Mallory's Camera

Skins has come out with a seventh season, a truncated run of eight episodes that offers peeks into the afterlives of four of the characters. I suspect the characters were chosen solely on the basis of actor availability, rather than any qualities intrinsic to characters the actors are portraying. I will probably end up watching them all, just like I watched the entirely awful Third Generation just because I really loved the show when it first aired.


So we are on to the third episode. We have just seen Effie in the Afterlife come to grief though hedge fund insider trading. Effie as a 14 year old was probably the most beautiful female I've ever set eyes on, dark hair, blue eyes, pre-Raphaelite face – a type that's always haunted me. As an adult, she's not nearly as beautiful – although still in conventional terms, I suppose, quite striking, still with that aloofness, with that beautiful, unmelting snowflake quality. Predictably she uses her charm to make bad choices.

The imagery is quite striking. The production values in these little segues are high, and the producers use a substantial portion of the budget on cinematography. Our last glimpses of Effie are in a glass elevator shot from outside huge plate glass windows of an intimidatingly imposing skyscraper. The elevator Effie is in is going down while another elevator is going up. Then we see Effie sitting in the back of a police car – Brit police cars are apparently modeled after the limosines of expensive car services. Effie watches London through the windows of the car and a small, inscrutable smile plays about her perfect lips. In its own way, the scene is as striking as the one in The Four Hundred Blows where Antoine Doinel looks at Paris through the tiny barred window of the Black Maria.

The second character to be showcased is Cassie who was always my favorite, possibly because I could relate to her general weirdness, her tendencies toward obsessive attachment and her eating disorders. I go in and out of anorexia myself though with me it's not a matter of fantasizing I'm fat. When I'm under stress, food just nauseates me. I crave that clear feeling you get when you starve yourself for prolonged periods of time. I wouldn't be eating now, for example, except dinner with the housemates is a household ritual. When I do eat, I have to force myself. Chant the mantra: Food is fuel. The machine doesn't run without fuel.

Anyway, in this episode, Cassie has apparently overcome her eating disorder. In fact, she has sprouted the delicate beginnings of a double chin. It's not unattractive. She still has the rabbit teeth, still has the frightened look. The things she is frightened of are not of this world.

Storyline is simple. Cassie lives in a horrible house with a shared bathroom. She works as a waitress in a Greek diner. She is virtually invisible to the world around her except for a single secret admirer who starts stalking her, taking secret photos of her and posting them online. The photos become something of an online rage, alerting Cassie to their existence. Eventually Cassie discovers the identity of her stalker, confronts him, takes his camera. Inevitably, Cassie realizes that the stalker's idolization of her is pure, gives the camera back to him.

In the very last scene, he begins to photograph her with her consent. "There's too much light," he tells her, so she moves into the shadows nd very slowly begins taking off her clothes.

Fade to black.

Nicely done.