Skins: 1x02 Tea.
Tea
Some characters in Skins don’t have to say a single word to explain who they are or to get what they want from others. This is usually considered a power – and most of the characters portrayed possessing this power are well-aware of it – and at the same time, their path will almost always be about stripping that certainty from them and expose whoever lies beneath it. Tea knows exactly what is going to happen in the next few hours when she looks back at the girl in class who can’t take her eyes off her. She knows where the sheet of paper with nothing but Northern Soul. written on is going to lead to – the changing into a different outfit, getting into the club without any issues despite a ridiculously obvious fake ID, taking over the dance floor effortlessly, dancing with Betty, taking her home. It seems like a well-rehearsed routine and it probably is, for Tea. The routine is the problem – it’s the same thing with every girl, and the morning after, Betty feels like someone who should have disappeared already because there isn’t really a place for her in Tea’s life.
Tea’s life, we find out, is a ridiculously large and loud family – parents, a horrible younger brother, a sister (or maybe an aunt – I tried to find hints about her status, but didn’t find any) pregnant with her third child, and a grandmother who never stops telling stories about American presidents that nobody listens to. It’s too much and it’s overwhelming, but more importantly, it means that anything Tea wants to share has to be said really loudly, both literally and metaphorically. Tea isn’t out to her family, even though she supposedly brings home girls often, and she knows that, as long as she doesn’t explicitly state that she is gay, nobody will call her out on it. It’s the same thing she does in school – she doesn’t explicitly state anything. This is an interesting choice in the show because gay teenagers are usually portrayed as either panicky about possibly being outed (like Betty is) or the exact opposite (Maxxie), but not ever in this strange in-between, and it almost seems like Tea is quite comfortable in this situation – at least until Betty calls her out. Tea calls her a “scaredycat” for not being brave enough to kiss her in public, but later Betty points out to her that being in this position where she doesn’t ever need to make a decision is its own kind of cowardice.
Tea
Some characters in Skins don’t have to say a single word to explain who they are or to get what they want from others. This is usually considered a power – and most of the characters portrayed possessing this power are well-aware of it – and at the same time, their path will almost always be about stripping that certainty from them and expose whoever lies beneath it. Tea knows exactly what is going to happen in the next few hours when she looks back at the girl in class who can’t take her eyes off her. She knows where the sheet of paper with nothing but Northern Soul. written on is going to lead to – the changing into a different outfit, getting into the club without any issues despite a ridiculously obvious fake ID, taking over the dance floor effortlessly, dancing with Betty, taking her home. It seems like a well-rehearsed routine and it probably is, for Tea. The routine is the problem – it’s the same thing with every girl, and the morning after, Betty feels like someone who should have disappeared already because there isn’t really a place for her in Tea’s life.
Tea’s life, we find out, is a ridiculously large and loud family – parents, a horrible younger brother, a sister (or maybe an aunt – I tried to find hints about her status, but didn’t find any) pregnant with her third child, and a grandmother who never stops telling stories about American presidents that nobody listens to. It’s too much and it’s overwhelming, but more importantly, it means that anything Tea wants to share has to be said really loudly, both literally and metaphorically. Tea isn’t out to her family, even though she supposedly brings home girls often, and she knows that, as long as she doesn’t explicitly state that she is gay, nobody will call her out on it. It’s the same thing she does in school – she doesn’t explicitly state anything. This is an interesting choice in the show because gay teenagers are usually portrayed as either panicky about possibly being outed (like Betty is) or the exact opposite (Maxxie), but not ever in this strange in-between, and it almost seems like Tea is quite comfortable in this situation – at least until Betty calls her out. Tea calls her a “scaredycat” for not being brave enough to kiss her in public, but later Betty points out to her that being in this position where she doesn’t ever need to make a decision is its own kind of cowardice.
Betty: I was think…
Tea: Betty. We had sex. But I’m not really looking for anything else.
Betty: Why not?
