Skins Season 4 recap – Episodes 6 and 7: Searching for Naomily in a messed up Skins world

Episode 6 and 7 of Skins saw some happy times and very messed up storytelling respectively. Emily and Naomi, however, were hardly there at all.

Previously on Skins: Emily moved in with Naomi and then she found out Naomi had been cheating on her with Sophia, who ended up committing suicide. Then Emily got back at Naomi by doing some drugs and making out with a random girl at a BBQ they were throwing.

Episode 6: JJ

Unlike many of the previous episodes, I really enjoyed watching the JJ episode. This is probably because I actually like his quirky, nerdy character. JJ is just soooo weird!

But compared to most of the Skins characters, he's pretty normal. At least, he is a decent human being who doesn't spend all his time drinking, doing drugs and having random sex. Is my age showing?

In this episode JJ finds himself a girlfriend. Of course, JJ being JJ, the whole process of landing the girl is full of embarrassing, unbelievably stupid, yet very cute events.

When he is out on his date with Lara in the pub, he bumps into Emily, who is there with some strange girl, who she introduces, just like JJ does with his date, as "my friend".

Hang on a second. So Emily has gone from drunkenly kissing some random girl to make Naomi jealous to, what, dating other girls? Good to see she doesn't need much time to get over her relationship with Naomi.

Once JJ and Lara become an item, he decides he should introduce her to his friends. He comes up with the great idea to go for a visit at Naomi and Emily's. Obviously, things are rather strained and uncomfortable.

When JJ wants to bring up seeing Emily at the pub the other day, she shuts him up and drags him to the bedroom to tell him not to say anything.

Apparently, she was on a date, but she doesn't know what she's doing and Naomi doesn't know a thing about it. I'm confused. So Emily is dating other girls, but she's still living with Naomi and they haven't even broken up yet?

We don't really see Emily or Naomi anymore for the rest of the episode, and the focus is mainly on JJ. The episode ends with him trying to win Lara over by serenading outside her window. This could be kind of cute, if not for the fact he brought an entire Ukulele ensemble and he's singing Spandau Ballet's Gold. WTF?!

Episode 7: Effy

Episode 6 might have been one of my favourite episodes, in contrast, episode 7 was definitely the one that made Skins lose all credibility for me.

Why? Because I can live with a Skins world that's full of teenagers and adults that don't have a care in the world and are busy pretending to have fun while they mess up again and again. What bugs me is when writers just make up totally unbelievable over the top storylines for no good reason.

I wonder what the writers were thinking when they wrote the Effy storyline. All I can say is, I could've done without. At first I didn't mind so much. Effy is obviously troubled, it was bound to get out of control, so it's great to see she's getting some help. I have no idea though, why they decided to give her a crazy, psycho, murderous therapist. 

Yes, you read that correctly: murderous. Effy's therapist has some very unusual ways (and unbelievable, for that matter) to help Effy get better, which involve her just pretending nothing bad ever happened to her.

He then convinces her to get rid of her friends, her boyfriend, and all her stuff. It gets to the point where she has no more memories and doesn't even know who she is anymore.

Hello! Skins is a drama, not sci-fi. You can't just make someone forget everything, no matter how troubled they are. I wish they just left it at that, but no, they had to take it one step further.

Effy decides she no longer wants therapy from the guy and has Freddie tell him to leave her alone.

The next morning Freddie is called by the therapist who wants to meet him at his house. When Freddie arrives there he starts to explain to Freddie it's important he continue to treat Effy.

When Freddie disagrees and wants to leave, the therapist smashes his skull with a baseball bat. I don't really have the words to describe this plotline, other than with another WTF?!

In case you might think things looked worse than they really are, the Skins website leaves no doubt, as they've actually put up a condolence book for Freddie. Once again; WTF?!

As for Naomily, we only get to see them in two small scenes. In the first one, Naomi goes to see Effy to say things are not going well with Emily and to see what a crazy person looks like, to check if she's going crazy herself.

The other scene is when the gang is celebrating their A level results at a pub and are calling out their results one by one. Unfortunately, that's all we get to see of them.

Next time on Skins: Emily and Naomi are lying in bed. Emily is saying "I love you" to which Naomi replies, "Don't lie". Sounds like another fun episode.

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This post was first published on eurout.