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Erda posted an update in the group
Autostraddle Skins Fan Club: 2 years, 1 month ago So I know this is the sort of thing of which flame wars are made – but which generation was your favorite?
While I love, love, love Naomily, I think Generation 1 was my overall favorite.
I actually minded what happened with Naomi and Emily least in Series 4, my only complaint being that they didn’t give them more focus. I also really liked what they did with Katie and Cook. What really bothered me was the way they derailed Thomas’s character, as well as the incredibly stupid Freddie/Effy drama that I think everyone hates.
Generation 1, for me, just had the most characters I cared about. I haven’t watched enough of Generation 3 yet to judge, but in Generation 2, I felt like there were characters I loved (Naomi and Emily, Katie in S4, JJ, and Pandora a little bit) but most of the characters really just made me feel ”meh.” Whereas, I feel like I connected with all the Gen 1 characters and their storylines at least a little (though I’m still sad about what they did to Chris).
I believe the explanation with Pandora is she was somehow taking classes like history that her friends didn’t know about – which is still a stretch. But either way, it shows a massive lack of research on their part re: the differences between UK and US universities. It would have been slightly more likely if they had just used Oxbridge instead.
the writers really just didn’t know what had made the show good and therefore didn’t put it in the 2nd gen it seemed. but then they found the je ne sais quoi and put it the 3rd gen. its so good. personally, i actually really love liv. her style is fab and she really just seems real and legitimate to me. also, franky and mini should have sex……you know, um, just saying.
I just thought I generally couldn’t connect with the Gen 2 characters as well as those from Gen 1 and Gen 3 – with the exception of JJ and Naomi and Emily, maybe Pandora a few times. Of course, they didn’t spend nearly as much time on any of them as they did on that Freddie/Effy/Cook nonsense. At least the main romantic plot of Gen 1, the Maxxie/Tony/Michelle/Sid/Cassie love quintangle (sp?), was somewhat realistic, I thought. No crazy psychiatrists coming out of nowhere to murder people.
pentagon. and yes, i <3 JJ.
Yes, obviously it’s pentagon. I was just thinking ”quadrangle” – god, I feel so stupid.
no, don’t. i looked at it for 5 minutes trying to spell it and then i asked my friend and she was like ”why not just say pentagon?”.
I got into skins late and have so far only watched up to the end of season 3, but I’ve got to say I think I prefer generation 2 to generation 1. Although that may be just bc I’m currently so enamored with Naomi and Emily.
Plot wise, it may not be as good as the first two seasons, but they’re the first characters I’ve ever truly related with.
Also, as dumb as she can be, I can’t help but adore Effy.
You can’t fully judge Generation 2 until you’ve seen the trainwreck that is Series 4.
YES. but personally, i sort of enjoyed the crazy crazy shit. not cuz it was good, but still.
Actually, when I think about it, about half of the S4 episodes – Katie’s, JJ’s, Emily’s and Cook’s – were pretty decent. It’s the rest that it made it such a trainwreck, with Thomas cheating on Pandora out of nowhere and all that crazy Effy/Freddie shit.
Maybe I just downplay the goodness of Cook’s episode because I’m not really a huge Cook fan. But it was way better than his S3 episode, where I feel like a whole lot of nothing happened.
Right now, I’d say my favorite is probably the third generation.
I like how they were able to take a character I absolutely hated (Mini) and made me love her completely. They had to hit Tony with a bus to pull that same trick in s1.
I hated S1 Tony as a person but not as a character. Both Nicholas Hoult and the writers were good at creating a TV jerk where it’s very clear why he has so much power over people and why they put up with all his bullshit. They tried to do that with Cook in Gen 2 and failed imo. (He became a good character in S4, one of the few things that series did right, but throughout S3 you can’t figure out why Freddie, JJ and everyone else put up with all his shit when he seemingly has no redeeming features.)
Also, Gen 1 was very good at giving me characters that I initially thought I wouldn’t give a shit about and making me become invested in them. Like Chris and Michelle at the beginning of S1 didn’t feel that interesting to me, but Michelle’s two episodes and Chris’s S2 episode made them both some of my favorites. And Gen 3 also did that for me with its various characters, Mini particularly as you pointed out. But I still feel like there are people who don’t do much for me. Like Matty. I don’t understand what his deal is at all.