Tea: Someone mentioned a boyfriend. What’s that for? For show?
Betty: I have to have a boyfriend.
Tea: Sounds like pretending to me, and that’s bad stuff we have to avoid. And I don’t want a relationship.
Betty: Why not?
Tea: Cause nobody matches up to me.
Betty: You’re just an arrogant bitch really, aren’t you?
Tea: Sorry.
Betty: Scaredycat. Your loss.
Betty is pointing out to Tea that she isn’t meeting her own standards. She is pretending just as much as Betty is: she isn’t out to her family, and she has such high standards that she can successfully avoid ever being in a relationship. She tries to say something at the kitchen table, but when she finally manages to be louder than everybody else, her sister’s water breaks and she is, once again, at the periphery of everybody’s attention (and maybe she was able to become this specific person because nobody in her family ever really paid attention – it must be frustrating, but it lets her get away with a lot too). She ends up telling her grandmother because presumably, that isn’t going to have any consequences – she is too lost in her own world.
Tea: Something’s wrong with me, Nana. I want the sex, but the girls I sleep with bore me. They’re catty. Flingy. I don’t know. Never feels enough. Is it too much to ask for someone to be interesting? Just want to feel equal. Too much?
Tea and Tony
Part of the process of watching Skins is always a certain suspension of disbelief. Of course it is unlikely that Tea’s blind date which she accepted to help her dad would be with Tony, but it is a cheap excuse to show these two other characters and how they relate to each other in a completely different context. Their conversation on the playground – tipsy on vodka – mirrors the one Tea had earlier with Betty.
Part of the process of watching Skins is always a certain suspension of disbelief. Of course it is unlikely that Tea’s blind date which she accepted to help her dad would be with Tony, but it is a cheap excuse to show these two other characters and how they relate to each other in a completely different context. Their conversation on the playground – tipsy on vodka – mirrors the one Tea had earlier with Betty.
Tea: Why Michelle?
Tony: Hm?
Tea: You heard.
Tony: She’s hot. No, she’s the hottest. And the cleverest, and her nipples make me laugh, so she’s mine. Ha.
Tea: That’s how you see it.
Tony: That’s how I see it. We get along.
Tea: Does it bore you?
And it DOES bore Tony, and one of the subtle changes of the US version is that Michelle seems much more aware of this and articulate about her frustration (towards the end of the episode, she tells Tea that getting Tony’s interest “feels like work”, and she know it shouldn’t). Tony feels the same way about people Tea does, except that he doesn’t actually seem to mind that he doesn’t feel equal, so he acts differently, and he enjoys having Michelle around to adore him. At some point in their first conversation, when he claims that he can match her, they realize that they want SOMETHING from each other. Tony explains that he thinks she is “mysterious” – “You hold back. Nobody gets in, it’s mysterious”, and that’s a challenge, and she wants to find out if he can live up to his claim. She takes him to Northern Soul – for which she has keys, as explained in her webisode – and dances, and he matches her dancing, and then they kiss and there is this moment of faltering in her face where she seems to question everything she used to believe in (Sofia Black D´Elia’s face after that kiss is my favourite thing in this episode). But then --- it turns out that they might be each other’s match intellectually, and in their view of the world, and in their standards, but they don’t match sexually.
Tony: What?
Tea: That was…
Tony: Awful.
Tea: Terrible. That was terrible.
Tony: Normal girls like it.
Tea: They must be really stupid.
“Did you get scared?”
Tea struggles, in this episode, to understand love. She mentions how her dad gave up everything to be with her mum, she sees Michelle, head-over-heels in love with a boy who doesn’t really feel the same way about her. After what must have been a really long day, after a frightening confrontation with Mad and Tony making her question herself, she only feels safe with her grandmother.
Tea struggles, in this episode, to understand love. She mentions how her dad gave up everything to be with her mum, she sees Michelle, head-over-heels in love with a boy who doesn’t really feel the same way about her. After what must have been a really long day, after a frightening confrontation with Mad and Tony making her question herself, she only feels safe with her grandmother.
