Food For Thought

Skins 1x02 - "Cassie"

Episode Grade: A-


Previously: Sid was going to lose his virginity, but he didn't. He might lose his balls, though. And we met Tony, which turned out to be an all together unpleasant experience. We met the rest of the kids too, but not in so much detail. Today, we're meeting Cassie. Wow!

Opening credits! Plink plink plink. Plink. Plink.

Cassie blinks herself awake, and we slowly zoom out to reveal more of the scene around her as she inspects it all herself, looking confused. She's lying on a sofa, which appears to have had some tuna spilled and/or vomitted on it. Her hand is covered in something white and gooey and generally gross looking, which is of course, not what it looks like. Well, unless someone's produced enough to fill a saucepan. There's also some dude lying on the sofa with her, top to tail. I don't think he's one of our kids, but I can't get a particularly clear view. Cassie stands, she's wearing mismatched undies and socks. According to her myspace, Cassie collects love heart sweets: "you can change the messages if you scratch them, you just need a pin." She also loves Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind, and wishes she could meet a boy like Joel Barisch. So, socially awkward, wears a hat all the time... That's a toughie. Cassie pulls on a shiny dress. The whole room is covered in food, all up the walls, all over the furniture, and all over Chris, who is lying face down on another sofa, with "I LIKE BOYS" written on his back, and an accompanying arrow pointing south. You just can't beat the classics, eh. Chris rolls over in his sleep, and Cassie wows at him. From the corner, Jal sleepily chuckles and notes that the rumours aren't true, "they're not all the same size at action stations". Cassie agrees and says "poor Chris", and covers him up and then, here's the kicker, bunches up the covers to form the illusion of a huge cock. I make no apologies for loving Cassie any more, that's just so weirdly sweet, OK?

Cassie drifts out through the halls, shoes in one hand, bag in the other, past a curtain made of spaghetti and into the kitchen. I've got to say, they've done a pretty fine job of giving the place the trashed, morning after party, before parents return look. Outside, Anwar's fully dressed and praying, Cassie watches through the window for a while, then puts her bag and shoes in the sink and goes to the fridge for some water. She notes that the 13th of whatever month it is has been urgently circled in red with the words "MUM HOME" with a look of mild concern. She goes out to ask Anwar the date, he confirms that it is the 13th, and she asks dreamily (which, by the way, is to Cassie as 'smugly' is to Tony, if you hadn't already guessed) if he thinks maybe she should remind Michelle of the significance of that date. Anwar gently admonishes her, "I'm trying to pray to my God here, Cass", and she stares like she's seeing him for the first time and wows. "Is He listening?" she asks with genuine curiosity. Anwar says he hopes not, since that would mean He'd have been paying attention to everything Anwar was doing last night. Heh. Cassie suggests he pray quietly and drifts off in search of Michelle.

She finds her in her room, obviously, in bed with Tony, obviously, and Sid lying at their feet like a dog. Obviously. Cassie gently nudges Michelle awake, and she moans "Fuck off, Tone". Cassie corrects her identification, and Michelle mumbles "Crazy bitch," which Cassie quite hilariously accepts as recognition with no kind of offended or surprised reaction. Michelle continues "Never fucking eat", which is frankly pretty unnecessary on any level, and Cassie is all "Very good, but let's move onto my point now, OK?" Michelle groans "tomorrow" at her, Cassie tries to persuade her that her mother returns on the 13th, which is today, but Michelle groggily insists "Tomorrow!" So Cassie shrugs and turns to the mirror to apply some make up. She pauses long enough to remove the "VIRGIN" post-it from Sid's forehead and replace it with a lipstick mark, and then heads outside to enjoy the fireworks from a safe distance.

There she's greeted with a "Hello, Cassandra" by Michelle's mother, who's pulling a suitcase out of her car. Cassie wows and responds in kind with a "Hi, Anna" and then stalls on her new husband's name; he grumpily reminds her it's Malcolm. Cassie cheerily asks how they're honeymoon was, Anna shares some happy memories for a while and then heaps the dramatic irony on thick by mentioning an important meeting later today and asking if Cassie's been helping to clear up. Cassie agreeably says "Oh wow, totally", and there's a little more banter about how Cassie is "looking much better than the last time Anna saw her", and Cassie calls Malcolm "Martin", and he asks if they can hurry up and go inside because he wants "some fucking Coco Pops" and makes fun of Cassie because he's a small-minded prick. And then Cassie steps back as Anna heads in to light the blue touch paper. Or, wait, I think she is the blue touch paper in this analogy. Whatever, Cassie's certainly making pretty light patterns in the air with her sparkler right now.

