Skins Season 4

About a year ago a friend of mine recommended the British high school drama Skins to me. He told me it got rid of all the typical high school cliches in film and television and was a compelling groundbreaking show. He mentioned that they didn't present drug use and sex as taboo, but as facts of life without moralizing; I was intrigued. I pictured a version of Freaks and Geeks where they focused on the cool kids with a little less humour and a little more drama. That is not what I got. I got The OC with british actors who actually looked 17-18 instead of being 25 year olds playing high schoolers.

The above description isn't all that bad it wasn't the magnum opus I was expecting, but it could be a fun compelling diversion and considering I have watched 7 seasons of 24 and am still watching new episodes of Entourage Skins was at times a pleasant addition to my TV cycle. Skins is a mercurial show that managed to occasionally create nice moments between characters that captured high school in a real way only to ruin them with soap opera cliches. Characters sleeping with teachers, 14 year olds performing sexual espionage, characters dying or getting terminally every month. In the second season one of the characters father a archetypal middle-aged blue collar man who wishes his life worked out differently, finally confronts his more successful family members and gets the redemption he wanted his whole life. It is a nice real albeit slightly melodramatic character driven moment that lets the audience empathize with the characters. However Skins the writers aren't content with just slight melodrama so either due to sadism or an addiction to melodrama the newly redeemed father dies from a severe case of Deus Ex Machinas. I was literally angry when watching this, because they just ruined a nice relatively grounded moment so they could create a cliffhanger that didn't really lead anywhere.

A common theme in a lot of high school shows is that adults are not infallible, they are real flawed people, which makes solving the existential crisis that is high school even harder for our protagonists. Skins does this, but it takes out it to such an extreme that we the only people that can sympathize with the characters are popular teenage girls. I doubt any audience member thinks boy it must suck to be a precocious teenager in a world full of adults who you are much more talented then. You aren't supposed to sympathize with the characters, you are supposed to envy them, which really enforces the oldest high school stereotype ever, you want to be one of the cool kids. Frankly I think the creators of the show, wish they were the cool kids in high school and are now trying live vicariously through these characters and become cool dads. In reality they are helping create a generation of people who are envy self-absorbed egotists.

Despite all of this I still watched the first three seasons of the show. Some of this was because I had a couple of long train rides and both seasons on my computers and because I like finishing everything I start. However on some level I did like the show, it was good enough to make me want to watch the next episodes out of general curiosity while my critical rage merely simmered and it has enough attractive high school girls that I didn't feel like it was a complete waste of time (though it did make me feel a little creepy), until I started season 4.

Skins has a young writing staff, an average age of 21, which explains a lot of the awful plotting and the reductive attitudes toward all adults. However they also have different directors for a lot of episodes and it seems as if each director is trying to show off as many tricks as possible. Season 4 opens with a longshot of an unknown girl walking through a club before she kills herself by jumping off the balcony into the middle of a dance floor, which seemed like an idea some director had so he could show off his limited technical process. After this tragedy the characters finally come to the conclusion that there maybe consequences to using drugs, but of course the characters aren't responsible for their actions (with one possible exception), it's all the fault of the sketchy clubowner for letting 15 year olds into his clubs. One of the show's strength has been it's lack of moralism, however when you decide to do it you need to implicate the characters, when you have validated their actions throughout the series. It is at this point in the episode there is a sex scene with a baptist choir chanting "I believe in your lord" ad nauseam, because there is no better way to juxtapose characters actions with religion then having ironic song lyrics literally screaming at the viewer so they have to understand this trite message. It is at this point of the episode I turned it off and stopped watching the show, likely forever. I just wrote 1000 words about a show I dislike and I don't feel like letting it waste any more of my life, so I am going to end this post as abruptly as I quit the show.

Friday Night Lights "Thanksgiving"

If Vegas allowed you to bet on what would happen in this season of Friday Night Lights "East Dillon beats the Panthers to knock them out of the playoffs" would have opened at 10:1. The challenge for Jason Katims et. al. Was to make that compelling and believable for the audience, while they sort of accomplished the latter they definitely accomplished the former. I literally stood up and fist pumped when Landry's FG went through, eventhough my brain knew it was going in. There has been a lot of misery and despair in East Dillon, but the writers are not sadists. Landry losing his girlfriend, best friend* and the big game in such a short span would be too cruel for the audience and the characters. So as soon as the score was 22-24 I knew Landry would be the hero, but I still cared about the characters and East Dillon so it didn't matter that I knew it was coming.

* Yes him and Saracen patched things up, but as lots of friends do I expect them to lose touch as life gets in the way.