President Eisenhower let me down. Some kind of war hero. He can kiss my ass. […] I thought nobody knew I had a lover. I told her, “This is a free country; no one can hurt you now. We got no ghettos here, Martha.” Eisenhower should have helped us. He should have put a stop to it — but it was on the radio every day. About the bad people. Traitors, queers. I guess they thought between us and the communists we were gonna tear the place down.
They even gave us a name, so everybody knew what to hate. Lavender. I told her: “It's a sweet flower, how can a flower hurt anyone?” But people visited. They said that wasn't the way Jewish people behaved, and Martha got so scared that they knew we loved each other. I heard she married a farmer in Wisconsin. Everybody's most particular there. Shame on you, Mr President. Shame on you.
This story isn’t about Tea’s specific situation. It acknowledges Tea’s decision to share something personal with her grandmother, and it points out the fact that other voices and stories have also gotten lost and been ignored around that kitchen table because nobody was listening.
This is how I see Betty’s decision to stop pretending. She kisses Tea in front of the entire school (“I put my truth on you, okay. See you around.”), because Tea could just sit there forever and not speak up loudly enough (and barely anyone would notice, since she doesn’t seem quiet at all).
It’s not obvious what decision she makes in the end of the episode. She picks up when Tony calls, and tells him that it “isn’t going to fly” – regardless of whether he matches her or not (and he really seems to mind), but she doesn’t pick up when Betty calls, and instead puts on that song again, and dances in her grandmother’s room, surrounded by all the small memories that collect during a lifetime and the lavender in a vase.
Random notes:
Just because I find this storyline so ridiculous that I didn’t want to fit it into the review: Mad follows Tea around the whole day, finally confronts her on her doorstep, calls her a “dyke” which her dad (because, as I said, Tea HAS TO SAY LOUDLY AND CLEARLY THAT SHE IS GAY OTHERWISE NOBODY WILL CALL HER OUT) understands as “kike”, which warrants him going on a holiday to where that car from the previous episode is currently dwelling, problem solved, and stunningly in an even more ridiculous fashion than it was in Jal’s episode.
The “I carry your heart with me (I carry it in my heart)” on Tea’s lower back is from an e.e. cummings poem:
here is the deepest secret nobody knows
(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud
and the sky of the sky of a tree called life;which grows
higher than the soul can hope or mind can hide)
and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart
I am wondering what this is supposed to mean (assuming that this isn’t simply Sofia Black D’Elia’s tattoo), because the idea of this kind of love doesn’t exactly fit Tea’s character. Maybe it’s foreshadowing.
I barely ever notice cinematography and how scenes are shot, but the two sex scenes stood out in this episode – there was an elegance to how they were shot – explicit but not exploitive? If that makes any sense. This is also all I am going to say about the child pornography debate, which is ridiculous and does, if anything, prove that certain people are willing to use anything to impose their “morals” on others, even if it hurts an important and relevant cause that should be taken seriously.
The scene in which the ridiculous teacher (from Canada) is teaching everyone a moral lesson was actually a really elegant way to deal with this kind of criticism: “River Mountains says Enough, designed to help you avoid bad stuff” is a good example of how ridiculous these campaigns are, and how they never work, and how they have no sense of humour at all and, most of all, don’t take the people they claim to protect seriously.
“Drugs. Alcohol. Saying bad stuff. Wrongful sexual acts.” Because the one thing that leads directly to crime is piercings and tattoos.
There were loads of lines taken out of context in this episode that all made me laugh, even though some seem terribly out of place outside the UK:
Daisy’s “You gonna tell them I’m not a lesbian anytime soon” – this was also the first time that I thought she was considerably different from Jal, because Jal would have probably just huffed and not acknowledged the brother at all.