From Anwar's kneeled vantage point, we here a bloodcurdling shriek and Michelle gamely tries to insist "Mum, I didn't know", and then Maxxie (who I have by now figured out was actually the one on the sofa with Cassie) and Jal hop out the window, soon followed by Chris, and then Sid and Tony, and they all tear off down the street in their various states of undress.

Meanwhile, Cassie's taking a bus home, and all around her, people are eating, eating, eating. Like, every single other person on the bus appears to be stuffing their face. Oh lordy. Cassie finds a post-it somewhere about her person with nothing but "EAT!" written on it, and sticks it to the window. The toddler sitting opposite her watches all this and, with the pure innocence of youth, offers her the chocolate digestive that's melting into her hand. Now, regardless of eating disorders, you wouldn't take that, but shit, that hurts. Commercials! Take a drink every time you hear the phrase "government legislation".

I need a breather, OK; anorexia nervosa scares me like little else in this world, and the reasons for that are not something I'm going to go into in any great detail, but I'm clearly not going to avoid any reference to them either, or I'd have avoided recapping this show like the plague. I don't want to let things get too heavy though, so, a joke:

A man with an orange head walks into a McDonalds and stands in line. The girl behind the counter is perplexed by the hue of his cranium, but says nothing as she takes his order (a double cheeseburger, naturally). Just as he is turning to go, though, curiosity gets the better of her and she calls him back; "Excuse me sir, but I couldn't help noticing that you have an orange head. Why is that?"

"Well," the man with the orange head explains, "a couple of weeks ago, I was rooting through the junk in my attic, when I found a dusty old lamp. I rubbed it with a cloth, to try to clean the dust off, and a genie came out and granted me three wishes. For my first wish, I wished for world peace, and it happened, and it's great. For my second wish, I wished to cure all disease, and it happened, and it's great. For my third wish, I wished for an orange head. I'm slightly regretting that one now."

Now, you might think that has absolutely nothing to do with this episode, but if you think about it, I bet Cassie would totally disagree, and she is, after all, the topic of the episode, so I think she should know, right? Anyway, let's get on with it. Cassie arrives home, and home has a nice orange VW Hippy Wagon parked outside, which is our first alarm bell. Inside, there's a pretty hideous painting of a naked woman who appears to have only one breast on the wall, and the sounds of adult giggling from further inside. Not far enough inside, as it turns out; Cassie enters the kitchen and finds her parents just about to start going at it on the kitchen counter. Cassie just stands and stares until her mum notices and even then they're pretty casual about slowly disengaging. Her dad (who's played by Neil Morrissey; a few steps up from Harry Enfield, just as he was on Men Behaving Badly) asks if she's had breakfast, Cassie lies with the effortlessness that only comes with a whole lot of practice "Oh yeah! Michelle does, like, crazy bacon, egg and sausage sandwiches. They're mad." Neil Morrissey cheerfully (which is his Personal Adverb, of course) tells her that's great and heads off down the hall saying he's going to have a shower, with a wildly unnecessary crotch pat. OK, ew. Mama Cass, meanwhile, is attending to Cassie's baby brother Reuben; Cassie offers to take over and specifically mentions feeding him; associating the idea of food with herself like it's no big deal, so nobody notices that it really really is. She's a smart one; that's what makes it so terrifying. Mama Cass breezily thanks her and heads off to join Neil Morrissey. Cassie mentions as Mama Cass leaves (with an unspoken, but nonetheless pointed, "In case you were interested") that it's her last day at the clinic; "They'll sign me off if I've gained a half-kilo". Mama Cass supportively asks if she has, Cassie claims to have "totally, for sure" done so.

