US Skins Review

First things first: I have another stinkin' snow day, which really screws me up, ugh. However, intelligently I am using this day to watch an episode of Community on-Demand. It's "Mixology Certification," and the episode is taking place on MY BIRTHDAY, December 3rd, and Troy's birthday is the day after mine! Yay!

This has thrown me off, plus I'm irritated, so this review will probably suck.

Anyway. Skins on MTV.

L to R: Chris, Daisy (Jal), Abbud (Anwar), Tea (Maxxie), Tony, Michelle, Stanley (Sid), Cadie (Cassie), Eura (Effy)

As I mentioned yesterday, I am a fan of the original British series; thus, it was hard not to let bias seep through as I watched last night's "Tony," which was essentially a remake of the very first episode of the original show. I didn't enjoy this pilot: let's get that out of the way. However, I didn't enjoy the original very much, either. The emphasis in both versions of "Tony" is on the intense partying and drug use that the characters participate in. This is undeniable; however, what I like about Skins is that the rest of the episodes focuses instead on character development, studying each character intimately. (Not in that sense.)

Those character study moments were absent from this episode. Characters were either broadly painted (Abbud, the new Anwar; Tony; Stanley aka Sid; even Effy who looked like a 28-year-old drug addict) or flat beyond belief. While this was obviously the pilot, from the previews they showed afterwards it didn't seem that the show was going to get much deeper.

Let's talk about some of the major differences to the characters, because even though this is a transplant largely word-for-word, there are some changes. The obvious one is that Maxxie is now a lesbian, Tea (I keep pronouncing that like the drink instead of Tay-uh, haha). While Tea is accepted into the group, like Maxxie was, it seems like she may not be out of the closet. This changes the character a bit, as Maxxie was out and proud, but because there was less drama there he faded into the background much of the time. Tea also reminds me more of a female Tony than a female Maxxie; Maxxie was sweet and sincere, not one to take authority. Tea seemed confident and strong; this should prove to be a big difference.

Michelle and Tea were similar, I think; Michelle in the British series seemed to live just for Tony's love, and wasn't a very strong-willed girl. The American Michelle was someone who, while watching, kept striking me as very "cool." Her being with Tony in a reciprocated relationship made more sense here, because Michelle was easily the coolest, strongest girl out of anyone we watched. You could see why Stanley liked her so much. (Also she's perfectly cast in that she kind of looks like the original Michelle, weirdly orange hair aside.) Speaking of Stanley, while Sid was a lovable loser who just wanted a girlfriend really, really badly, Stanley was a bland pothead. He was extremely boring, and you could tell that the director really wanted us to root for him. However, his actor was not able to sell me on the character; he failed to make an impression on me, much unlike Sid did.

The acting by everyone was terrible. Evey single one of them. I had read that Tony and Tea's actors were surprising standouts, but when I watched I found them to be just as terrible as everyone else. I'm not sure if it was the direction, the fact that they have to live up to the amazingly strong original cast, or if these kids are just that bad at acting, but at times it seemed like they had learned the dialogue phonetically. This could make sense; it's impossible to completely match the cadence of the original script, with its heavy usage of British slang (that weirdly enough they kept in; the scene when Chris acts for "skins" felt really, really false to me, more than everything else), so for some of them it was a struggle to keep up while the rest didn't even try.

Eventually the episode deviated from the original enough that I no longer had a point of comparison and was forced to watch the show for what it was. This is where I meet some kind of conundrum: at the end of the episode I decided that, had I not known what the rest of the (original) series was capable of in terms of plot and character, I would give up on this show and never watch it again. I really hated this episode; it was boring, I didn't like any of the characters, the acting was terrible, but what if I hadn't known some of the more interesting things that happened later on in the original show? What if I had given up on that after the pilot, too? Because the British pilot was similarly bad, although it was better in that the characters made immediate impressions on me, especially Tony whose cell phone scene in the original was one of my favorite moments in the entire show, just for how well he sold it. So should I keep giving this show a chance?

I might, but it doesn't look good. When your central character is so weak and uninteresting, what is there to stay for? Next week should be Cadie (the new Cassie)'s episode, and while the Cassie episode in the original was one of that series' best, that was partially because Cassie was a phenomenally-played character. Cadie? She just seems to be your typical angsty teen, only she's a little "weirder" and has also tried to kill herself multiple times. Cadie was one of the least intriguing characters in this episode. There was no air of mystery surrounding her (ETA: this is also true of the new Effy, Eura, who made me angry beyond belief despite her being in two scenes), and her budding relationship with Stan was abrupt and unbelievable. The scene with the two of them in the kitchen was one of the episode's worst.  Cassie was the most original character on the show; I'm struggling with how I could describe here. Cadie was one of the least compelling here. Differences like these water the US Skins down until it gets to the point where even taken as its own show it's not interesting.

I can see how American teens who haven't seen the original show can get into this; the cast is "pretty," the partying is kind of funny (although they totally ruined "Tabitha's," aka Abigail's, party which was another moment that made the show stand out to me in that first episode, as she had everyone take off their shoes as to not ruin her parents' new rug) and I guess maybe more realistic than parties shown in other shows, there's the promise of tons of relationship drama. But as an American teen who has seen the first two series of Skins, I can't say that there's any reason for me to continue to watch this.

I really did want to give this show the benefit of the doubt. I admit that I thought it looked terrible by virtue of MTV's involvement from the getgo, but I didn't want to hate it as much as I ended up doing. It really just was not my cup of tea, even if there's that small promise of it linearly following the plot of the original show (which I can assure you/me will not happen).

Skins gets one and a half Tony's singing wildly inappropriate songs to repressed schoolgirls out of 5.