Tony saying “Making monkey” to Cadie. Of all the things Tony makes me think of, Pandora is not the first on the list (“Well I guess I am looking at Tony’s cock, but he can’t tell”).
“Trés incroyable” (Yes, thank you for reminding me of how much I miss Panda)
“History grope, err, history group” – Poor Betty, first she has to endure Tea’s teasing of her dad (“she really likes to chew things over”), and now Daisy is making fun of her (for being just one of Tea’s many conquests) as well.
SCREW!
The scene similar to the one in the bathroom where Stanley asks everybody to help him get the money was lacking something really important: Daisy being the one who really tried hard to help him. This was one of the scenes that really stood out to me in Cassie’s first episode and endeared Jal to me way before I really started to love her as a character.
It’s really interesting (and it must be intentional, considering how the writers – in this case Bryan Elsley – enjoy throwing in lines from previous seasons in completely different contexts) that Tony would describe Tea as “mysterious”, because that word has followed Effy around her entire existence on Skins, and Effy and Tony were always described as “matching each other”. I am still waiting to find out what they’ll do with Eura, but this is really changing the course of this season and so far, it’s good?
Also, Effy’s “I think I was born backwards” speech (just that it says “out of my mother”) is written on a sheet in either Tony’s or Effy’s room – you can see it in Effy’s in the previous episode, and mirror-inverted behind Tony (WHAT A BRILLIANT IMAGE THOUGH, Eura’s identity reversed in Tony’s room) in this one. This speech really is the elephant in the room, the thing that defined Effy, and it’s brilliant that it’s just going to be there in the background all the time (the same way it was in the background of my mind all the time when Effy graduated from being a supporting character to season three).
Michelle! She seems very, very different and I love her in every single scene – I always liked April Pearson’s performance but the UK version of Michelle just isn’t the kind of character that I easily fall for. Rachel Thevenard plays her as much more vulnerable, and I also like the friendship between Tea and Michelle.
I barely ever articulate criticism, and I held back in the pilot because it was a pilot and there is always a lot of room for improvement in those, but here’s a list of things that didn’t work in the two episodes so far:
The “ridiculous” adults. This episode proved that the surprising moments of insights and honesty coming from adults (And the Gina Campbell and Rob Fitch Award goes to: NANA) work perfectly in Skins US, but Mad Le Dong is an awful character and terribly played. Skins UK has the advantage of usually casting really good comedic actors in those roles, but there must be a better way to handle this.
The music. Sometimes it’s good. I thought the opening track (Tony Clarke’s Landslide) and the recurring theme of Marlena Shaw’s Wade in the Water both worked very well with the character and in the episode, but other times, the music was too loud and didn’t just not accompany the scenes well, but overshadowed the dialogue and destroyed the mood (especially in the playground scene and with Mad in front of Tea’s house). This is ironic because it’s MTV but I really wish there was LESS MUSIC.
Webisode
Diary
This is how I see Betty’s decision to stop pretending. She kisses Tea in front of the entire school (“I put my truth on you, okay. See you around.”), because Tea could just sit there forever and not speak up loudly enough (and barely anyone would notice, since she doesn’t seem quiet at all).
It’s not obvious what decision she makes in the end of the episode. She picks up when Tony calls, and tells him that it “isn’t going to fly” – regardless of whether he matches her or not (and he really seems to mind), but she doesn’t pick up when Betty calls, and instead puts on that song again, and dances in her grandmother’s room, surrounded by all the small memories that collect during a lifetime and the lavender in a vase.
Random notes:
Just because I find this storyline so ridiculous that I didn’t want to fit it into the review: Mad follows Tea around the whole day, finally confronts her on her doorstep, calls her a “dyke” which her dad (because, as I said, Tea HAS TO SAY LOUDLY AND CLEARLY THAT SHE IS GAY OTHERWISE NOBODY WILL CALL HER OUT) understands as “kike”, which warrants him going on a holiday to where that car from the previous episode is currently dwelling, problem solved, and stunningly in an even more ridiculous fashion than it was in Jal’s episode.
