SKINS S1E7: Tony 2012

This episode starts with Michelle punching Tony in the face and then kicking him in the balls. In other words, we're off to a great start. And it's not the last time Tony takes one on the chin (I swear that isn't a blowjob joke) either--Sid gets fed up, too. Compared to the relatively grim conclusion of "Maxxie and Anwar" (Anwar is relegated here to simply sitting in the background and glaring) this episode is downright redemptive, with Sid and Michelle and Michelle's step-father ALL making positive changes and not even ultimately backsliding! A thing like that!

It's also a pretty funny one--there's a great bit of business involving Angie, Michelle, and ringing cellphones. There's also a great use of rack-focus during Cassie's only scene (let's hear it for Cassie, by the way, right? CASSIE!!!), in which she simultaneously busts Sid's and her new boyfriend's balls.

The plot, in short: after watching Tony suck a dude's dick, Michelle finally decides to dump him. While she's at it, she tosses Jal aside too, but it's kind of a friendly-fire death. Meanwhile Sid realizes that he actually DOES have feelings for Cassie at exactly the wrong moment.

While visiting Cassie at Willy Wonka's Rehab Centre, Michelle gets asked out by Josh, who is the brother of that Posh Bitch with the intense teeth that Tony likes for some reason. It goes well, as in sex, except for the way Josh constantly reminds Michelle that he is mentally unstable and needs to stay medicated at all times. Cool story, bro.

And Tony walks around quoting Shakespeare while pieces of sky repeatedly fall on his head. Later, when he sees Michelle and Brother Posh together, he flawlessly executes a bizarre heist, stealing the guy's cellphone and sending sexy pictures of the dude's sister out to his contacts. Michelle is one of the recipients and takes this as confirmation that Josh is crazy. And you know, he probably is,* even though he didn't actually do this. So whatever, something something will out. And Tony's plan doesn't work anyway, because Michelle declines to return to his (Tony's) unloving embrace either.

(*And even if he isn't, he really annoyingly pretends he is.)

Tony quotes Romeo & Juliet throughout, but a play better suited to his tastes is probably Titus Andronicus. The speech from Aaron The Moor is Tony's philosophy (or, the philosophy he claims to have) in a nutshell:

Even now I curse the day—and yet, I think,
Few come within the compass of my curse,—
Wherein I did not some notorious ill,
As kill a man, or else devise his death,
Ravish a maid, or plot the way to do it,
Accuse some innocent and forswear myself,
Set deadly enmity between two friends,
Make poor men’s cattle break their necks;
Set fire on barns and hay-stacks in the night,
And bid the owners quench them with their tears.
Oft have I digg’d up dead men from their graves,
And set them upright at their dear friends’ doors,
Even when their sorrows almost were forgot;
And on their skins, as on the bark of trees,
Have with my knife carved in Roman letters,
‘Let not your sorrow die, though I am dead.’
Tut, I have done a thousand dreadful things
As willingly as one would kill a fly,
And nothing grieves me heartily indeed
But that I cannot do ten thousand more.

I mean, Tony hasn't dug up a dead body yet but give him time.

(Sorry.)

The above passage from Titus Andronicus was quoted in a recent Radiolab episode ("The Bad Show") and is also used on an album by the band Titus Andronicus (natch). Speaking of Titus, they've got a rad new song I have been listening to CONSTANTLY. It's called "Upon Viewing Oregon's Landscape With The Flood Of Detritus" and you can check it out here.