Skins – Waiting for our lives to start.

Skins: 7x03 & 7x04 Pure.

So I never wrote a letter
I never took my true heart I never wrote it down
So when the lights cut out
I was left standing in the wilderness downtown
Now our lives are changing fast
Hope that something pure can last
It seems strange
How we used to wait for letters to arrive
But what's stranger still
Is how something so small can keep you alive
We used to wait
We used to waste hours just walking around
We used to wait 

Arcade Fire: We Used to Wait

Some people make plans for their paths in life and follow them eloquently, and sometimes they succeed and sometimes they don’t but that idea of a path never leaves them. We will never know how Effy Stonem ended up working for a hedge fund, what exactly it was that derailed and took focus from Naomi Campbell, how Emily Fitch figured out what she wanted out of life apart from spending it with the girl she’s been in love with for forever. I never felt like Effy had a plan, if anything, at the end of season four, she seemed even more lost than before, and yet, three years later she somehow ended up with something resembling a career. They have barely anything else in common, but in terms of being unpredictable and without a mapped out future, Cassie and Effy are similar. Last time we saw her, she’d fled from the trauma of seeing one of her best friends die, because sometimes leaving is the only viable option. Sid chased her to New York but Skins left it blissfully open if he ever found her (in a way, the choice to leave and his choice to follow were more important than anything than resulted from it). Now, five years have passed, and Pure actually delivers on an unspoken promise that Fire broke: the past is important, and the way characters, in this case Cassie, talk about it, remember it, carry stories about it into the presence, is essential. The episode starts by mapping out Cassie’s current situation – she came to London a couple of months ago, works a job but has no genuine connections to the people she works with, lives in a flat but the other people who share it don’t even know her name, has no friends, just sometimes her phone rings and reminds her of the fact that her father and her baby brother are struggling to deal with the death of her mother, relying on her to provide a certain kind of balance, asking more of her than she is capable of providing because it’s a choice between the holding-pattern she’s in with the job that doesn’t have any perspective, and the people she has no real connection to, and the apartment that feels more like a hotel than a home, and going back to Wales to take care of her brother because her father, drinking rather than confronting his grief, can’t. Cassie’s life feels like it’s been suspended because she finds it impossible to make a choice; and rather than choosing, she is waiting for something significant to happen, a meaningful connection, that will give her directions and a purpose, because she is unable to make that change happen herself. In a conversation with one of her roommates she reveals that she travelled the US with a friend – until there was nowhere to travel, until it became a choice between leaving and staying forever, and that forever that used to be a problem with Sid (“I’ll love you forever, that’s the problem”) still was, so she returned, and probably he isn’t okay, but also, this isn’t his story. This is the last choice that Cassie made, moving to London, not choosing forever with the boy whose name she isn’t even able to say out loud. 

Cassie isn’t making any choices anymore, she is stuck – but then, things start to happen. A customer at the café shows her pictures that have been posted to a website, pictures of her, taken in secret, that are now becoming popular in the way things do on the internet. They’re of her mundane, everyday life, and the thing that seems to speak to people is the elusive beauty of Cassie, unaware of being observed, the perceived authenticity of pictures that aren’t arranged but merely observant. It’s creepy as well, because they are intruding, even more so when Cassie figures out that the photographer is Jakob, one of her colleagues at the café she works in, and that he has camped out in an abandoned office building across from her house to capture her most intimate moments. 

And this is also where things gets complicated, because on the one hand, this is clearly a violation, regardless of the motives. Jakob argues that his art is pure because he isn’t objectifying Cassie, it’s not about sex, and yet he intrudes without her consent. On the other, this is exactly the insecurity Cassie has always had, why she didn’t eat for a week to be pretty for a date with Sid, and now that this intrusion has happened, she can’t help but acknowledge the beauty that the audience finds in the pictures that Jakob has taken. As revolted as she is initially by the idea that he did this without her knowing, captured her in that way (“Don’t speak to me.”), she starts to consider this as possibly being that thing that she has been waiting for, the connection that has been missing before. The episode never makes that explicit, but part of why Cassie is so drawn to Jakob and the way he sees her is that her father, now entirely caught up in his grief for the loss of his wife, never painted her. She used to be like a ghost to her parents, who were so obsessed with each other that they forgot about both of their children. Cassie is fascinated by the idea of being that person that someone else could find so beautiful that they would dedicate their art to her, even though the way Jakob does this is creepy, and she constantly questions his motives, constantly checks that this isn’t about sex (and Jakob claims that his art is pure exactly because he has no other motive but capturing that beauty, selling these pictures is entirely foreign to him. 

