TV

“Skins” Retro Recap (3.06): “Naomi”

It took two weeks, a whole lot of Rophy doing what Rophy does, and three mega saves from my sister to make this recap happen. I hope it’s everything you always wanted when you started whimpering sweetly for these retro-recaps, my precious muff monkeys.

(P.S. If you haven’t read Rophy’s “Naomi” recap yet, I seriously doubt your commitment to awesomeness.)

You know near the end of Emma when Mr. Knightley finally realizes Emma might love him back, and he fully goes, “I cannot make speeches, Emma!” And you’re like, “Dude, you’ve been monologuing like a comic book villain since page three; what do you mean you cannot make speeches?” And then he’s all, “If I loved you less, I could talk about it more!”

That’s what this episode of Skins makes me feel like.

I know I can’t shut up about stories, stories, stories, and Austen and Yeats and Shakespeare and Dickens and one minute I’m talking about dragons and the next minute I’m talking about baptism and now I’m going to throw Keats into it because this is the reason for the one billion words and the infinite circumlocution: “I am certain of nothing but the holiness of the heart’s affection and the truth of imagination.”

We don’t ask for much from TV anymore because at some point it became pecuniary narrative and we never slammed on the brakes to demand more. We just grinned stupidly and bought the Kidz Bop soundtrack and went comatose in front of a gaggle of plastic actors and shallow, soulless, emotionally and intellectually-stunted moving pictures with words. And that’s just … not story.

Naomi has a throwaway line in this episode that’s one of my favorite pieces of dialogue on Skins. She asks her mum, “What is this? Surveillance culture?” And it delights me because I know it’s not an intentional riff on Gossip Girl, but people – Americans, especially – are dead-set on packaging Skins and Gossip Girl together, the same way Americans also shout really loud, really slow English words at people who do not speak English. Like maybe if you enunciate vehemently enough, Portuguese will come out of your mouth.

Gossip Girl really is all about surveillance culture, and when it’s good it’s about how surveillance culture tells the story of the story the characters are telling themselves. You’ve got Chuck trapped in Bronte and Blair wrapped in Austen and Dan pinging around inside of Wharton and if ever there was a Daisy Miller stuck in Gatsby it’s Serena van der Woodsen. Because, I mean, there aren’t many new stories; you’ve got to make it new with the way you tell it.

And then there’s Skins. And certainly there are some types and archetypes – the Hamlet one is spelled out, of course; and the anti-hero/hero thing with Cook; and I think you could make a solid case for Effy as a Catherine Earnshaw – but the way the writers tell real, raw things with courage and candor and absurd, subversive surrealism, it makes it feel like you’re seeing the whole world brand-new again. (That’s why when Skins misses, it’s just so glaring. We’ve been trained to overlook unraveled threads on most shows, but Skins’ loose ends turn us into psychotic kittens.)

What’s crazy interesting is that, for the most part, Skins is always doing classic narrative in a fresh way – except for Naomi and Emily. Which is what makes their story so exceptional. With Naomi and Emily, the writers tell an old story in an old way. Love is love is love is love. It is wretched. And it is perfect. It can set you free. And it can clip your wings and send you hurling straight into the motherfucking sun. Love is the original story. Tell it – just tell it – and you don’t need a caveat.

And so Skins feels like the future. Naomi and Emily feel like the future, like the time when people stop using TV as white noise and start demanding a revival of the truth of imagination. (A lot of British TV feels like that lately. Dr. Who, for one. And I’m still having night terror about Torchwood: Children of Earth.)

Keats was undone when he wrote his letter to Benjamin Bailey. He said this whole glorious thing about how stories can “surprise [you] with an old melody in a delicious place, with a delicious voice” and how it will make you feel like your soul is “mounted … on the wings of Imagination.” He capitalized imagination, so gone was he over the idea that story is the deepest thing in life.

Which is why if I loved this episode less, I could talk about it more. Because it’s an old melody shocking me in a delicious place, with a delicious voice. It really does make me feel like I’m mounted on the wings of Imagination – capital “I” – and the air up here is thin, and it makes me kind of dizzy. Or maybe it’s Lily Loveless that makes me dizzy. I think the real lesson of Emma is that it’s totally, acceptably awesome to fall in love with someone ten years younger than you.

OK, pop quiz – Which is worse: a) Waking up in bed next to Mandy, her Giant Nakedness and vodka bottles all up in your business to the extent that you have to bolt from under the covers and sniff your fingers to determine what kind of f-ckery she tricked you into in the dark. Or b) Waking up with a hobo’s foot in your mouth?

[Rophy says: Rophy would take the hobo’s foot. We’d swallow his sock, digest it and all. No really.]

[Rophy also says: Is there an ‘other’ option? If so, Rophy would like to be the hobo’s foot.]

