Welcome back to Oh Brawling Love!, where guest critics discuss a pop culture item they thought they’d hate, but ended up really enjoying.

This week’s post comes from Madeleine Martin  That’s her up top there.

You may know her as Becca Moody (daughter of David Duchovny’s Hank) on Showtime’s Californication, or from her starring role in Broadway’s kick-ass, Pulitzer Prize-winning play August: Osage County.

Today, Madeleine (or “Mad Dog,” as her friends call her) will explain her brawling love for Skins, a soapy teen drama on  BBC America. In an interesting twist, part of her frustrated love for the show comes from her irritiation with season three… but I’ll let her tell you about it.

Take it away, Mad Dog!

 What Happened to My Favorite Show?

By MADELEINE MARTIN

I am completely bummed about my favorite show, the BBC’s Skins, because I just found the third season online. Judging from the first episode, they have replaced the entire cast from Season 2—with the exception of Effy—with a group who is, so far, less than inspiring. And as if to taunt the show’s previous fans, a loutish new character flings open Sid’s old locker and tosses out Sid’s trademark knitted cap!

Sid was a favorite character on the show. He was earnest, direct, and complicated… everything this new incarnation of the show is proving not to be. To see a neanderthal boor in possession of the contents of Sid’s locker is too symbolic for me. The subtle, sensitive and real characters I have grown to love have been taken over by cartoonish imposters. And in this first episode, the beloved Effy appears to have become a slut.
So now, anything I write on the subject of ‘brawling love’ is really just a post mortem on a show to which I once looked forward. What first drew me in was the storyline about Cassie’s anorexia. Sure, it could have been more clear whether she was imagining those text messages admonishing her to eat, or if someone who cared (Sid?) was actually texting her. And also, why did we never get an explanation about the menacing car-service driver?

Plot questions aside, though, Cassie was a dreamy, poetic girl, and she lived in her own world until she met Sid.

The characters on the first seasons of Skins have real flaws like people do in reality. Sid is no heroic dreamboat. He’s unmotivated and flunking out of school, but he has the sense to see through Tony’s self-importance and insensitivity towards Michelle. I also love Sid and Cassie’s erratic fashion sense. I wish I could find that animal print skirt of Cassie’s or the animal necklace, or that long-sleeved yellow squeaky t-shirt Sid wears. They clearly belong together, and when they ended up in NYC, their relationship alone had me wishing for a sequel.

My friends never watch Skins. They are all Gossip Girl fans. I tried to watch GG so I could follow their references, but I just couldn’t relate like I could to the characters on Skins. I guess as a Queens native, I’ve never understood GG‘s apparent contempt for the boroughs. I mean it was F. Scott Fitzgerald who said “the city seen from the Queensboro bridge is the city seen for the first time.” But on Gossip Girl, one family has the unfortunate plight of residing in Brooklyn, a real estate faux pas which confers permanent outsider status on the entire family. People always talk about the rigid hierarchical structure of society in Britain, but on the BBC’s Skins class is barely relevant, while on Gossip Girl class is really the main character.

On Skins, Anwar’s father is a cabdriver. (And Anwar is played by Dev “Slumdog” Patel. Take that, classists! — Mark)  Most of the characters on Skins are from working or middle-class families, which for a girl from Queens means they’re easier to relate to than the GG real-estate barons of NYC’s upper east side.

Also, I guess I just can’t buy into the world view on GG that human beings are primarily motivated by fear of slander and innuendo. Skins, on the other hand, portrays a group of friends who are struggling sometimes alone, but often together, to find fulfillment in their lives. For example, each character’s reaction to Tony’s brain injury reveals his or her struggle as an individual to come to terms with suffering and loss. Whether it is Maxxie patiently cutting Tony’s food, Michelle and Sid refusing to accept Tony’s fall from grace by ignoring him completely, or Effy warding off the female predators who are after her brother, Tony’s plight reveals where each character is in his or her own life.

On GG, a story arc in which the show’s lead character is blackmailed over a sex and overdose video is shocking, but that story doesn’t reveal the same depth of character development. And that is why I used to look forward to Sunday nights on BBC America… to be lured into the lives of these teens across the ocean. Maybe I’ll give season 3 another try, hoping that Effy may redeem what I’ve seen so far. As for my own friends and GG, their legacy may be Yale 2013, but I’d rather cast my lot with Sid’s “Wild World,” a Cat Stevens song I never liked until I heard Sid sing his version in the Season 1 finale.