You know what? We don’t care. Yeah, you heard it right. The penultimate episode of the series, the one in which all the good stuff in the final episode is supposed to be set up… and it bored us.
OK, the Emily/Naomi stuff was kinda interesting, and it was nice to see them finally declare themselves before the world (at a school prom - cliche of cliches, and don’t tell us the writers were being all post-modern… and where the blinking flip did that crazy headmistress bit come from?.. utterly random), but we knew it’d happen so the tension was a little lacking.
All the twin stuff, though… so what? Is this one of the great arcs that’s supposed to have kept us enthralled throughout the series? One dimensional bitch twin has been vile to meek little mouse twin and indeed everyone else because… she loves her sister? What, that’s the grand revelation we’ve been building to? Call us both underwhelmed and unconvinced. We could rant on more, but ennui is overwhelming us. At least JJ and Freddie (yaaaaaaay!) were there to add a bit of colour, though -and we feel dirty saying it - JJ’s stock-in-trade bumbling (tired plot device alert: want something uncomfotable revealing? Have JJ spit it out without meaning to after being ‘locked on’!) was at least better than Freddie constantly being sorry for everything. Freddie should never apologise for anything! Never!!!! Oh… sorry… now we’re getting ‘locked on’…
Ah well, at least we get back to the interesting stuff next week, though as Freddie cheerleaders it’s our hope that Cook’s teeth get mistaken for a graveyard and get smashed up by a bunch of wasted chavs, thus leaving the way clear for Freffy to finally happen. I know we’ve not been too nice about Effy (parents splitting apparently equals she can do anything she wants), but seriously, what are the alternatives?
Don’t worry we haven’t forgotten our prediction. No hints this week so we’re sweating, but we’re sticking with it. You have to admit, Cook being the one that tried to stove in Katie’s head would be a mite more interesting than anything that happened this episode… We’re not holding our breath, though.
Oh, and if Pandora says ‘Wizzer!!!!!’ one more time we will not be held responsible for the atrocities we will commit…
Tags: boring, cook, crappy sister love, effy, emily, freddie, freddie should never apologise, jj, katie, killer rock, meh, naomi, pandora, series 3, skank-in-chief, Skins, tombstone teeth, yet more cliches
If you haven’t seen this episode, do not read on… SPOILER ALERT! And it’s a big one…
Since it is so big, we’ll get straight to it. Effy turning all cavewoman and clonking Katie one on the bonce with a handily placed rock? Nah… we don’t buy it. There’s just too much about it that doesn’t ring true.
One: Effy was wasted. This doesn’t mean she couldn’t have done it, but since she was high on hallucinogenic shrooms could it be that her recollection of the incident didn’t quite match what really happened? But if Effy didn’t crown the most one-dimensional character in Skins history (and that includes Abigail Stock), who did? This brings us to…
Two: where was Cook? Having gatecrashed and caused mayhem, he was on the loose when the bashing occurred. He’d already said that Effy was all he had left, and all this series the writers have been showing us that he’s someone that’ll do anything to get what he wants. Katie’s skull says hello to Mr. Rock, and we end the episode with Cook and Effy driving away together. Coincidence? No way…
So here we go: we’re gonna look idiots for this, but even though we’re not playing Cluedo we’re saying when Katie was clogged, it was Cook with the rock in the woods. Feel free to taunt us later if we’re proved to be fools…
But onto the rest of the episode! Bits we liked? JJ stumbling into the morning from his girl-infested nest and smiling bemusedly, Emily’s disdainful look at Katie when she told her not to eat the shrooms, Thomas’ refusal to be baited by Cook, Freddie (yaaaay!) and Effy secretly holding hands while sleeping, Freddie facing down Cook.
Bits we didn’t like. The pointless poachers: only there to create tension so that Cook could arrive by surprise, even though we all knew that’s exactly what’d happen. The incomprehensible nature of Freddie and Katie being together. Seriously, where did this come from? One minute Katie’s some Bristolian footballer’s moll, the next she’s sucking Freddie’s face in the sacred shed. No explanation at all. We know you’re supposed to watch the Secret Skins clips on the e4 website, but this is too major a plot point to be left out of the TV show.
