rewatching skins

I have a guilty pleasure when it comes to shows that not a lot of people agree with. I absolutely love to rewatch shows. It's one of my favorite things to do. If I watched a show and I enjoyed it, you better believe I'll be rewatching it. Every show I've ever enjoyed, I have most certainly watched at least twice. It doesn't matter if the show is absolute doom and despair or if it's a sitcom, there is a point in time where I'll find myself in the mood to watch it again. I love the familiarity, I can watch it without paying full attention, like in the background while doing homework, but I still know I'll enjoy it.

I've rewatched Bojack Horseman, Arrested Development, Shameless, Orange is the New Black, Fleabag, High Fidelity, Girls, Glee, New Girl, and Sex and the City. My point is, there's a wide variety of genres of shows that I've seen and love and will continue to rewatch, even if they fall into that category of awkward that I've talked about. Most recently, I've rewatched Fleabag, but in more recent terms, I'm a little over halfway done with a full rewatch of Skins (UK). See, with some shows, when I rewatch them, I don't do a full rewatch. I start at a certain season, like with American Horror Story, I'll only watch the seasons I really liked, however, that just depends on the show. Skins is one of my favorite shows, and I wanted to go into it a little bit, considering the recentness of my rewatching it.

With Skins in the past, I've rewatched only certain 'gens' depending on which one I felt like watching more. This time, however, I started from Gen 1 and am watching all 3 gens, except I don't think I'll be watching season 7 since I never really enjoyed it. This is the first time in a while I've rewatched Skins in its entirety rather than just picking out a certain gen. Now I don't have a favorite gen like some people do, I thoroughly enjoy all of them, they're all vaguely similar in the idea of themes, but at the same time they're vastly different.

Skins (UK) via Hulu poster

Now, for those unfamiliar, Skins has 7 seasons, with three different 'gens,' or generations, meaning the characters and the casting completely change, the setting is the same, and even the college they attend, as well as some of the faculty, remain the same, but the main characters themselves change. Season 1 and 2 are representative of gen 1, for gen 2 there is season 3 and 4, and for gen 3 there is season 5 and 6, as for the seventh season it's just disappointing and there isn't any time worth talking about it. Season 7 is just a collection of episodes

As for Gen 1, it's an absolute classic, what I would give to watch it again for the first time. I will say Gen 1, compared to the other gens, probably had the better second season; the other two gens were either underwhelming or just completely irritating in their second season. Gen 1 had some of my favorite relationships and my favorite characters, I absolutely adore Maxxie, he can do no wrong in my eyes. As for other characters, I love them, but they truly irritate me a lot at times, or they can be so messed up, like Sid, Michelle, Anwar, or Cassie. I absolutely love Jal and Chris, especially when they got together in the second season. Chris is an absolute favorite of mine that I think deserved so much better, truthfully he may be a top five character for me overall in Skins. Tony, however, is not a favorite of mine. I wasn't a fan of him in the first season, especially the more I rewatched, and in the second season, I still wasn't a big fan of him, mainly because of the first season version of him I still had in mind.

Gen 1 characters from Skins (UK)

Gen 2, I would also give anything to watch for the first time again. They had some of my favorite characters overall and showed a lot of well-developed themes with character development. I loved Naomi and Emily's relationship and how Emily and Katie's relationship as twin sisters, and the theme of jealousy. Now, absolute hot take, but I love Effy wholeheartedly. The season 4 version of her isn't that great, I'll admit, but her appearances in Gen 1, being Tony's little sister, and her barely speaking were iconic. Effy season 3 version was my absolute favorite and also probably top five characters. I feel as though season 4 really fell off in the sense that it was mainly focused on Effy's storyline and didn't entirely focus on all the characters as much as I think they should have. Cook was irritating, but he did show a lot of growth in the show overall. I loved Thomas, too, as a character and his storyline. Freddy was an absolute sweetheart who also deserved a much better ending, but Skins does an amazing job ending a generation off with at least one tragedy. I loved Pandora, and she is most definitely a top five character for me, she is so authentic to herself but at times I think she deserved better in terms of how she was treated by Effy. JJ honestly irritated me. He was ok at times, but he didn't really have much significance in the overall plot to me. Gen 2 is great overall, but season 3 is by far so much better than season 4.

Gen 3, what I'm currently in the middle of finishing up on my rewatch right now is also great, but once again, the second season of it is overall underwhelming. Grace and Rich are my favorite couple in all of Skins, and there's no debate, they deserved a lot better, once again with the tragedies. I loved Frankie in season 5 truthfully I thought she was great, however her character really fell off and became a terrible person especially after meeting Luke. I loved her and Matty together, and I honestly like Matty more than Nick, as the writers decided to play with the theme of twins again and jealousy, living a vaguely similar storyline as Katie and Emily in Gen 2. Alo, I loved overall in both seasons, and he never disappointed. I especially liked when he and Mimi got together in season 6. Mimi definitely had a lot of character development, in season 5 I disliked her character so much and thought there was no coming back from that, season 6 she had a complete turn around. As for Liv I don't think she changed much throughout both seasons, but I did like her character a lot, both of her episodes were pretty enjoyable, I feel like other than her episodes you didn't really get a deeper look into her life like with the rest of the characters.

But, that's basically it on my wrap-up of the skins characters from all three gens, and me finding it impossible to choose just one favorite gen. The thing about Skins is that it's another 'awkward' TV show, that being said, everyone is just so incredibly human in the show. Everyone is so flawed, it's refreshing to see a normal representation of what people are like or are experiencing in their lives.

-AC