Skins pilot review

Well, it’s one of the best things on MTV right now. We’ll give it that.

But even though this is going to make us sound like total killjoys, we weren’t feeling the subject matter. It made drugs and casual sex in high school look extremely glamorous. Now we don’t know about you guys, but in high school, we didn’t know how to wipe our asses properly (ok, we knew THAT, but you get the point. Looking back, we were dumb), and we certainly weren’t ready for sex. Is anyone’s sex life in high school glamorous? We’re not feeling a show about sex that gives an “everyone’s doing it” message to teens and furthers the old cliché that it’s shameful to be a virgin. Yeah, we loved Sex and the City, but that was for grown-ups. Also, the heart and quality and humor in that show made up for it.

We don’t need more teen pregnancies (due to kids thinking that they should just go around rooting each other as soon as they get the urge.) Shoot, forget that. Innocence and lack of a broken heart are valuable things. You have to protect your emotional health when you are young. And guys who just go for the physical thing and probably wouldn't get hurt, you have to protect your humanity and not turn into a low-grade Tucker Max knock-off. MTV just wants money. It doesn’t care. According to the ratings, millions of young people tuned in for more messages that, if they listen, are just going to end up making them feel more insecure and empty. Sorry, but no teen should be wandering the streets after a bender, shoeless in the winter, doing a walk of shame all the way home. They are babies. Is MTV trying to shake things up and be controversial? Sorry, but American Pie did this first, and it was funnier. None of the things in this show were new. Also, the teens’ behavior wasn’t authentic to how most American teens are. Kids don’t act like that. Most of them are shyer. It’s like “teens exaggerated.”

Also, for most of the episode, this show featured lots of teens with humor and boldness, but little heart. Kids don’t have the cynical hearts of critics. They won’t care about how good the tone of the show is and how modern it is if they don’t have someone to root for. Some heroes. So if Skins is going to thrive, the show has to plug some more soul into the sex fest. It needs to be funnier, sweeter, and smarter, or once the shock wears off, there will be nothing left. Quality can overcome subject matter for us. We watch the kids on Glee get frisky, Dexter kill people, and people doing all that they do on Boardwalk Empire. But those shows have other things going for them, so we're cool with them.

There were some fun and funny moments in Skins, and the show flew by. It was easy to watch. And we LOVED how the high-schoolers actually looked like they were in high school. Well, a high school for models, but still. They looked 17-ish, and that’s more than we can say for most teen shows. If you can get past the subject matter and are solid enough in where you stand in your own decisions regarding sex, this show might be a keeper in the future, once characters actually develop and the makers stop trying to be controversial.

For now, it’s a regular old C

Also, maybe we will make decent parents one day....it seems we have at least one lecture under our belts.

Update: Watched the British version of this episode on Instant Netflix, and it was just like this episode, only better and the kids had British accents. We are going to keep watching that, rather than wait for this show to come out week-by-week. If you have Instant Netflix, that's what we'd recommend.