There was some other stuff we didn’t like, but it seems insignificant beside our bold prediction of Cook’s guilt. We’re off to read our Agatha Christie novels, so if it turns out like we say, just remember that we said it first. If we’re wrong, though, it’d be great if you forgot this ever happened…
Tags: cluedo, cook, effy, emily, freddie, jj, jj's girl nest, katie, killer rock, series 3, shrooms, Skins, thomas
This is a very difficult review to write. You might think we’re paranoid, but we’re sure the writers of Skins wrote this one just to mess with us. What d’you mean they wrote it before this site existed? A mere detail. They knew…
But what are we so crazy about? That they could give us an episode in which JJ is revealed as the sweetest, most intelligent and most considerate character in the show at the same time as we see, for the first awful time… Evil Freddie! 
It could be said that the writers did this before with Cassie - the troubled, sensitive, complex loner - but they do it well. It was heartbreaking to see JJ, a soul too soft for this cold-edged world, cast adrift with his friends too obsessed with their hatred of themselves and each other to see him slowly breaking. Left alone behind, JJ can only watch as his friends disintegrate.
The worst, though, was Evil Freddie. The way he ruffled JJ’s hair… aaaargh, so patronising! And boffing that bitchy little footballer’s skank Katie… urgh. He could have banged Sketch and it wouldn’t have been as bad. Skins writers, you must promise us… Evil Freddie must never appear again. If he does, we may have to take action. Drastic, heinous action.
Our point made, onto the rest of it. Cook is finally revealed to loathe himself as much as we loathe him. Cool. So your Mum didn’t give you sweeties as a kid? Boo hoo, it’s no excuse for being despicable. We don’t buy him hugging JJ… we heard him on the phone to Pandora earlier. As a side point, why is Cook living in a hall of residence? And which sixth-form colleges actually have halls of residence? Stretching credibility even for Skins…
Why was Effy sitting semi-naked in her room, with music so loud President Obama heard it in the White House? Why is Skank-in-Chief Katie suddenly being nice to Naomi? Why doesn’t Naomi just go the gay way and finally get with Emily (come on, we all want them to get together)? How has Thomas gone from being a penniless immigrant to being a club promoter in a few weeks (this is even worse than Cook’s incomprehensible hall of residence… no-one sells that much drugs that quickly unless they’re called The Greek, live in Baltimore and sell drugs to Avon Barksdale and Marlo Stanfield).
Bits we liked: finding out how sweet JJ truly is, his final moment of happiness with Emily, her new technique for stopping him being ‘locked on’, his passion for model planes, him finally losing it with Cook (”ABOUT ME!!!”), him spiking Cook with pills, his vast wall diagram (there’s some very interesting stuff in that if you freeze-frame and take a look), Cook getting the beating he’s been due for a long time, Freddie and JJ charging in to rescue Cook from said beating, Naomi and Effy making it plain that each has the other sussed out, Freddie’s insistence on talking to JJ shirtless 
. Perhaps more than all, though, that final long shot of JJ’s Mum, broken and joyful at the same time: if that didn’t bring tears to your eyes, you’re made of stone.
Bits we didn’t like: Evil Freddie , Freddie and Katie (why her?.. seriously, why her?), Cook’s phone betrayal of JJ, poor Thomas finding out about Cook and Pandora, the writers’ cheap device of having JJ revealing hidden things to move the plot along by being locked on, Naomi denying Emily once again (give in!), anything that Cook does ever.
OK, so here we are. Three episodes to go. Will Effy stop being selfish enough to see what she could have with Freddie? Will Naomi stop rejecting Emily? Will Katie have more than one dimension? Will JJ start to get respect from his so-called friends? Will Cook be imprisoned for crimes against dentistry?
Whatever, we don’t care, as long as we never see Evil Freddie again…
Tags: aaaaaaargh, avon barksdale, cook, cook's beating, effy, emily, episode 7, evil freddie, footballer's skank, freddie, incomprehensible halls, jj, jj's mum, jj's wall diagram, katie, locked on, naomi, pandora, series 3, shirtless freddie, skank-in-chief, Skins, thomas, tombstone teeth
OK, so we’re really late with this one, but the excuse is that your dear Admin had a bad dose of the lurgie. Kind of better now, but thinking back to that bearded teacher lusting after Naomi might send us over the edge again…
Since we have JJ’s review to get to, this is gonna be a short one. Bits we liked? The night by the lake, holding hands through the letterbox… the romantic stuff, basically. Oh, and Cook behaving like a human being for once.