The “I carry your heart with me (I carry it in my heart)” on Tea’s lower back is from an e.e. cummings poem:
here is the deepest secret nobody knows
(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud
and the sky of the sky of a tree called life;which grows
higher than the soul can hope or mind can hide)
and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart
I am wondering what this is supposed to mean (assuming that this isn’t simply Sofia Black D’Elia’s tattoo), because the idea of this kind of love doesn’t exactly fit Tea’s character. Maybe it’s foreshadowing.
I barely ever notice cinematography and how scenes are shot, but the two sex scenes stood out in this episode – there was an elegance to how they were shot – explicit but not exploitive? If that makes any sense. This is also all I am going to say about the child pornography debate, which is ridiculous and does, if anything, prove that certain people are willing to use anything to impose their “morals” on others, even if it hurts an important and relevant cause that should be taken seriously.
The scene in which the ridiculous teacher (from Canada) is teaching everyone a moral lesson was actually a really elegant way to deal with this kind of criticism: “River Mountains says Enough, designed to help you avoid bad stuff” is a good example of how ridiculous these campaigns are, and how they never work, and how they have no sense of humour at all and, most of all, don’t take the people they claim to protect seriously.
“Drugs. Alcohol. Saying bad stuff. Wrongful sexual acts.” Because the one thing that leads directly to crime is piercings and tattoos.
There were loads of lines taken out of context in this episode that all made me laugh, even though some seem terribly out of place outside the UK:
Daisy’s “You gonna tell them I’m not a lesbian anytime soon” – this was also the first time that I thought she was considerably different from Jal, because Jal would have probably just huffed and not acknowledged the brother at all.
Tony saying “Making monkey” to Cadie. Of all the things Tony makes me think of, Pandora is not the first on the list (“Well I guess I am looking at Tony’s cock, but he can’t tell”).
“Trés incroyable” (Yes, thank you for reminding me of how much I miss Panda)
“History grope, err, history group” – Poor Betty, first she has to endure Tea’s teasing of her dad (“she really likes to chew things over”), and now Daisy is making fun of her (for being just one of Tea’s many conquests) as well.
SCREW!
The scene similar to the one in the bathroom where Stanley asks everybody to help him get the money was lacking something really important: Daisy being the one who really tried hard to help him. This was one of the scenes that really stood out to me in Cassie’s first episode and endeared Jal to me way before I really started to love her as a character.
It’s really interesting (and it must be intentional, considering how the writers – in this case Bryan Elsley – enjoy throwing in lines from previous seasons in completely different contexts) that Tony would describe Tea as “mysterious”, because that word has followed Effy around her entire existence on Skins, and Effy and Tony were always described as “matching each other”. I am still waiting to find out what they’ll do with Eura, but this is really changing the course of this season and so far, it’s good?
Also, Effy’s “I think I was born backwards” speech (just that it says “out of my mother”) is written on a sheet in either Tony’s or Effy’s room – you can see it in Effy’s in the previous episode, and mirror-inverted behind Tony (WHAT A BRILLIANT IMAGE THOUGH, Eura’s identity reversed in Tony’s room) in this one. This speech really is the elephant in the room, the thing that defined Effy, and it’s brilliant that it’s just going to be there in the background all the time (the same way it was in the background of my mind all the time when Effy graduated from being a supporting character to season three).
Michelle! She seems very, very different and I love her in every single scene – I always liked April Pearson’s performance but the UK version of Michelle just isn’t the kind of character that I easily fall for. Rachel Thevenard plays her as much more vulnerable, and I also like the friendship between Tea and Michelle.
I barely ever articulate criticism, and I held back in the pilot because it was a pilot and there is always a lot of room for improvement in those, but here’s a list of things that didn’t work in the two episodes so far:
The “ridiculous” adults. This episode proved that the surprising moments of insights and honesty coming from adults (And the Gina Campbell and Rob Fitch Award goes to: NANA) work perfectly in Skins US, but Mad Le Dong is an awful character and terribly played. Skins UK has the advantage of usually casting really good comedic actors in those roles, but there must be a better way to handle this.
