writing. (she wrote the novel and clearly ignored 2 main points she developed in that. so i guess the novel isnt canon after all. which then can be assumed the gen2 novel wasn't either by that logic.).

well, put together Sid/his dad and Mini/her dad and you've got BE's kids' perspectives on their relationship with him. He's said multiple times that he wasn't the greatest parent so go figure. i can't imagine it was a very good relationship -- until Skins and money came along. and even then, i have no idea what it's like now, but BE commandeering Skins and JB being booted for his sister? eehhhhh. Rough. that's the really scary thing about this tho. it gives you possible insight into the creators and writers more than the characters. and it's creepy speculating on it, and probably a little out of line -- but it's inevitable when they make it so salient.

[elizalavelle]

I think you hit the nail on the head. I don't think the show needs to preach but the consequences are often so random. Effy is a huge case in point. Her actions had no consequences and she just randomly went crazy.

Yeah I feel creepy wondering what's going on there but when you have your kids write the episodes and they're so blatently off plus there's the firing of one and hiring of the other... I just speculate the family situation is not good. Honestly with a person who is so dellusional that they get a twitter to hear praise then run when they get bad feedback you know something isn't good there. Glad he's not my dad.

Wait was there another novel?