As usual Coach and Mrs. Coach are the backbone of the show and while it wasn't necessarily the pragmatic thing to do it was nice to see Mrs. Coach go off book, because she knows she's right. Kyle Chandlers look of pride and worry at her press conference perfectly showed how I believe most of the audience reacted to her stand. I thought it was a little contrived for Tami to get the guidance counselor job at East Dillon so easily, but it will make next season less chaotic allowing them to fully develop all the arcs, so I don't mind it.

The finale also gave a happy and tragic ending to two of the shows staple characters Matt Saracen and Tim Riggins. Saracen finally gets the finale he deserved after seeing him sparingly since he left for Chicago. In possibly his last episode* Zach Gilford gives another wonderful performance; his banter with Julie really brings out the best in Aimee Teegarden, who has been hit or miss throughout the series. Little things like Saracen talking about Greektown or joking about Matt "deflowering" Julie created a bunch of little real moments that makes this show so good.

*He won't be a regular but it wouldn't surprise me if the last season ended in a big West Dillon vs. East Dillon game where everyone came back to watch the game.

Finally I would be remiss without touching on the tragedy of Tim Riggins, the season premiere seems so far away, but in season 4 Tim Riggins went from being a scholarship athlete to a felon. I knew they would be writing Riggins off the show as he is trying to pursue acting in films, but it still hurts to see him go. He has an incredible screen presence and charisma, in addition to being incredibly good looking. I started tearing up a bit when Tim saw Mindy and Billy playing with the baby and I knew he was going to fall on the sword. I started tearing up again as he walked into the police station alone, very few actors could elicit that emotional response from me from so little. I was expecting the Riggins brothers to turn on Mo, solving Vince and Riggins' problems, but like real life not everyone in Friday Night Lights gets a happy ending. I realize I have complimented almost everyone's acting in this blog post, but I need to mention Derek Phillips as Billy Riggins. He was always good as the goofball older brother of Tim, but he has showed off some good dramatic chops this season. His rambling apology to Tim and rambling toast at Thanksgiving dinner, were two great heartbreaking speeches that were compelling, but also difficult to watch because they were so sad.

Stray Thoughts

- Friday Night Lights does a really good job executing or putting a spin on typical sports movie cliches. The two best examples this week were Coach Taylors speech over a montage of practices at the beginning of the episode that literally gave me goosebumps and Coach Taylor''s Thanksgiving practice where the other coaches wanted to leave.

- Of course Buddy Garrity would deep fry a turkey.

- All of the new cast members have been very good this season and while the finale left a lot of open ends for Vince, Jess, Becky and Luke I expect them to all be addressed in the fifth and final season.

-I initially planned on writing this blog right after the episode, but felt so sad afterwards that I decided to do something else.

LOST "What Kate Does"

It's been awhile since I posted a blog. I don't like writing posts for TV shows a week after they aired and I have been relatively busy which isn't a great combination for whoever wants to read my thoughts on TV.

Last nights LOST was a mediocre episode, that I don't feel like commenting that much on. Evangeline Lilly is not a good actress and Kate episodes generally require a performance that Lilly isn't capable of giving. They also require the audience to empathize with Kate despite the fact that she still is a murderer* . Most of the characters in LOST have cliche redemption stories, but they are well executed and you feel happy when that character can correct their past mistakes. Despite being one of the leads the leads Kate hasn't changed at all. She is the same selfish, non-committal person and the audience is supposed to root for her. The title, "What Kate Does" acknowledges this, but I don't need a full episode to show me this is What Kate Does when I already have 5 seasons that do.

*Whose actions are less reprehensible then most murderers.

Before writing this post I read a lot of other peoples thoughts about this episode and it made me notice how many LOST fans are petulant children. There were problems with this episode, but a lack of answers wasn't one of them. It seems like people would rather have a textbook with all of the answers than a great television series and this attitude has been prevalent since season 2. Two of the consensus worst episodes of LOST are Expose and Tricia Takanawa is Dead. Both of these episodes are light on answers, but are entertaining hours of television that lets us see some nice moments between characters. They aren't my favorite episodes of the show, but they are episodes I enjoyed at the time and on the rewatch. In an era of DVRs LOST is one of the few shows that is appointment television, which has caused viewers to demand an unrealistically high standard every week. They want the answers right now so they can prove that they didn't waste 50 hours on TV's wild goose chase.

After seeing the reaction to this weeks episode one of my first thoughts was "Do these people learn?" Since the 2nd season most LOST seasons have had huge developments in the premiere followed by a letdown 2nd episode, yet everyone was completely blindsided this time. Cuse/Lindellof will wait until Episode 8 or 9 to do a Richard or Jacob or Esau flashback and everyone will instantly put that episode in the top 5 of all time. After watching this show for 5 years, waiting another week won't kill you, but treating the show like a crack addict who needs his next fix could.