Unfortunately, Skins does not seem to be moving towards the strong finish I had hoped for. Now, with only two episodes left in the season, this week’s “Daisy” was yet another thoroughly uninteresting episode in a season full of uninteresting episodes, a few atrocious ones and only a couple of brilliant moments.
There were two main conflicts in this week’s episode. The first affected all the main cast members. “All this shit going down,” Abbud says to Daisy at the beginning of the episode. “Tony does Michelle. Tony does Tea. Michelle does Stanley. Everyone’s got the clap. And I’m asking myself what went wrong … Everything is screwed up. Nobody’s talking. So, we’ve come to see you so you can fix everything.”
The second conflict stemmed from Daisy’s home life. Her father is a hard man. He works for the postal service to make ends meet for his two daughters after his wife abandons them. Daisy’s parents were both musicians at one time, but the struggle to live on an artist’s wages drove her away. Since then, he hasn’t allowed music in their house, posing a problem for both Daisy, who aspires to be a funk/jazz trumpet player, and her younger sister, who fancies herself a hip-hop MC.
Daisy’s personal story was a little more interesting than the gang’s troubles, but not much. I’m not sure if it’s the bad acting, the poor treatment of the characters in the writing or a combination of the two, but I just have a really hard time feeling for these characters. I can’t seem to take any of them seriously.
I did think some of the changes from the U.K. version were a little interesting. In the original, the conflict over music comes from the fact that Daisy’s U.K. counterpart Jal has a passion for classical clarinet, but her father, a successful hip-hop producer, doesn’t support the “rooty-tooty music” she plays, saying she is “dancing for whitey.” The change in the MTV version allowed for music to be the connection point between Daisy, her mother leaving and the estrangement between Daisy and her father, providing one of the more touching scenes in the episode when Daisy’s father sits down at his absent wife’s piano for the first time in who knows how long. I wouldn’t necessarily say this made for a more entertaining storyline, but it was a nice touch.
I’m also interested to see if Daisy’s younger sister will become a recurring character. She was entertaining, and we saw her hanging out with Tony’s younger sister Eura, who is likely to have a bigger role in the next season if MTV decides to keep mining the original’s story lines — if there is even going to be a second season at all. If they manage to stick around, there is a good possibility that Daisy’s sister will get more screen time as well.
There were some intriguing moments in “Daisy,” but overall, the episode was pretty bland, suffering the same problems as most of the other episodes so far. It’s not that Skins is unwatchable, it’s just not very good, and it’s a let-down compared to all of the potential promised by its predecessor. It’s disappointing, really, but not particularly surprising. I just had higher hopes, and MTV’s Skins has failed to deliver.
Stray Observations:
• There was a lot more cursing in this episode than the others. I’m not bothered by swear words, but since Skins is on basic cable, the words were all censored, which is kind of annoying. The censor noise always takes me out of the show, and that is bad news for a series that is struggling to keep my interest as it is.
• The Abbud/Daisy sex sub-plot was somewhat funny, but the best part was Abbud’s post-sex, awkward exit scene. Hilarious.
• Sometimes, I felt like the sub-plot between Daisy’s mentor and her father was more interesting than the main plot. I often found myself wondering, “What’s the story with these guys?”