Jack Thorne and Atiha Sen Gupta wove Naomi’s episode together with such tenderness and skill that every time you peel back one layer you discover another one, and that’s especially true with Naomi and Emily’s dialogue which is delicious on top and delicious underneath – like at the end when Naomi asks if they can just hold hands through the cat-flap for a bit, and Emily says that yes they can, for a bit.

[Rophy says: Rophy says: Naomi and Emily’s dialogue is like a turkey sandwich, where the bread is made out of turkey]

But also: wouldn’t it be perfectly reasonable in that moment if Emily was like, “Look. You’ve woken up beside me two out of four times this week, and if you count the time with my name tattooed to your face, you’ve woken up with me seventy-five percent of your mornings. And you’ve seen the perfect contrast of us, the way we fit together, how we’ll take turns being the big and little spoon – so I honestly do not understand why you are allowing room for vagabond toes and jean shorts and Giant Not-Yous, when we can just be together in a way that doesn’t require either of us to open a flamethrower on your bedroom.”

So, Naomi wakes up with a strange man’s sock in her mouth, which she spits out while sitting up and shouting, “Jesus Christ!” And the guy under the covers pokes out his grubby head and goes, “You rang?”

Naomi gathers her clothes and storms out of her room, which I guess explains her outfits: She’s always just picking up skirts and shirts and tights off the floor and shrugging them on in the hallway to get away from whatever random Jesus her mum tucked into her bed in the middle of the night. Although, if God really did visit Naomi’s bedroom, the first thing he’d do is banish that one floral print jacket back to the ninth circle of hell because you know that thing was conceived and sewn together at Satan’s own atelier.

Naomi clomps into the kitchen to wonder aloud if anyone’s ever told her mum what a “complete f-cking cow” she is. Answer: Yes, apparently. But right now she’s more concerned about how the aggressive – nay, patriarchal – shape and texture of a banana is scaring one of the vagrants living in their house. Naomi is like, “Speaking of phallic-shaped produce, there is a man. in my room. in my bed.” Naomi’s mum says he didn’t have anywhere else to go and so obviously she told him to bed down with her teenage daughter. Naomi picks up the banana and bites the head right off that thing, wipes her mouth, clomps out.

And let’s go ahead and talk about how Skins music is always awesome, but in this episode it is just maddeningly perfect. It serves as a frame in some places, the Mirror of Erised in others: showing you nothing more and nothing less than the deepest, most desperate desires of Emily and Noami’s hearts. Honestly, “Naomi” doesn’t even need any commentary. I could post screenshots, dialogue and song lyrics and it would be better than anything I could ever write.

High Place’s “Jump In” doesn’t come in until the middle of the episode, but check this out:

If you never take the first step

You cannot go too far

I’m sure you know that

You strike me as a smart kid

And you’ve got big plans

And big dreams

And big big goals

If that’s not a treatise on Naomi Campbell, I don’t know what is. Smart kid with big plans and big goals and big dreams, who is convinced that her success in this world depends on not going too far with Emily Fitch, which of course she cannot do if she never takes the first step. I mean, that’s literally her survival plan in life: Do Not Take The First Step With Emily Fitch. And with most people, Naomi’s got some serious desert between first step and too far, but with Emily, the first step is already too far. And Naomi knows it.

Right now you’ve got the synthpop of The Human League’s “Love Action.”

When you’re in love, you know you’re in love

no matter what you try to do

You might as well resign yourself

to what you’re going through

Emily is waiting outside Roundview for Naomi because they might not be together together, but they are together at pub quiz nights together and not too long ago – though I don’t really know how long because Bristol’s space-time continuum is as bendable as a noodle – they were very together in a bouncy castle. Naomi hides behind the Brandeh Babies (because being seen naked once this morning is enough, thank you very much) and sneaks into school without Emily noticing.

Or, you know, maybe not. Maybe she just sneaks out and has a smoke and some banter with the father figure who’s clearly perving on her. The first time I saw this episode I thought Kieran actually was Naomi’s dad because of the way he inquires after her mother and wonders if she’s “still saving the world one lentil at a time.” Naomi says that sometimes her mum is up and sometimes her mum is down, which is just another inconsistent thing in a life full of things she can’t rely on, another person she can only trust with her Campbell Crunch outside and not her fluffy Naommallow center.

Emily is going to show Naomi the truth of herself in the most comforting and terrifying way a little later over oilz, but this thing with Kieran: Naomi just wants to hang out with someone nonthreatening who thinks she’s kind of special. Who thinks she’s kind of different. Who thinks it’s OK to dream a little. Who doesn’t want to get in her pants. Or her … red overall dress(?) with the one properly functioning strap.

In the Roundview assembly room, Effy and Freddie are trying to out-emo one another, which Naomi immediately picks up on and asks about when she sits down with Effy and Panda. Effy tells Panda to shut up before the words even finish forming in Panda’s head, and Naomi doesn’t push because she’s got to use all her energy to huff and puff and sigh and eye roll when Emily hops up beside her on the table. And, like, you know Naomi’s got to use her energy for something or she’ll be crawling all over Emily like a box of puppies in a matter of seconds.