Bits we didn’t like? Naomi keeping giving in to her fear, Katie’s continued bitchiness to Emily, the writers keeping up with the ridiculous COOK CAN HAVE ANY WOMAN HE WANTS thing (OK, not technically true as Naomi drew back from the abyss, but nearly), the lack of Freddieness (although convenient, as the Luke-O-Meter was still in for repairs).
So we can’t wait for episode 7… oh, hold on, we’ve seen it already. Better get writing that review!
Tags: bearded teacher, cook, emily, episode 6, freddie, jj, katie, Luke Pasqualino, naomi, series 3, Skins
Hot off the press, here’s a new interview with Luke from AXM magazine’s digital edition. We present it to you in pictorial form: just make with the clicks to make them bigger.
You can see the interview in its native habitat here:
AXM Digital Edition Issue #1
Tags: axm magazine, interview, Luke Pasqualino
Ok. Trying to be calm here, but it’s soooo hard.
The Skins writers must have it in for us. One the one hand, there’s so much Freddieness that the Luke-O-Meter explodes… and on the other hand Cook is finally shown to be not just mean but utterly, crazily despicable. No doubt there’ll be some stuff revealed later on to try to make us feel sorry for him, like how he used to get knocked around by his dad or some crap like that, but we’re not buying it. There’s no excuse for what Cook did to Freddie, his supposed best friend. That look at the end, of gleeful triumph… aaaaaaargh! We want to punch him in his tombstone teeth! Repeatedly!
And Effy’s no better. So she’s sad that her Mum and Dad are splitting up. Well, get over it, girl, doesn’t mean you can mess with people like you did with Freddie. Leading him on only to show yourself with his onetime friend, but now enemy… low, even for the Stonems.
But this was supposed to be a review of episode 5, not a rant. Ok, getting calmer now. The hot chocolate with marshmallows is beginning to work… calm, calm… yes, time to do a proper review.
Bits we liked? Freddie, Freddie, Freddie, Freddie, Freddie, Freddie, and Freddie. Oh, did we mention Freddie? He’s turning into the beating heart of the show: even after the way his sister ignored him and his dad hit him (grrrrrr), he was still there for them at the end. Even after the way Cook’s been, he still hasn’t abandoned him completely… or at least hadn’t before tonight. He cares, but will he finally start making a stand? Other good bits? Naomi’s wink, the kiss in the lake, the weird quiz questions, the meat prize, Freddie’s surprise head butt, JJ’s magic trick.
Bits we hated? Anything that Cook did, Effy’s selfishness (she’s not cool with hidden emotions, she’s just doesn’t care about anyone or how she hurts them), the way Cook treats JJ, the broken picture, Freddie’s dad punching him, Karen and her idiotic fame obsession, the fat American’s haircut, anything that Cook did. Again.
So where will it all go from here? If Freddie even bothers to look at either Effy or Cook, he’s a fool. Maybe he’ll have to talk to them to try to stop JJ being Cook’s gimp, but that’s the only good reason.
But what do you think? Do you share our defence of poor Freddie, or are you one of those strange people that actually… likes… Cook? Wow, that was hard to say, but we imagine there might be some crazies out there that like his rotten gob. Whatever your thoughts, you have to tell us about them.
We’ll read your comments when we return… we’re off to try to fix the Luke-O-Meter…
Tags: aaaaaaargh, cook, effy, episode 5, freddie, jj, karen, Luke Pasqualino, luke-o-meter, series 3, Skins, surprise head butt, tombstone teeth
Yes, that’s right. lukepasqualino.com needs your help, and here’s why.
We want to make this the best Luke (and Skins) fansite on the web, so we need all sorts of cool stuff: pictures, articles, videos, interviews… the list goes on. See anything we don’t have that we should have? Then get in touch and tell us about it! The more Luke goodies we have, the better the site will be for you.
Also, we’re looking for staff members for lukepasqualino.com. Yes, this is your chance to get involved in running this site: writing articles and reviews, building and running our forum, that sort of thing. If you’re interested, get in touch telling us about your skills and experience and telling us why you’re the only person for the job. Needless to say, you need to be able to write well, and to write stuff that the fans will love. If successful, you’ll be involved in our fast growing Luke fansite, and if you do really well, we may even give you a lukepasqualino.com e-mail address… and wouldn’t that be cool?
