Skins

                If you’re lucky, you have never seen the television show Skins, MTV’s attempt at a show about “teen life.”  The show claims to be an accurate prediction of what teen life is really like, yet the show manages to contain zero events or characters that bare any resemblance to reality. 

                The problem with shows such as Skins is that anybody can understand what social role each person plays within ten seconds of watching.  Instead of having multifaceted characters with complex motivations, each person is defined by a singular motivation i.e. a girl they can’t have, a desire to fit in, an attempt to be a sports star, etc.  Not only is this style of writing disingenuous, it’s terribly uninteresting. 

                Teen shows and movies make it seem as if life is defined by singular, seminal moments such as prom, a first date, a championship sporting event, etc.  But this is generally false.  Seinfeld realized that life is defined by the ordinary events that make up our everyday lives.  Portraying the subtleties of a dinner party or having coffee with a friend is far more interesting and meaningful than extremely dramatic events.  Until teen shows such as Skins attempt to capture “everydayness,” they will always be cliché and boring.  This is because portraying normal events requires nuanced, well-rounded characters while extreme events tend to create archetypes instead of real humans.