Cassie gets on with feeding and changing Reuben, but attention is undeniably drawn away from this by the painting behind them, which covers the entire wall and depicts the same naked, psychotically smiling woman as before, only now she has all breasts present and accounted for, and is holding a baby with umbilical cord still attached, and from the context it is clear that this is a painting done by Neil Morrissey, of Mama Cass and Reuben. Yeah, anorexia nervosa has nothing on this painting. Ye gods. Cassie turns on a musical mobile above Reuben's crib in a hopeless effort to drown out her parents' moans from upstairs, and then takes out an ecstacy pill from her bag. She's momentarily distracted by a text from an unknown number, saying simply "EAT!", and then washes down the pill with something from one of those double-handled juice cups for babies. And then she smiles melancholically, looks upwards, and watches the mobile spin and the world fade away. She's always doing that, taking symbols of youth and innocence, and combining them with the exact opposite. It's so sad. Horrific paintings aside, it seems like her parents would seem just awesome to have when she was a kid, but now she's supposed to be growing up, and they've never really shown her how. So she keeps clinging to the childhood that she can never really get back, because it's the only thing she really knows how to do.

Later, Neil Morrissey is painting yet another paean to his lord Cthulu. Cassie is unfazed by the sight of her mother posing naked, because, as established, this is a fairly usual occurence in her household. Plus, Cassie is never fazed by anything that isn't edible. If you are thinking what I think you are thinking right now; NO. JUST DON'T. Cassie tells Neil Morrissey that her taxi's here, he has no idea what she is talking about, because her parents are crazy hippies and pay no attention to her, which is why she is so fucked up. Now, it cannot ever be boiled down to something as simplistic as that, and you are stupid if you think it can. But since I don't think the show or anyone else was saying that, this is not actual criticism, I'm just enjoying the sound of my own voice. Ho hum. Cassie reminds Neil Morrissey that they send a taxi every week "to make sure I go", and he is momentarily overjoyed with the "fact" that Cassie is soon to be cured of all her ills, and then immediately returns all his concentration to his painting. Cassie looks a little upset for a moment, then silently walks away.

In her taxi, Cassie is sticking weights in her knickers to cheat on her mass test. Dayum. Now, it seems a little odd that she'd be doing that now rather than just before leaving the house, but maybe she's trying to limit the time she has to stand up with them in there in case of wardrobe malfunction. One the one hand, if that was true, I would have thought the skirt she's wearing would be a pretty uncharacteristically bad choice of attire, but then, on the other hand, I guess anything tight fitting enough to contribute significant support would probably give rise to extremely suspicious bulges. Either way, I am putting far too much thought into this. Her kindly old taxi driver, Alan, watches this and asks if she's "got enough room back there", which strikes me as slightly odd, somehow. Cassie says "You won't tell on me, will you, Alan?" She already knows the answer, or she certainly would've put the weights all about herself earlier; "You know me, kid. See no, hear no, speak no." There are a lot of things I love about this episode, but I think the camaraderie between Alan and Cassie is the thing I love the most (aside from The Plinks, of course). Cassie explains that she won't have to keep going back if she's half a kilo up, Alan, without a hint of accusation, asks if she knows what she's doing; she says "Oh totally", of course. Alan catches her of guard by telling her plainly "I'm going to miss you, Tiny". Cassie gives a "hadn't thought about that" wow and responds in kind. Alan, again like it's no big deal either way, asks if she's going to start eating this time. Cassie, of course, says she totally will, and flashes him her accomplished disarming smile, which he immediately calls her out for. Cassie promises not to pull that one on him again and sincerely tells him she loves him, which he reciprocates. Aw, man. And then things get a little "Attempt To Tip The Scales" weird; Alan asks if she wants him to change the music, and the nice sedate mood music that they've been playing throughout the scene is flicked off and replaced by some dude yelling "Go, bitch, get out the way, get out the way, bitch, get out the way", which Alan incongruously declares as his "new favourite". It's perfectly possible that that mood music actually was playing on the radio, and that Alan switched to CD or whatever, but that still gives the whole thing a slightly unsettling atmosphere. We're seeing the world through Cassie's eyes, and those eyes don't quite see the same world as anyone else. It becomes more noticable as the episode wears on, of course, because these things tend to; you never want to show all your cards at once.