The lights go off and the Bristol Strangler comes in and MURDERS EVERY ROUNDVIEW STUDENT AND FACULTY MEMBER! No? Then why is everyone screaming? Oh, it’s Doug, doing a poetry reading to some battle sounds and projected images on the wall. That’s awesome. I would totally do that if I was a teacher. The point is: There’s going to be a democratically-elected student president, and as soon as Harriet announces it, Emily nudges Naomi who shakes her head like, “I’m already in charge of the zoo at my house,” but Emily – per usual – refuses to take no for an answer.

She follows Naomi through the hallway and demands to know why she won’t stand for president.

Emily: I don’t get it. You really care about this stuff.

Naomi: What stuff?

Emily: Equality, environmentalism, feminism, I-don’t-ever-want-to-shut-my-mouthism. Come on. You know about politics. You’re always talking about it.

Naomi: Emily, we’ve had about three conversations our entire lives, so the idea that you always know I’m always talking about anything is a bit ridiculous.

Emily somehow manages not to say, “Yeah, well we probably would have more conversations if we could do something with out mouths besides smash them into one another every time we get alone together.” Instead she’s like, “Yeah, OK” and shoots Cook the foulest look when he walks up. If Cook noticed foul looks, though, his entire Cook-ness would crumble, so he just takes the opportunity to tell Naomi that he’s been thinking she should see more cock. She says she’ll see it when he runs for president and passes a law that forces her to see it, and he’s like, “OK, I’ll go ahead and fill out those forms!”

She follows him and climbs up on some boxes to peer into the registration classroom to see if he’s serious, and it’s sex, so of course he’s serious. She tumbles off the boxes when a wanker named Crispin storms out of the room, and so Cook finds her sprawled out in the hallway with her knickers on display. He says they should “get together and feel all right,” and she’s all, “You couldn’t make me feel all right if you stapled your tongue to my clit and stood on a cement mixer.” Which: Ouch. And: I don’t know what kind of weird fan fiction you’ve been reading, Naomi, but that is not a thing.

She walks away and flips him off while he laughs that crazy Cook laugh. And I have been trying for a year to figure out what the hell Naomi’s giant denim bag says, and I think I just decoded it: “Warning. This Contains Ideas.” I would mock that, but I spend half my life shouting things like, “Have you seen my Wonder Woman Ideas Notebook?” And, “Do you know where I put my SpongeBob Ideas Folder?” And, “My Ideas Envelope, the one with the dinosaurs on it, any idea where I left it?”

Kieran’s waiting to give Naomi a ride home in the kind of car you’d get if you bought all the pieces from that leftover parts room at IKEA and then assembled them in the dark, with your feet, while you were drunk. Shockingly, it won’t start, so he asks for a ride home on her bike, and instead they walk together and talk about how he stood for student government once and she should too. She pretends not to care, which is her modus operandi obviously, but grabs the registration paper from his hand at the last minute with the cutest “thanks” ever.

Inside, Naomi’s mum is all, “I saw you hanging around on the street corner with a scruffy man twice your age and rather than being alarmed at the familiar yet awkward body language between you, I just waved! It’s a nice change from the way you’re usually just clomping around and scowling and nipping at bananas all by yourself!” Oh, and also: “One of these drifters stole the telly from your bedroom.”

Naomi opens up her bedroom door shouting about how there’s never any peace in her house – which is kind of a theme in this episode, how badly Naomi wants peace – and notices that there’s a little Emily Fitch sitting sweetly on her bed, hands folded neatly in her lap.

Naomi: How did you get in?

Emily: Some weird guy let me in – looks a bit like Jesus.

Naomi: Yeah, it’s like a game of Christ-shaped Guess Who in this house. What do you want?

For someone who’s being so aggressive, Naomi adopts the most defensive posture. Like, which one of you is in danger here, Naomi Campbell? And this is some of that delicious dialogue I was talking about earlier because Nomi says, “How did you get in?” And she means “inside my house, inside my bedroom” but also “inside me.” How did you penetrate the walls of the castle I’ve been building my entire life?

Emily: [placing the registration form on the bed] I wanted to give you this.

Naomi: You’re very annoying.

Emily: Yeah, well, you seem to inspire it in me.

Naomi: [placing her registration form beside Emily’s on the bed] Jinx.

Emily: You’re gonna run. Great. I’ll help with the form.

Naomi: No, Emily. I don’t need any help.

Emily: Right. Well. OK. See you.

And here it is again: “No, Emily. I don’t need any help.” “I don’t need any help filling out this form.” And “I don’t need any help in life. It’s sorted. It’s under control. All the power is in my hands. Power and control. In my hands.”

