SKINS 4.8

WRITER: Bryan Elsley
DIRECTOR: Daniel O'Hara
GUEST CAST: Hugo Speer, Kwame Kwei-Armah & Klariza Clayton

This is the final guest-review from Dan Lester, who's been offering us his take on Skins' fourth series over the past 8 weeks. If you've been following his reviews every weekend, why not show your appreciation with a comment?

[SPOILERS] It's impossible not to watch this this concluding episode of Skins 2.0 and not cast your mind back to the brilliantly open-ended, MGMT Kids-backed conclusion of the first incarnation of the program. Whilst not a total disaster, where the end of series 2 had viewers bidding tearful farewell to the likes of Sid and Cassie, the general feeling watching this episode was one more of indifference and disinterest, alongside impatience to get the new cast in. If Facebook status updates are anything to go, it's a common sentiment; series 4 has become the year in which the so-called "Skins Generation" began to lose interest in their namesake.

The episode starts promisingly; a thrilling montage set to Creedence Clearwater Revival's "Run Through The Jungle", which even makes even Thomas (Merveille Lukebar) seem vaguely interesting, though in typical Skins fashion it's followed up by a couple of relentlessly uninteresting and irrelevant scenes -- in particular, Pandora (Lisa Backwell) bursting out into a song so cringe-inducing that it almost became unwatchable. More Skins-trying-to-be-quirky, but failing once again.

To it's credit, the episode does differ from the usual forumula, in that the episode has more than one storyline going for it. We have the relationship between Emily and Naomi (Lily Loveless) coming to a head, and Freddie's sister trying to track down her brother (which none of the other characters seem the least bit concerned about), while elsewhere Thomas taught Katie (Megan Prescott) French, much to Pandora's disgust. To an extent this proves detremental though; the aforementioned death of Freddie being almost completely glossed over, spare the first and last few scenes. Again, it's hard not to draw a parrallel to Chris' death in series 2, and how much better that was handled.

As usual there were a couple of amusing moments. Cook showing off his new girlfriend (Holy Churches) worked well, as she's the spitting image of Effie, who Cook claims he's "over", yet at the same time the writers embarassingly try and derive humour from her name being "Arsea".

In general, series 4 has been a mixed bag; encapsulating oddball humor, surrealism, lighthearted quirkiness, but drawn with a feeling of gloominess. Where series 3 saw the cast getting together, this series has seen argument after argument, each as tedious as the next, so that when, when relationships were finally resolved here, it was incredibly hard to care. Naomi and Emily's making up at the party might have been sweet if their relationship hadn't long become quite so tedious. What's more it all seemed contrived. Pandora announces that she's off to do History at Harvard, despite having only got one C at A-Level in the prior episode, while Thomas coincidentally wangled a scholarship there too... because he's a bit good at running.

Meanwhile, over in Cooktown, everyone's favourite loveable rogue went off to resolve the cliffhanger at the end of the penultimate episode, finding a creepy notebook of Freddies, scrawled with "I love her" and "John Foster wants to hurt her." After this, Cook spotted John (Hugo Speer) late at night and followed him to his office. There was a brief confrontation, John standing by Cook with a baseball bat, and then, with a cry of "I'm Cook" the series just... ends. A thrilling clash of the youth and adult worlds? More like a potentially awful, anti-climactic ending -- though it's rescued by Jack O'Connell, who has continually proved himself to be by far the best thing about Skins 2.0.

Where does Skins go next? With the first reboot, we knew Effie was going to be heading the new cast, in the same setting, but here the doors are thrown wide open. It's hard to see anyone being attached enough to the now-concluded cast to harbour resentment at replacing them for series 5, so it'll be interesting to see what approach is taken next year. In any case, with plenty of Skins-influenced shows now rivalling its inspiration (The Inbetweeners, Misfits), the makers of Skins will need to up their game to breathe life into what's becoming a stale teen drama.

18 MARCH 2010: E4 (HD), 10PM