The music. Sometimes it’s good. I thought the opening track (Tony Clarke’s Landslide) and the recurring theme of Marlena Shaw’s Wade in the Water both worked very well with the character and in the episode, but other times, the music was too loud and didn’t just not accompany the scenes well, but overshadowed the dialogue and destroyed the mood (especially in the playground scene and with Mad in front of Tea’s house). This is ironic because it’s MTV but I really wish there was LESS MUSIC.
Webisode
Diary
5 comments:
You know what I thought was odd? the fact that it seemed the group didn't know each other for that long. Or maybe that they didn't know much about each other. This was mostly in scenes with Tony and Tea. Idk, I'm really trying to get behind the show but the acting is atrocious. I think the only part where it felt great was when Cadie was on the screen, it's true she's different from Cassie. I can't wait for her episode. I like Chris though, I'm not sure why but I did since first episode. So I'd love to see what they do next week.
Yeah. The original series never really made it clear (we know that Michelle has known Chris for a long time, and that Sid and Tony have been friends, but the rest of the group?) how and how long the characters knew each other but it seemed like they were pretty close. I can't really read the relationships in Skins US but it doesn't really bother me?
I agree with the acting. After the first episode I thought I'd give them a couple more to grow into their roles but some lines are delivered terribly awkwardly (and you know what's weird? I was watching Skins UK expecting them to be awkward in their roles and they weren't at all, and now I feel a little bit differently about Skins US). Tony seems to be going into a different direction though, and I thought James Milo Newman did okay in his scenes with Tea. So far, Skins always started with the most experienced actors carrying the episodes (Nick Hoult, Jack O'Connell, now Dakota Blue Richards), so he just had the most difficult job in the pilot. There wasn't really enough of Chris, Daisy or Eura to say how well they are doing, but I really like Jesse Carere (and I expected to hate seeing my favourite character re-interpreted) The grown-ups are AWFUL to the point of distracting me from everything that is good about the show (Tea's dad was okay, and maybe her gran, but everybody else is a catastrophe). I'm excited about everything that is different about this gen - the changed dynamics, the slightly different characters (I'm also really looking forward to finding out more about this Michelle), but I am REALLY, really looking forward to Cadie's episode. Britne Oldford is great so far.
Have you watched Franky's episode yet? It's going to be hard not to compare the fifth season to the US version.
And you know what else is weird? I've watched all the Webisodes so far and the actors seem much more comfortable in their characters and natural than in the actual episodes, especially in the one for Chris' episode.
Yeah I'm not sure what that's about. The difference between UK and US acting I mean. I totally forgot that the starters of the series were experienced. But from what I found Sofia Black has also acted before and I wouldn't say I could tell. But still leads me to wonder why they didn't start off with her...I'd say her grandma definitely was good but I couldn't get with the father. I also wondered why didn't he go after the mad le dong guy at the doorstep. Looking at the situation of this overbearing guy and this teenager, just standing there was weird.
I don't really compare the two Skins I just sort of see them as two separate shows and I get to watch Skins twice a week.
oh yeah? i gotta watch them then. I've only seen the bra scene with Tea and Abbud.
"Not comparing the two versions" - I'll try and not do that so much in the future. It's a bit difficult because I watched the original first series so recently. This is probably going to get easier once the original storylines kick in.
I didn't even know that Sofia Black D'Elia had acted before (a soap?). I thought she was good in her own episode but sometimes she seems a little bit off - but then, she didn't exactly get the best scenes in Chris, so I don't know.
The Webisodes aren't particularly good, but the acting is less awkward - it kind of of makes me hope that the actors are going to handle their original material better (I think they've all seen the original series, and maybe that's the issue).
Post a Comment