Emily’s feelings are hurt, but somewhere between Naomi’s bedroom door and four steps down the hall, she works up to indignant and bursts back in.

Emily: And just so you know, when I see you, my first thought is not: I want to f-ck that girl. We’ve kissed. Twice. And it was nice. But it’s also nice just being with you – when you’re not being a prick, that is.

Naomi: Thanks?

Emily: You should run for president because I think you’d be good at it. It’s that simple, OK?

Naomi: OK, then, you should … stay.

Emily: Thanks. I will.

And you know what makes Naomi and Emily special? Not just in Skins world but in the whole wide world of fictional couples? They really do just enjoy being together. To wit:

Naomi and Emily lie on the rug, perfectly composed at opposite angles, contrasting each other beaitifully, while Asobi Seksu sings about I love, love, love, love you and why are you running away. Emily laughs about Naomi’s campaign slogan – Naomi: get to know me – and says that yeah, it’s catchy, but so is AIDS. And they giggle and grin because this is who they are together, this is who Emily allows Naomi to be: soft and silly and thoroughly adorably lame. Naomi’s been drinking a little and it feels so warm with Emily touching her and laughing at her that she forgets herself for a moment and says, “Do you think I can do it?” And Emily doesn’t hesitate: “I think you can do anything.”

And you want to talk about terrifying? You want to talk about the scariest f-cking thing anyone could ever say to you in your entire life? It’s not: I’m attracted to you. It’s not: I love you. The worst and best thing a person can ever do to you is say: The out loud dreams you dream – and the dreams you can’t even bring yourself to whisper – they can come true. You can make them come true. You’re good enough and you’re smart enough and you’re strong enough and I believe in you.

It’s not cool to dream. If you want to be cool, you’ve got to wrap everything in snark and sit around being ironic and clever and apathetic. You’ve got to mock the kind of people whose need to dream rivals their need to breathe. Because if you dream, with your voice especially, you’re going to fail. Not always, but that’s life. Everyone on top of the mountain has scars to spare. The only way to not fail is to not dream at all. And we’re so afraid of falling down in front of other people that that’s exactly what we do.

Naomi keeps pretending she’s terrified of the way Emily wants her, but really, she’s terrified of the way Emily sees her. Sees the scariest, most feverish, sweatiest parts of her darkness, and keeps standing there. Standing there believing that Naomi can be better. Be braver. But what if she can’t? What if Naomi destroys her walls and battles her dragon and wraps Emily up the way she’s always wanted, and Emily realizes she was wrong? If Naomi is unhinged just having Emily beside her, what will happen if she has Emily inside her? She’ll be wrecked. The way Naomi craves Emily’s belief, longs for her presence, she wouldn’t even be able to control the bleeding – if she had Emily and then lost her.

But Naomi is buoyed because Emily just said the thing she needed to hear more than anything – because she always answers the question behind the question – and so Naomi sits up and says, literally apropos of nothing, “I’ve been wondering … what do lesbians do? I mean … in bed.”

OK, and let’s just trace that because it’s the best non sequitur ever committed to film. Emily: Your campaign slogan is weak. Naomi: Do you think I can win anyway? Emily: Yeah, absolutely. Naomi: Lesbian sex, how does that work?

Naomi plays with her necklace because she’s nervous and Emily swigs some more vodka straight from the bottle because whatever she was expecting when she decided to drop by Naomi’s, this conversation was not it. Emily says she doesn’t know, and Naomi says, “So you’ve never…” which is eighty percent of the reason she brought it up in the first place, and Emily assures her that their first time with be her first time, full-stop. Naomi proves that she’s been reading all the wrong fan fiction by asking if it’s all “brogues and strap-ons.” And then check out these pronouns from Emily: “No, we just do what we do to ourselves, only to each other, probably slightly more aggressively, and, you know, with …oilz and stuff.”

Not “they,” as in “those lesbians with their lesbianism.” But “we,” as in “us.” We just do to each other what we do to ourselves. This is what we’ll do when you stop fighting against me. Naomi looks at Emily’s lips for a long time and thinks really hard about giving up the fight right then, but she lies down instead and they giggle some more about oilz.

And then it’s morning and they’re at opposite angles again – in Naomi’s bed.

Naomi blinks her eyes open and rolls over, clutches a vodka bottle to her chest the way she clutched her teddy bear as a little girl because the night is dark and the world wants to rip her apart. And there’s Emily. Emily who thinks she can do anything. Emily who sees the truth of Naomi and is dazzled by it. Emily with her hair splayed out like fire on Naomi’s pillow, looking for all the world like a painting in want of an artist. And she happens to Naomi. Every time she sees her, Emily happens to Naomi all over again. And in sleepyhead veritas, just like we’ve talked about, Naomi reaches out her hand to caress Emily’s hair.

