I really hope MTV picks up Skins for a second season, because with a little bit of finesse, this show could really be something. I mean, if Skins is going to be Skins, it should never be wrinkle-free, but I feel like there are three – maybe four – variables that could be ironed in way that makes the whole thing more cohesive and more resonant.
One thing people aren’t talking about, and I think it’s kind of important, is that despite its flaws, Skins really is capturing the essence of working-class teenagers. Actual teenagers. Whose problems exist outside of whatever shit Gossip Girl is talking about them, or what to wear to whatever regatta gala. Urban families – the ones we create as opposed to the ones we’re born into – is one of the things Skins does best, and I think “Daisy” really demonstrates that. Monica Padrick wrote this episode with Bryan Elsley, and I like her style. (She wrote “Cadie,” too, which was the strongest episode of the season.)
One more thing, also. The Skins model is always a little disjointed because of the character-specific episodes written individually by different writers. The up-side is that we get these layered, subversive stories without being patronized. The down-side is that sometimes we’re left scratching our heads like, “Wait – why does Stanley suddenly love Cadie?” It’s a good feeling when the character moves forward in a way that connects her with the everyone else, and causes her to become a catalyst in their stories too. “Michelle” and “Daisy” both excelled in that. Like, less moving chess pieces around and more of just playing the game, you know? (While we’re on the subject: UK Skins series five has found this balance like no series before it. They’re slaying it across the pond. It’s the absolute greatest.)
So, anyway! Daisy! This is going to be a short recap now that I’ve felt my feelings out loud for you, because Tea only popped up for a second, and only to reiterate the thing we already know.
Daisy is the fixer. That’s what she does. She fixes people, fixes relationship, acts as the keeper and immune system of her entire group of friends. Homeless Chris? Helped. Heartbroken Michelle? Helped. Abbud and Chris visit her at her Hooter-esque work to ask her to fix the new problem of: The lesbian f–ked the alpha male and so his girlfriend ran away to Boston after beating the s–t out of him. She says she’ll deal with it. But also she’s got to deal with her family situation. Her dad can’t pay the rent, and he only eases up on the emotional distance when he’s hammering her about how she’ll never make a career out of music.
Her first order of business as a friend fixer is to oversee Abbud and Tea’s couples counseling. He’s pissed that she slept with Tony. She’s not really feeling the remorse this week, all, “I screwed him, OK? And it was terrible. But there’s something in him I can’t help wanting.” Abbud points out that she also screwed Michelle in the process, which was a really shitty thing today because not only is she one of Tea’s best friends, Tea is a lesbian. Tony overhears her say that, of course, and so he smirks a little bit from the doorway. (Not too much, though, ’cause he’s still sporting some serious bruises from that time Michelle destroyed him with her fists of steel!)
Daisy’s second order of friend business is to fix Stanley up with Cadie. ‘Cause he was such a good influence on her before, what with the driving her to overdose and all that. The important thing isn’t that Cadie is awesome at basketball or that Daisy convinces her that her new boyfriend is a troglodyte. No, the important thing is, as always, Britne Oldford‘s masterful delivery of this line: “I just pretend the ball isn’t a real ball, but, like, a globe of superheated energy, and the net is God’s waiting room.”
Daisy’s family business is a little more complicated. Her dad breaks up her trumpet lessons and tells her she won’t be going to trumpet camp on his watch. (Because, see, Daisy’s mom left them when she became a famous musician and he’s still a little bitter.) Daisy decides to fix Abbud’s problems by sleeping with him, but that plan gets thwarted when they go to her place and find her sister in the throes of a drug-fueled rager. She’s a rapper, by the way; she’s kind of awesome. Daisy wails on her about “What is this? an indifference convention?!” and then a pile of laundry turns into a pile of Eura, and Daisy calls over her friends to help her clean things up for once.
Her dad’s upright piano got smashed, so the just cover it back up and clean around it. That’s kind of a problem when he decides to sell the piano to pay the rent. He says he’ll take Daisy’s trumpet camp piggy bank now, but she decides not to try out for the program anyway. Her pop finally realizes he’s doing that age-old failed artist thing of projecting his failure onto the whole entire world, including his kids. And because Daisy is the most awesome thing you’ve ever seen, she buys him a piano with her trumpet camp savings account.
It’s actually a cool scene at the end. He says he needed the money to pay the rent, and she says, “Rent, Dad?” In the way that only an artist would understand. Poetry is the opposite of money. She sits beside him on a piano bench and they play a duet for the first time in a long time.
I need more Daisy in my life. I need a second season.