Cassie seems to need to be able to think of this as an option, because at the same time, it becomes more and more obvious to her that her father isn’t equipped to take care of her brother. He is drinking away his grief, failing to send Reuben to school, and Cassie is the one who Reuben turns to with all his concerns, because she seems much better equipped to help than her father. Jakob’s pictures lead to an actual photo shoot, parties, a prospect of success, but all the time, phone calls remind Cassie of the thing that she is still running from. The photographers and models offer money and drugs, but the thing that works for her, that gives her purpose, is being able to be there for her brother when he needs her. 

This is the interesting story, the compelling story. Not Jakob and Yaniv, fighting over Cassie with both their ideas about how she is supposed to live her life (not sell pictures of herself with profit because it goes against the principle of purity, not wait because Yaniv, a soldier, has been to places where you can’t wait). Ultimately, neither of them matter because they are just a distraction from the big question that Cassie is facing: what gives her life meaning? She can’t answer the question at the beginning, it’s why she’s stuck. Making these big choices is always terrifying, but ultimately, Reuben gives her meaning and a purpose, so she chooses to take care of him while her father tries to deal with his grief and get a grip on life again. This is when she realizes that Amanda (another co-worker), the one person she’s constantly ignored, through feeling like the choice was between Jakob and Yaniv’s idea of her, through being drawn into the world of modelling by a girl who recognizes her from the pictures and follows her, through trying to explain herself to Maddie, a roommate who gives up on London and her dreams, provides the insight and help she needs. 

Amanda: You’re gonna do something. Something fantastic. That’s what I was thinking about back there. Something’s coming. Magic. It’s lucky for you.

Maybe everything does matter, in the sense of making one path clearer than the others. Cassie seems to try to see herself through the eyes of all these people, trying to make sense of herself that way – she is beautiful, because the people looking at pictures of her think she is beautiful, she is pure, because this is what Jakob things of her – but what matters is what she sees when she thinks about herself and her future, what makes sense to her. It’s not Jakob’s pictures, or the professional ones in the fashion magazine, it’s taking care of her brother, making a life for herself that way. 

Reuben: Is everything good?
Cassie: Everything’s good.
Reuben: Everything’s good.

Random notes: 

Apparently it’s even more difficult when I do like an episode but at the same time intensely dislike parts of it. I just really, really wish that writing about Skins didn’t require talking about creepy, manipulative, controlling, stalking male characters as much as it has since season six. I’m sick and tired of it, and I’m exhausted by constantly wondering if the narrative is on my side, if the writers are aware of how fucking awful these characters are. It doesn’t matter what Jakob’s motive is, taking pictures of people, stalking them, and then publishing the pictures without their consent, is creepy. It’s creepy to try and set terms about what Cassie can and can’t do with her body. This is Nick and Matty and Alo all over again, with a side-dose of Dom. And “can you be friends with a boy and not fuck them” – feels like a betrayal of the entire first generation. Of course you can.  

I think this episode may have been perfect if it had been more eloquent in calling Jakob out on what he’s doing, because the scene when Cassie first realizes it’s him and confronts him is perfect – that palpable disgust and feeling of being used and betrayed. Nobody cares about poorly constructed triangles of doom. 

There is also a really interesting moment between Cassie and Jakob in Wales, when they’re visiting Cassie’s dad – she is clearly distressed over how her father is dealing with his responsibilities, getting drunk, shouting his grief and anger against the wind, and she stops Jakob from taking a picture of the moment, because it would betray the authenticity of the emotion. There’s an untold story in these episodes about whether a picture could ever be authentic, especially if the photographer doesn’t fully comprehend the emotions of his subject (because Jakob doesn’t understand that it isn’t about her dad failing Cassie, that it’s about the fact that she feels responsible for Reuben regardless, and loves him, and gains meaning from that).

Probably my favourite dialogue in the episode: 

Reuben: Dad’s on the beach and he’s sorry.
Cassie: What for?
Reuben: Shouting and crying.
Cassie: Is everything alright, Ruby?
Reuben: I was missing mum this morning and dad said I could ring you and you would make me feel better.
Cassie: And do you feel better?
Reuben: Yes. Because you love me.
Cassie: That’s right, Ruby.

I genuinely enjoyed the first part of Pure – it’s gorgeous, aesthetically, the cinematography, the way small things are remembrances of past Cassie episodes (the bus ride, especially, the way it opens with curtains, finally, properly, someone waking up to open a new chapter) – and Hannah Murray is amazing in all of it, which is perfect, because I’ve always felt like the moment that Skins truly became itself and proved what it could do, in terms of impact, was her first episode. 

Amanda: Aren’t you handsome?
Reuben: I’m six.