To contact us about both of these things, please use the address below:
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Tags: Luke Pasqualino, lukepasqualino.com, Skins
OK, so we’ve scoffed a little in our past few reviews - mostly about the CRAZY antics and mysterious pulling power of the tombstone toothed Cook - but it seems with episode 4 that Skins could be going back to being Skins. For the first time this series the writers have throttled back on the cheap shocks - and it shows how bad this series has been when you can say that about an episode that contained an out of control, drug-fuelled party and a secret suburban sex tape - and gave us more insight into the souls behind the faces of the new gang.
Cook’s nihilism, though capable of kind moments as with Pandora (well, he thought so), is becoming more self destructive as his friends start to turn away. Pandora’s inherent sweetness could be threatened for the first time, not by anyone else but by her guilt at giving in to Cook. Despite Naomi’s protestations, she and Emily begin to be drawn deeper into each other. Effy’s world is slowly starting to unravel: her parents’ troubles are revealing her cool, aloof attitude to be a cover for something more lonely, with her binging on drink, drugs and Cook nothing more than an attempt to run from these broken feelings. Finally Freddie - yes, Freddie - is finally starting to grow out of his slacker ways and become the real moral centre of the series. His rescuing of JJ, his disappointment at Effy and his despair at Cook’s idiocy matter so much because it’s in such contrast to the others. Cook’s angry at Freddie because underneath the swagger he knows his friend is right, and so does Effy: she might try to escape herself by having sex with Cook in a wardrobe, but she knows that’ll only make things worse, while Freddie offers a way out to a place where she won’t feel so alone.
The question is, will Freddie be able to carry on, or will his own problems overwhelm him? We’ll find out next week, with a whole episode of Freddie to bask in. It’ll be excellent.
So what do you all think? How are things going to turn out? Can Freddie save the others, or are they too far gone? Sign up to this site and tell us your thoughts.
Tags: cook, effy, emily, episode 4, freddie, Luke Pasqualino, naomi, pandora, secret suburban sex tape, series 3, Skins, tombstone teeth
Yeah, we’re a bit tardy with this one, but you can’t really blame us. The Luke-O-Meter only registered 1 out of 10 with this episode :-(, so we weren’t falling over ourselves to write…
That said, this was an improvement on that COOK IS CRAZY episode 2. Thomas is (was) a sweet if cliched character, and hopefully we’ve seen the last of the spectacularly rat-faced Mackenzie Crook as Johnny White. Pandora’s introduction of herself was immense ‘Hello, I’m Pandora. I’m useless’, and future storms continue to brew with Effy finding her mum in flagrante with a man that looked suspiciously like David Baddiel. We had the obligatory party in a crazy place that only seems to happen in Skins, and hopefully we’ll be seeing more of Pandora’s aunt… and less of Katie being a one-dimensional biatch. That’s getting old pretty quickly, eh?
Still, despite all this it all seems a bit flat so far. Maybe things will start to heat up in the next couple of weeks. Episode 4 sees Pandora’s pyjama party, and episode 5… heh… well let’s just say the Luke-O-Meter might break from overuse, and we’ll have to get a new one that goes up to 20! 
Counting down the days…
Tags: cook, freddie, katie, Luke Pasqualino, luke-o-meter, pandora, rat faced actor, series 3, Skins, thomas
Again, we’ll try to make this spoiler three for those of you that haven’t watched yet.
So episode 2 is the one where the writers (repeatedly) get across to us the idea that Cook is CRAZY. He shouts in the street! He drinks alot! He does drugs! He shouts in pubs! He kisses people! He drinks some more! He shouts some more! He eats alot! He shows his tombstone teeth! He sings! He annoys gangsters! He wants sex all the time! He’s craaaaaaazzzyyyyyyyy!
Did we mention that he’s crazy?
Ok, so we’re going on about it, but that’s pretty much what the writers did with this one. At least there was some development elsewhere, though. Freddie (yaaaay!) showed signs of finally getting tired of his CRAZY mate, Naomi’s short conversation with Emily gave some depth to both of them (and explained Katie’s hostility), Pandora was… well, Pandora, and we got hints about some of the characters’ background lives.
Hopefully next week will be a bit more subtle. It’s strange, but this episode wouldn’t have seemed so uneven if it was part of series 1, but after the heights reached in series 2… this just seemed a step back.
So here’s looking forward to episode 3… less crazy, more character development and Freddie scenes, please! 
But of course we may be wrong, and it was brilliant. What do you think?
Tags: cook, emily, episode 2, freddie, katie, naomi, pandora, series 3, Skins, tombstone teeth