Naomi pulls her hand away almost immediately, muttering “for f-cks sake.” She grabs some clothes willy-nilly off the floor, asks out loud what she’s doing. And she leaves. She tells herself enough, but it never is. It’s never enough and it’s always too much and if it really is the world that wants to maim her, why does it feel like Emily Fitch is the one who is destroying her?

At Roundview, Cook’s got a whole Chavez riot going, and if JJ and his mum painted this banner, they’ve got some explaining to do about that weaksauce poster they made Lara for JJ’s ukulele serenade. Seriously, if they can do this in a night, they should start a business. Emily chases Naomi down again and tells her she got the message, but they still can’t let Cook win the election. The look on Naomi’s face when Emily says it is just …. how do you never stop being so great, Emily Fitch?

Campaign montage! (Emily, those posters are the most horrific thing I’ve ever seen in my entire life. Where did you learn to match your colors? Naomi’s closet?)

At lunch time, Naomi marches right into the cafeteria, hands Emily her bag, and jumps up on a table to talk about the election. Cook interrupts and gets a deafening See You Next Tuesday from Emily. And because he never fights fair, he mocks Naomi about her “girlfriend” and reinforces the thing she’s been afraid of all along: This is what caring does. It hurts you. It embarrasses you. You dream out loud and you fall down in front of everyone.

Naomi shouts at Emily to leave her alone, and she flees to Kieran’s classroom for comfort. But by “comfort” he thinks she means “snogging” and he gets super gross super fast. And that’s it. There are no more safe places for her to go.

At home, in her bedroom, Naomi finally, finally loses it. She cries because her teacher tried to seduce her. She cries because she didn’t realize that’s what he wanted all along. She cries because Cook made her into a joke in front of the entire school, and because her house is full of strangers, and because there’s never a moment of peace anywhere inside her world. She cries because the only person who understands her is the greatest threat of all. And she cries because no matter how hard she tries, she can’t stop wanting her back.

And she’s angry. She’s angry that she can’t stop her heart from opening up to Emily, angry that Emily acts like it’s OK to care. And when she finds the note Emily left on her bed – Emily Slept Here – she hurls it across the room because stop. Just stop. Can’t Emily see she’s already broken?

But as soon as the note hits the floor, Naomi retrieves it. She smooths it out in her hands. And she falls asleep with it on her pillow because the girl literally. cannot. help. herself.

When she wakes up with Emily’s name printed on her face, Naomi’s first reaction is to rub it the f-ck right off, but she barely scrubs the “Em” before she picks up her phone, dials the very first number and says, “Can we go somewhere? Anywhere.”

And here’s the High Places song I like so much about how you can’t go too far if you don’t take the first step, and I know this is one of the most iconic Skins scenes ever, but you guys, Kathryn Prescott cannot ride a bike. I fear for her life when I watch this scene. I fear for her life and the lives of anyone in love/foolish enough to ride near her.

And please let me take this opportunity to say that I do not (nor will I ever) love you enough to ride a bike beside you if you wobble. My first two broken bones came from riding my bike beside my baby sister and both times it was me carried her to our house shouting about how she was dying, when she had nothing more than a few scratches and I was rocking compound fractures. Compound fractures which I compounded carrying her home at full sprint.

Wow. Have some feelings, Heather Hogan.

Rophy says: This is where Rophy was unable to go on Rophying. Our hands were too busy tucked under our chins the whole time. What do you want us to do? Six seater table.

So, Naomi and Emily stare out over the lake and Naomi looks right at Emily and says, “It’s lovely.” And then back out over the lake and says, “It’s a lovely place.” And Emily – Jesus God, little Emily Fitch – just starts stripping down. Naomi protests that she doesn’t have a swimming costume and Emily says she doesn’t either. Then that delicious, multi-layered dialogue again: “Come on, the sun won’t shine forever.” And Naomi says OK, and Emily promise not to look …

… which lasts exactly three seconds. Emily glances at first and then – I really do think Emily is a slave to her body sometimes around Naomi – she fully turns around and walks toward Naomi. Naomi shrieks about how Emily wasn’t supposed to look and starts poking and shoving Emily in the kind of fight that always leads to making out if there’s a couch nearby.

Naomi pushes Emily in. And Emily coaxes Naomi from the edge. And I wrote way too many words about baptism in the last recap, so you can get your submersion symbolism over at “Freddie” if you really, really want it.

When I was a teenager, we used to have s’mores when we went camping, but these are Skins teenagers and so Naomi sips vodka from the bottle and and muses, again, about how peaceful it is while Emily pokes at the fire and returns her hand to the blanket to caress Naomi’s.

Emily: Do you want to do blowbacks?

Naomi: I never got blowbacks; why can’t people just smoke the damn thing straight.

Emily: It’s fun. Have you ever tried it?

Naomi: No, but being all-seeing, I already know it’s shit.

