"Skins" Uproar: WTF (Why the Fuss)? - Ed Martin - MediaBizBloggers

Why the uproar over MTV39s Skins Could it be that there is so little else to get excited about during the opening weeks of what is shaping up to be a curiously dead midseason Had we become that dependent on Lost and 24 to bring us back to life after a long holiday break Was the entertainment value of the American Idol audition shows entirely dependent on the blunt honesty and wry wit of Simon CowellThere doesn39t seem to be very much passionate interest out there about anything on television with a few exceptions The Real Housewives of Bravo the AllStars of Top Chef and the angstridden teens of Pretty Little Liars comprise the very short list Maybe new episodes of Glee will do the trick though given its curiously uneven fall season I wouldn39t count on itWhich brings me to Skins Take one risky remake of a risktaking British series about disaffected youth throw in predictable protests from a television watchdog group in this case the Parents Television Council add a few advertiser pullouts and you39re good to go with a controversy that will keep the show in the media spotlight for weeksFrankly the show isn39t worth all this fuss I don39t think it39s as bad as many critics would have us believe but it sure as hell isn39t going to impress anyone who is already enamored of the original which is a masterpiece of modern storytelling that owes more to its overlooked subtlety and nuance than its muchbuzzedabout shock value and naughty bits Here as there Skins may challenge the tastes of certain viewers but there is nothing remotely obscene or exploitative about it Indeed at times it is remarkably smart sensitive and sweet Some of the actors in the MTV version who are playing characters that have sex and take drugs may indeed be under the age of seventeen but they aren39t depicting anything teenagers haven39t already seen on one screen or another and they aren39t making porn so everyone who is worked up about this should take a deep breath and chill They might also consider that every actor involved in this show participated with parental consent and I assume legal representation of some sortI have seen only the two episodes that MTV has televised to date so my opinion may change in the future But I have seen in their entirety the first four seasons of the British original which is serving as a sketchy blueprint for the American version Taken together I consider the first two British seasons to be among the very best series in the history of television seasons three and four not so much but that39s another column They offer a consistently profound look into the lives of a group of high school students and they explore and expose universal truths about maturity companionship adolescence and adulthood that resonate at any age not simply among the young That said the original Skins as entertaining and insightful as it is never comes across as representative of all teenagers Rather the core characters interact with and rotate around each other because of the specific individuals that they are a circumstance not uncommon in adolescent social environmentsAn interesting side note After watching the first two episodes of our Skins a friend of mine who graduated from high school more than forty years ago turned to me laughed and said quotThis is exactly what high school was like when I was a kid What took them so long to get it rightquotIt may be true that over time various characters and the experiences they have in Skins will speak to most teenagers But that doesn39t mean the show is about all teenagers all of the time In this particular fiction as in real life no two teens are shown to be the same even if they have much in common Its creators might disagree and many of its detractors will continue to assert otherwise but I don39t see Skins as a general reflection of quotnormalquot or quotaveragequot teenage life because there is no such thing Look around Not all teens are singularly obsessed with sex drugs partying and antisocial behavior and not all parents and teachers are clueless buffoonsI39m sorry to see that the second episode of Skins suffered so precipitous a plunge from the show39s weekone ratings because it was much better than the first and it largely focused on the new Skins39 most interesting character Tea a confident openly gay sixteenyearold girl who isn39t afraid to express herself She doesn39t exist in the British version Tea is played by Sofia BlackD39Elia an engaging young performer who already stands out from her cast mates It may be that so many viewers bailed after the first episode because as with the opening hour of the British version it focused so heavily on the character of Tony British Tony played by the very talented Nicholas Hoult was a sexy sensitive multidimensional troublemaker a bad boy who was so inherently good you couldn39t help but root for him American Tony on the other hand came off in episode one as a smug arrogant asshole I think this had more to do with the way American Tony was written and directed than with the performance of James Newman a young man who according to his MTV bio has never before acted in anything Nevertheless the acceptance of this crucially important central character and perhaps Skins itself is going to rest largely on his inexperienced shoulders

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"Skins" Uproar: WTF (Why the Fuss)? - Ed Martin - MediaBizBloggers

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Ed Martin

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