Skins: Ass to Ass with "Freddie"

Every episode of Skins is basically a self-contained coming-of-age novel but none more so than Freddie’s ep. We got the hook: Freddie’s got a dancing whore of a sister, a dad who favors her more, and to top it all off his mother’s dead. The conflict: Freddie’s stuck in a slacker slump and in love with a girl who won’t love him back. The resolution: Freddie forces himself to grow up and tell the girl how he feels. But the formula stops there because although he is the hero of our tale he doesn’t get the emo girl of his dreams in the end.

The ep starts with Freddie’s dad forcing him to tell his sister she’s sexy. Score one for the creep factor, show! And then he does and goes outside to be angsty and is surprised to find Effy in his garden. And she’s all, Yeah I’m in your garden. That’s not strange at all. And Freddie’s all, It kind of is. And she’s like, I wanna go inside your shed. And Freddie’s like, Is that a euphemism? And just like that the spark of romance ignites.

It burns brighter in class in the most chaste of ways when Freddie and Effy’s forearms touch and the hair on his skin stands on end.

And finally, when he decides to do something about it and goes to Effy’s house to “return her bracelet” aka tell her how he feels. Now, the thing about Freddie is, he’s not very good at articulating anything. This was his primary character trait throughout the episode so it was nice when he got to the point and told Effy that they’d be good together. And she tells him something about how she’s a heartbreaker and therefore it would be a seriously stupid idea. So Freddie goes to explore his feelings some more and we’re subjected to yet another skateboarding montage where we’re meant to understand that Freddie’s a crap skater when girls don’t love him back. And things are about to get a lot worse: his dad destroys/cleans up his shed; he learns that Cook fucked his sister; and then, in a gratuitously gross scene, he throws up.

But then, like an angel, Effy appears to him in a post-vomit haze and enlightens him with the words, “Just be.” which sounded a lot like “just pee” to the point where I thought she had a secret remedy to cure vomiting, but alas, she was just the catalyst to make him point his life in a new direction.

He decides to stop skating, stop smoking, put on a suit (later) and go kiss Effy in a lake. (The scene was sweet, and probably had all the Effy/Freddie lovers absolutely dying, but I’m still not sold on this ship. They just seem wrong for each other and I can’t picture what a relationship between the two of them would look like. Suffice to say, the Freddie/Effy scenes made me cringe a little bit.) But anyway, Freddie’s loosened up! Here’s the thing about Freddie: he may be a bore (when he isnt being a self-richeous little pris) but he’s still the prettiest boy on the show (he’s got the dirty-boy-chic thing down.) And when he loosens up his personality matches his looks and he becomes... cute. That scene of him singing along to “Ass to Ass”? Adorable!

He continues the adorableness by reconciling with his sister and supporting her throughout the loss of her Sexxxbombs competition. But Cook comes over and completely amps up his dick quota for the series by revealing that he was the one who sabotaged of Karen’s career as a singing slut. Freddie head butted him and Cook retaliated by kissing him- which actually isn’t the non sequitur that it sounds like.


After all this, Freddie’s still thinking about his undying love for Effy, and in a climactic scene towards the end Mrs. Stonem essentially tells him that Effy doesn’t want any Freddiebrek because she’s having a Cookie upstairs. And maybe Freddie and Effy aren’t that wrong for each other because the one thing they share in common is that neither one is much for communicating well. They give and receive messages through action. Freddie proclaims himself to her through a kiss. Effy turns him down by showing him, deliberately, that she doesn’t want him (well, she does want him, she just doesn’t “do” relationships.)

The closing of Freddie’s story opened up a whole new one. Not only has the show’s main romance taken a turn for the worse, but we’ve seen the turning point of Cook/Freddie too (and I’m not talking about that kiss.) Cook’s acting out of jealousy now and his actions are becoming a lot more malicious. He’s definitely taking notes from Tony Season 1 in the ways of alienating friends and making yourself the most hateful “friend” of the group. An interesting character arc but I like my Cook to be flavored mild, thanks very much.

All in all, not the best ep of the series by far, but it moved things along somewhat. Some great moments in the episode:

- Naomi = I moan. Hehe. Naomi gets all the sexual references and I love it.

- Cook = “Crayola Dick.” Now I’m just really curious.

- Speaking of Naomi and Cook, this episode was not without its Naomi/Cook allusions. Cook thinks she’s funny, and along with his “I like her” statement from the premiere episode, it was just another subtle hint that he’s developing more than just boner-inspiring feelings for her. At least imo.

- “Hi this is Effy, I’m not talking right now.”
We finally got an answer to a question we never thought to ask: How did Effy talk on the phone back in her non-speaking days? She didn’t! And thanks to Effy’s fantastic voicemail we now know that she really took the silent vow thing to heart. A great throwback to series 1.

- Speaking of the earlier series we got a few other refrences in this episode. Cook said something about encountering an “Anwar the Magnificent.” (So Anwar’s a magician now?) AND, Josie’s back! Ever since counseling Chris in the ways of careers she’s been a delightful recurring character on the series. And she even brought back Chris’ beloved “pucking.” Glad she’s back.