Emily: Come on, everything once.

Naomi: [sighing dramatically] Ah, f-ck it. Go ahead and disappoint me.

Jack Thorne, I honor you. You are a magician and I am so glad you’re writing the Skins movie.

Naomi cups her hands around Emily’s face and Emily grasps onto Naomi’s neck and they both take unsteady breaths that have nothing to do with blowbacks.

I can never decide if Susanna and the Magical Orchestra or Grouper win the prize for best song in this episode, but “Believer” is as ethereal and perfect here as anything on TV ever has been.

Didn’t think you would trust me

Thought you would see what I see

This days have been good for me too

But I can’t stay

You know why

Didn’t want this to end like this

Thought I might could convert

These nights have been sad for me too

But I don’t pray

You know why

You are a believer

I am not

Didn’t think I could ever love

So I had to destroy it all

But you will do find someone new

When I am gone

You know why

You are a believer

I am not

The thing about being a kid, the thing you always forget when you grow up and get a job and a mortgage, is that when you’re a kid, you’re the one who’s actually responsible for the whole world. Your dad doesn’t want to be a part of your life? It’s your fault. Your mum is up and your mum is down? It’s your fault. If you just tried harder, acted kinder, got better grades, brushed your hair, demanded less, they would love you. And he would stay and he would love you. And she would be up and she would love you. If you could just be good enough.

But Emily breaks the rules of love. She holds out her arms and opens her hands and promises you don’t have to earn it, promises you don’t have to strive for it. It’s there: the biggest love in the world. A love you can never exhaust. A love you can never repay. Naomi is a moonbeam and Emily is lightning. Naomi is frost and Emily is fire. Naomi knows she’s not enough. She’s never been enough. But for now, just for now – in this moment, in this firelight, at Emily’s lake, under these stars – she wants believe she could be. Naomi looks up, looks at Emily with more openness and adoration than she’s ever felt or expressed in her entire life, and she asks Emily to make her believe.

There’s a moment before Naomi leans over to kiss her when Emily’s face almost imperceptibly changes from amusement to awe, and I think it’s the first time we’ve ever seen anything like fear in her eyes, because there’s a sudden acute feeling that every lie ever she told is about to come true.

They are awkward and unsteady because every touch is deeper and truer than the one before it. It’s not MDMA, Emily didn’t just want to kiss someone, it’s not a party, there’s no one around to stop them from pretending it’s just the drugs. Emily leans in to kiss Naomi’s neck and Naomi gasps and grabs her arm like she’s falling off the edge of the earth. She asks Emily to say something and Emily chokes out her very last lie: “I’m all about experiments, me.”

She tugs Naomi’s jumper over her head – always unraveling her just one layer at a time – and Naomi’s eyes are seventeen kinds of hungry. Naomi pulls off Emily’s jumper and when Emily reaches up to fix her hair, my heart clenches. And when Naomi invades the frame like the only thing that matters in the whole world is devouring Emily Fitch, I die. Every single time.

The whole point of acting is that you’re not supposed to notice the acting, but the open recklessness, the consuming honesty Lily Loveless and Kat Prescott infuse into Naomi and Emily: It’s one of the most courageous things I’ve ever seen. It’s breathtaking and it’s glorious and I will always always love them for being so, so brave and so, so real.

Naomi lowers Emily to the ground in the gentlest most frantic way possible. It’s Naomi in this scene and it has to be. She has to be the one who reaches. She has to be the one who moves them away from the purgatory she placed them in. And when Naomi surrenders, when Naomi gives in to the ache and the longing, when Naomi finally asks to be annihilated, Emily flips them so fast it’s dizzy-making.

And then she goes ahead and disappoints her.

I don’t think you need me to break down the symbolism of this transition shot.

Emily wakes up to the familiar sound of Naomi running for her life. She sighs and her face looks like, “Goddamit, Naomi Campbell!” And her morning hair looks like it was licked into place by kittens. And she gets up and marches straight up the hill, shouting at Naomi to stop right now. And Naomi – just listen to this bollocky wankshite right here – Naomi literally goes, “What?”

What? What?! What in the homegrown banana fuck do you think?

Naomi says, “I’ve got to go!” And Emily proves, once again, that she is superior to you and me in every possible way:

Emily: Twice? You’re going to do this to me twice? Naomi, no. You … f-cking stop right now! Don’t you dare leave me in your bed again. I know you, Naomi. I know you’re lonely. I think you need someone to want you. Well, I do want you. So be brave – and want me back.

Naomi’s face when Emily says “want me back” is maybe the most heartbreaking thing I’ve ever seen because up until now, Naomi has really only been running away from a kind of half-lie – the monster your mind creates when the moon plays tricks on your eyes – but when she starts pushing her bike away from Emily’s pleas after the night they just spent together, she’s running, for the very first time, from white-hot truth. She took the first step (not the sex, but the thing behind the sex) and now she knows what Emily does (and will do) to her, inside and all-over. And she wants it, she wants it, she wants it. Her face says how badly she wants it. And she runs.

