Trying Too Hard
One of my favourite Day One* tracks was Trying too Hard given the hip soundtrack to Skins it really should have been used on Series 3 Episode 1.
I really liked Series 1 and 2, there was a willingness to explore topics few other series would as well as quite good character arcs. With the cast moving on and a new one starting I had high hopes for the new series.
What we seemed to get was Skins to the XTREME!!!!!
We had Cook being more Tony than Tony. We had JJ playing the most annoying traits of Sid and Anwar. We had Pandora as Cassie after being dropped on her head as a child and we had Effy as Effy Max with extra smoking at every possible moment.
Hopefully this was just showing all the extreme character traits so you could identify each person easily in future episodes and this won’t be their characterisations on every single episode. On the positive side we had Effy as a pretty similar character as before, her arc will probably be the main one in the show. Katie and Emily interaction is going to be quite good if the writers show even half the skill as the previous series of showing episodes from individual characters points of view. We saw Katie being a complete bitch to her sister, but not really any insight into what her view of Emily is. Neither Freddie nor Thomas made much of an impression. I sense Naomi being the token activist
with ever changing obsessions every week, much as Hollyoaks** have done with that annoying character.
I almost forgot, all the teachers were pretty bizarre too. Previously all the characters had some sort of flaw, so far everyone appears to be completely dysfunctional. Not to mention cliché person in Communications who has trouble communicating. As soon as her title was announced I groaned as it was soooo obvious given what had happened already in the episode.
It can only improve.
* Who I recently found out have finally gotten round to releasing that second album. It was quite good too. And I have just discovered they will be in Glasgow soon.
**Usually on at tea time, occasionally interesting, mostly boring.
*** Note to self, 8am = grammar broked