SKINS S1E4: It's Alright Ma

I've never been abandoned by one of my parents. I've also never had a fifteen-hour erection. Ergo, there's almost nothing for me to relate to in this episode of Skins. And yet I do! I suppose it is because the actor who plays Chris Knitcapper brings so much humanity and compassion to his character. This guy keeps Chris grounded, which is no easy feat. Motherfucker gets wrapped up in some cartoon ish like ERRRRYDAMNDAY.

In some ways he is the opposite of Tony, right? They're both pill-popping sex-crazed sociopaths, but Tony is so stone-faced and unfeeling and, subsequently, impervious. Chris feels everything, too much, and his actions have consequences of which he is all too aware. Mid-way through this episode, Chris is so world-beaten that he looks like a corpse.

But before that, he wakes up to an envelope full of cash and a permanent boner. PARTY ON, WAYNE.

And the other way in which Chris is Anti-Tony is that he has actual romantic feelings for a girl (who just so happens to be his teacher but whatever!). During the above party scene, Tony cruelly mocks Michelle's breasts and then she fucks him anyway. Meanwhile Chris makes an earnest, if addled speech to Angie about how much he wants her to stay at his party and have fun. She's convinced, but then she hugs him and feels his, uh, Monsieur Rabelais. Whoops! 

And that magic boner becomes symbolic (uh-huh) because it finally leaves Chris as the truth dawns on him: his mother is gone for good. And that is bad enough news, but then some hippie dude who's been sleeping in his shower stages a coup and kicks Chris out of the house. If you want to come up with some rebirth metaphor about a naked Chris getting pushed out the front door of his house, well, be my guest.

But if it's a Jesus metaphor, the order is all off, because after his rebirth comes the three days when he's dead. Accompanied by Jal, Chris walks us through the actual horror of his life: a father who wants nothing to do with him, and a dead brother he once idolized.

And by the end of it, Chris's situation hasn't really improved much. Angie hooks him up with precarious new digs on campus, but his mother is still gone and his father is still gone every way but corporeally.

Maybe these aren't visual metaphors for rebirth. Maybe we're just seeing how every time Chris busts out of one box, there's just another one surrounding him. A slightly bigger box, sure. But he's still confined.

Other notes:

• Tony is really awful, huh? Any goodwill he earned in the first episode is gone now. Instead I feel like he's being set up for a fall.
• No word on the condition of Mr. Mustache, Sid's malefactor, but I'm still presuming him to be dead. 
• Cassie continues to throw herself at Sid, this time demanding a date in the near future. I want to tell Cassie she can do better than Sid, but I guess he's an OK dude. And who else does she really have? British Doyle Murray, maybe. If he was even real. Was he real? 

• Muslim Skin and Gay Skin continue to be nonentities to me, but that will probably change next time! 
• Oh, and Jal lost that competition. Boo.