And Emily. Sweet heavenly storytelling. I’m not sure I have ever loved a character’s development more than I love Emily’s. Make no mistake: she’s done her part corroborating the lies Naomi has told herself up until now, but always, always, always as a means to make (and keep) them safe. I’m going to talk more about Emily’s audacious relationship with honesty in the next episode, but for now I just think it’s thrilling to watch her speak this truth instead of bandaging Naomi’s wounds. Because that’s what Naomi gave Emily permission to do when she reached for her last night – not once, but again and again and again. Permission to tell the truth no matter which way it burns.

I don’t think I’ve ever said this before, but it’s the truest thing and so here it is: Remember when you first watched this series, how much you wanted Naomi and Emily to just be together? And remember in series four when they were ripping each other apart? And remember how you just needed it to stop before they bled to death? Well, no matter how much you wanted those things – no matter how much you begged and wished and prayed and Tweeted – it was nothing on how deeply Naomi and Emily wanted those things. They have always wanted a happy ending in each other with more desperation than you could ever wish for or project onto them.

Peter Selgin writes this amazing thing in By Cunning and Craft

At some devoutly wished-for point in our writing, our characters turn into real people, and when we fail to respond authentically even to their most trivial wishes and urges, we kill them off as living, willful beings and turn them into puppets, and the fictional worlds they inhabit collapse.

If TV is more to you than noise, if you select it as carefully as you would a bed time story, if you embrace it as (and demand for it to be) art, then you are forced to put your trust in the writers. And that’s no small thing, especially if believe earnestly in the soul-sustaining power of fiction. But when your belief as a story-lover/viewer collides with a writing team that is committed to carefully and truthfully weaving the fabric of the fictional dream, what you get is Naomi and Emily.

Skins loves them some Electrelane, and rightly so because it’s never less than awesome, especially “After The Call” right here.

All the things that I’ve done

Go around in my head

And I can’t forget

All the things she said

What could I do?

What could I do?

What could I do?

What could I do?

At home, Naomi tries to wash Emily off of her – the scents and tastes and sounds that threaten to conquer her senses – but she can’t do it.

She stares at herself in the mirror and retraces the map in her mind, trying to remember when it was exactly that she went too far – opened the gate and handed Emily every weapon she’d ever need to destroy her.

And when she can’t wash away Emily and when she can’t pinpoint the moment she lost control, she goes to her mum’s room and I’m kind of sorry that we’ll never know what, exactly, she was going to say. Because guess what random Jesus has bedded himself down in Naomi’s mum’s bed? Politics Professor Jesus (now with 100% more naked arse)! He chases after Naomi and shouts about how he’s a f-cking disaster.

At Roundview, Naomi sits on a desk in an empty classroom and swings her legs like a kid on a playground and stares at Emily’s number in her phone while Dodos sing “Walking.”

You can’t fight the fire that’s in your head

Lay it down, the hour has come to end

Walk around without her just for a bit

Looking back upon the way things had been

Man, I’ve been wasting so much time

Walking the same street every night

Don’t you think maybe it’s about time?

Harriet and Doug bust into the classroom, so Naomi hilariously scoots under the desk and listens to Harriet threaten to chop Doug up into tiny pieces and feed him to her pet piranha if he doesn’t help her rig the election for Naomi. Harriet then makes the classic teen movie mistake of stuffing Cook’s winning votes down her shirt. And maybe – just maybe – it would have worked, but after one night, Naomi’s already an expert at working someone else’s bra and she summons her integrity in front of the whole school and pulls out the winning votes and declares Cook the winner, which leads to … anarchy, obviously.

But also: a snowy look of longing across the cafeteria that’s going to foce me quote Robert Frost: The woods are lovely, dark and deep / but I have promises to keep / and miles to go before I sleep / and miles to go before I sleep.

That’s what Naomi tells herself anyway, as she rips her gaze away from Emily and bolts into the chaos.

In the hallway, Kieran apologizes with some more lovely dialogue that works in degrees.

Kieran: I’m sorry.

Naomi: You were supposed to be flattered by my attention, but ultimately, honorably, unobtainable.

Kieran: A bit too flattered, maybe. A but too obtainable. A bit of a twat.

Naomi: Yeah, maybe. So, do you like her?

Kieran: Yeah. She’s … right.

Naomi: So go tell her, will you?

On her way out of the chaos, Naomi spots Chaos Personified rummaging around, looking for some contraband toys to return to his constituents. Cook giggles and says they get to willy-waggle now that he’s won the election and Naomi banters with him cutely, decides maybe there’s another way to wash Emily off of her, jumps off the desk, grabs his face and snogs him silly. And I’m not gonna lie, it’s sexy. I adore Cook and Naomi’s relationship. They thump around and Naomi yelps as they fall off the desk with a stack of textbooks, and then she stops him and becomes the only main girl on this show not to sleep with one (or more) of the main boys on this show. (Fascinating!) And here’s how she stops him: “Cook. Cook. This isn’t right.”

