Skins
From Frikipedia
Contents |
Summary
Dawson's Creek for the MySpace generation.
The Premise
Skins is the latest uber-trendy teenage sex and drugs drama from Channel 4, attempting to perpetuate the myth that all 16 year-olds lives are one long house party where they take turns to snort coke off each others egos and drink that really expensive vodka that comes in a crystal bottle. It isn't. 16 year olds these days are either all down the park drinking cider and shooting each other, or they're wrapped up in cotton wool in their parents house in the Home Counties, and spend all day adding more and more garish add-ons to their Myspace pages before talking to endless online friends about monumentally stupid forms of music, without ever interacting with anything approaching normal society.
It stars the now grown up annoying twunt from "About A Boy" (not Huge Grant) and a simpering collection of skinny self-congratulatory wankers who all need a proper slapping. Really they do. Friki is certain that there are types of malignant skin growths with more personality than this bunch of spivs.
The Plot
Doesn't really exist. The show usually revolves around one of the aforementioned oh-so-cool parties. The beautiful gang turn up and have their fabulous way with the surroundings, which is all done in a style that would be edgy and cutting had it been broadcast in 1987.
"Ooh, look, that teenager is drinking. How very anti-establishment. Oh, now they're all stripping and rubbing each other. Wow, was that a nipple? And now one of them is vomiting in a corner, fabulous. And look, the speccy geek one still can't get laid! How hilarious it is to laugh at people not quite beautiful enough to make it into our online community-based fantasy land! And the Muslim guy is drinking as well! I read somewhere that they're not supposed to do that! And look, the pretty emaciated girly one has an eating disorder! What dramatic plot twist will come next in Stereotyped Suburbia?!"
Fuck off, Skins.
The Truth
People watch Skins for two reasons only. Either they are sad loners who have to cling to imaginary flights of friendship and togetherness, like MySpace or Skins, to give their life some sort of fake depth and prevent them from resting their head on the nearest train track, or they believe they actually are like these people, all skin-tight jeans, pouty posturing and 24 hour parties where they trash the place good and proper, and the desire to be seen as "cool" will lead to them copying whichever sub-sordid and really rather boring act of "craziness" the gang get up to this week.
But there isn't anything cool about any of them. If you actually ran into any of the characters from Skins at a party, you'd want to mash a series of sharp kitchen utensils right through their head within around 16 how to get rid of stretch marks seconds of them starting to talk. They are a singularly self-obsessed ego-driven bunch of fucknut wasters, whose lives would fall apart the second that society actually asked them to do anything remotely useful.
Friki doesn't know who wrote Skins. It seems to remember it was the same person responsible for Shameless, which was a far superior drama focusing on the drudgery of the grotty residents of a grimy Northern council estate. Despite the fact that they were all really rather evil, and did a similar amount of drinking, drug-taking, pointless shagging and stealing as the preening pricks of Skins-ville, there was something fundamentally loveable about the Shameless cast, all of which is missing from Skins.
Possibly because of the fact that if the cast of Skins were real people in the real world, they'd end up living off their parents money well into their mid-20's, before eventually blagging a high paid job in the city thanks to daddy's contacts and spending their entire life so utterly disconnected from life that it just makes you want to be sick.
Friki Verdict
Friki would very much like to herd the cast, crew and anyone connected with Skins onto a small deserted island and leave them there, laughing maniacally as the poor stupid losers resorted to chewing each others legs off in a mad attempt to stave off starvation, before wasting away to a painful end right there in front of Friki's eyes.
Was that too harsh? Friki just found out a second series has been commissioned. So no, no it wasn't.
