SKINS S2E2: The Sense God Gave A Lemon

One thing Skins does very well, which I haven't noted before, is visual storytelling. That's hard to do--I mean not only is it conceptually difficult to tell a comprehensible story in images instead of words but it's also like, literally logistically hard to move the camera and lights around and show all the stuff you need to show. It's much easier to just have a guy say, "Oh, so Maxxie's stalker lives on THAT floor." And this episode of Skins is a particular standout in that regard--multiple scenes rely on understanding spatial relationships between characters,* and a huge amount of information is conveyed visually. You could almost watch this episode with the sound off.

(*And if you think that isn't hard to do, watch most TV shows while trying to understand where everyone really is in a room. They're not usually really showing you!)

Of course if you kept the sound off, you'd miss all the 9/11 jokes. This episode is centered around a production of Osama! The Musical, an original work being performed by the Skins Repertory Theatre. One walks a fine line when one attempts 9/11 jokes, and the easy and usually irritating way to get away with it seems to be the "look how transgressive I am being" Family Guy madlib approach "(Hey Stewie did you hear about how the Pope aborted a 9/11 terrorist at George Zimmerman's house?"). It's not as though jokes coming from that dark place can't be funny, but truth be told usually they aren't, and using them too often suggests something uncomfortable about the joke-teller. It's not unlike the trend/problem of "hipster racism" that's been in the news lately, mostly because of Girls. 

("Hipster racism" is one of those things I want to say more about, but sort of can't yet, as it mostly a "know it when I see it" situation. It's definitely real, I mean it is the most predictable outcome imaginable--relatively affluent white people appropriate aspects of an ethnic culture without becoming assimilated into the original culture and a reflexive reaction to that embarrassment follows--but most of the writing happening (that I have read, anyway) on the subject is muddled and usually half-about something else. This article on Gawker just seems to be about regular racism, and The Atlantic Wire's articles on the subject are mostly about Girls writer Lesley Arfin and her tweets, which seems like a misguided focal point, to me. More on this story as it develops, in my brain.)

What Skins does differently, or at least seems* to do differently, is come at 9/11 jokes from a goofily earnest place. Their deluded theater teacher thinks he is telling a stirring, noble story. So much of the transgression on Skins comes from an innocent place, right? Especially in the character of Chris, who continues to be the best (at least while Cassie is in absentia).

(*I mean, yeah, the jokes are still being written by knowing, cynical people, and if you think the cuddly rubes of the Skins cast DON'T shield this gag from scorn I suppose I can't blame you.)

ANYWAY this episode follows the exploits of the appropriately named Sketch (full name Sketchy Misery McSwimfan), a single white female living with her disabled mother and building a One Hour Photoesque shrine to Maxxie in her bedroom. We get a headfake toward pathos for Sketch when we first meet her, helping her mother in the bathroom (yikes). But it's short-lived sympathy; Sketch's opening salvo is attempting to murder Michelle. Then she gets a teacher fired for (not really) molesting her. And then she ties up her disabled mother and goes full Black Swan during the play, poisoning Michelle and seizing her role then surprising Maxxie and making an overture to him onstage. Finally, it all comes crashing down on her.

Elsewhere: Michelle is having feelings for Tony, Tony is still mostly a vegetable, and Chris and Anwar have suddenly developed a strange habit of trading Tarantinoesque one-liners about pop culture (Star Wars, Driving Miss Daisy, and the complete filmography of Hugh Grant). It's not entirely unwelcome, and it at least works during the (semi-inexplicable) costume party, but much like the 2006 dark comedy American Dreamz, it sorta came out nowhere. (See?)

True story: in high school band we performed a piece that was meant to evoke 9/11. All noble soaring melodies with just a hint of something sinister from the brass section, and then, no joke: a long trombone slide followed by a cymbal crash. I'm pretty sure I skipped out on the final performance of that piece, lying about a dead family member so I could go to a Rilo Kiley concert. Fair enough, right?