Which is, of course, a perfect callback to the previous scene: “Yeah, she’s … right.”

(Which is the second of three times someone else gives voice to the thoughts inside Naomi’s head in this episode. Number one being Freddie: “It should make a difference when someone loves you, shouldn’t it?”)

I love, love, love the contrast between riot and peace in this episode, and the way that even the music adds depth to the idea that Naomi can only rest when she and Emily are together. And I love all this talk about the difference between right and wrong, not in a moral imperative kind of way, but in a how-magnets-work kind of way.

Count me among the people who are grateful the Skins writers never felt the need to label Naomi’s sexuality, because while I am over the moon about the way Emily embraces and adorns the “I’m gay” label with courage and aplomb, I’m equally enamored with the idea that in the complex and infinite spectrum of fluid sexuality, Naomi’s “right” just happened to be another girl. (I mean, that’s truth. That’s life. That’s a conversation I’m excited to be a part of, a future that makes me want to leap out of bed. That’s a story that makes me feel like maybe we – all of us – really are going somewhere.)

Naomi asks Cook if he’s not going to try to change her mind: “Most guys would.” Cook says, rightly, that he’s not most guys. And that there’s another reason she won’t sleep with him, and it’s probably a good one, because she’s clever. She kisses him on the cheek, that lost little boy, one of the only people in the wide world to ever see his soul, and they say their “f-ck yous” and she heads back out into the storm.

And while I’m just singing praises like an angel on ecstasy, let me just go ahead and high five Simon Massey, the director and mastermind behind the brilliant shots (and choreography) in this episode, including this one of Naomi engulfed in flames. Just another layer, kids. Just another perfect layer.

At home, Gina has kicked everyone out except Kieran, and Naomi says again how she really did just want a little peace. She asks what Naomi wanted to talk about this morning and then gets really real, really fast.

Gina: Did I ever tell you how angry I was when I found out I was pregnant with you?

Naomi: Is this going to cheer me up? Because I need cheering up, OK?

Gina: I’m getting there. I’d met the man of my dreams. I wanted to travel the world, f–k on every beach in India, be in love, and then I found out I was pregnant.

Naomi: I can only apologize.

Gina: And you know your dad turned out to be a shitty little prick and it was all a little bit rubbish – until you made my life complete, and rather f—–g wonderful.

Naomi: I did that?

Gina: I wasn’t expecting it. The people who make us happy are never the people you expect. So when you find someone, you’ve got to cherish it.

And that’s the final “this is about me, but really about you and Emily” thing.

And oh, Naomi’s face, to know she made her mum’s life better just by being a part of it. To know she was enough all along. And Gina, sweet Gina, she knew the morning she met Emily exactly what Naomi had found. My favorite line in the amazingly absurd Skins novel is when Gina says: “Don’t be so angry, Naomi. It’s only love.”

Grouper’s “Heavy Water” leads Naomi “we’ve only ever had three conversations” Campbell straight to Emily’s door, and Naomi’s is so open and expectant and terrified as she tries to see Emily through the glass after she rings the doorbell. “I’m not going to open the door. My face is all … puffy. I’ve been crying … a bit,” Emily says. No more lies. And Naomi just wants to see her, see her and have her make everything OK the way she always makes everything OK. “I don’t care,” she says, and when Emily doesn’t budge for the first time ever, Naomi just sits down on the other side of the door. She can’t stay, but she can’t go. Like every day of her life since Emily Fitch invaded it.

Naomi: [crying] I do want someone … need someone … you were right.

Emily: [crying] … and?

Naomi: And when I’m with you I feel like I’m a better person. I feel happier. less alone, less lonely.

Emily Fitch, pushing so gently. Always so gently: “…and?” Then, the best moment in the history of space and time and TV happens. Emily reaches through the cat flap and Naomi grabs her hand like exactly what it is: the one thing in the world that will keep her from drowning.

Naomi: But it’s not as simple as that, is it? Being with someone?

Emily: Isn’t it?

Naomi: No. I mean, I don’t know. I mean, I don’t think so. I mean … can’t we just sit like this, for a bit.

Emily: Yeah. We can. For a bit.

Again, the contrast. The click and snap of their perfect fit. Naomi can’t let go of her fear. Emily can’t let go of her hope. And then, one last time,Thorne and Gupta tap into that Donald Newlove idea that all dialogue is between self and the soul: “Yeah. We can. For a bit.”

Emily can’t wait forever, but she’s brave enough to wait for now. Brave enough for both of them. Brave enough to hold on, just a little longer.

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