Lending credence to my point, the yelling dude carries on yelling until well after Cassie's out of the taxi, and all the way through her mass test. Cassie heads to the corridor outside, where another girl is preparing for her own test by chugging down an entire two litre bottle of water. Cassie watches in admiration and does some quick maths in her head to tell Watergirl just exactly how much weight she's giving herself. Unfortunately for Watergirl, the clinic people keep her waiting out there for too long to actually retain all the water, and she goes desperately rushing off in search of a toilet. Tough break, I guess.

Cassie heads on to the office of the head clinic lady, who just so happens to be the mother of Abigail (the posh girl whose house they all wrecked last week), which is revealed by an overly conveniently coincidental phonecall about promises being broken and carpets being damaged. Still, it's always nice to see my old pal Continuity, although I can't help but feel he might have been put to better use answering the question of whether Chris and the polish girl ever got out of the car. This phone call also involves the line "I am not an expletive bitch!", hilariously. That and "Have you taken your medication? Well, take it now! NOW!" Hey there, Foreshadowing! Mrs. Posh hangs up, and, with a little too much forced smiling and making big shows of having to check her papers to remember Cassie's name, she ticks all the boxes to give Cassie her freedom. While she's doing so, she rattles off a totally emotionless rendition of a speech she knows by rote about how the clinic is Cassie's friend and she should look upon it as a sanctuary of goodness and hugs and puppies, and all the while, Cassie is watching a guy charging around the fields outside in nothing but a straight-jacket and being tackled and then dragged around by his penis by orderlies. Ironic Juxtaposition too! The gang is out in full force tonight! Now, this is either a pretty shittily written attempt at getting a cheap laugh at the expense of any regard to realism, or this is showing the clinic as Cassie sees it, as a sinister organisation that takes away your freedom under a crude mask of kindess. First time through, it's obviously the former, and I'm still not sure I really want to keep watching this show, with the benefit of hindsight, it at least seems completely reasonable to interpret it as the second, and this is actually rather brilliant. Once Mrs. Posh has finished her spiel, Cassie says "Thank you" to Mrs. Posh (who is actually called Dr. Stock, so I apologise for not giving the correct title, Dr. Posh), because Daddy might be a crazy hippy who's too busy tiling on the roof and fixing waterproof to really pay attention to her, but he sure didn't bring her up with bad manners. And then she kisses her on the cheek, because that is just our girl's way. Dr. Stock is totally frozen in confusion at this, and remains so even after Cassie leaves the room, so I take it I am to believe that as a genuine reaction.

I guess group therapy was another requirement of Cassie's course, because she's sitting in a circle with a bunch of people and being applauded. She wows and thanks everyone for their help, and I guess she likes the therapist here a little better, because his praise actually seems kind of genuine. Although he is still a little abrupt on moving onto the next member of the group, "Madison". Wait a second.... Aw, shit, and it was all going so well. It's Mad Twatter. Ugh, let's gloss over the stupid ranting; he's mad because he hasn't got his money from Sid. We already knew this. It's bad enough you feel the need to stick him in scenes that advance the plot in some way, please don't go filling out time with his pointless bollocks. Oh, he's got some kind of photo ID card of Sid's, so now Cassie knows about this, which I guess is something of a development. Eh. Commercials.

Cafeteria. Sid gets himself his lunch, which is basically a plate piled high with chips, plus some pilchards for reasons of tokenism, which goes along with a funny little bit where the dinner lady is contractually obliged to dress as a pilchard and explain their health benefits for reasons of Jamie Oliver being a pillock. He walks over to sit with the boys (minus Tony, plus new character Kenneth) who all laugh at him because he's still got Cassie's lipstick mark on his head from this morning. Kenneth, by the way, is black, and plays this up ridiculously with urban street lingo that I tend to find pretty impenetrable ("bear shit on his forehead an' ting!" is all I can make any sense of in this scene) before suddenly slipping into an almost Chris Eubank-esque accent. This is all he ever does; he's completely one note, but damn it if it isn't hilarious every time anyway. Thankfully, they do just about keep him on the right side of 'overused' throughout the season. Chris quite excellently asks "What's the frequency, Kenneth?" after his babble in this scene. Heh. Anyway, Sid gets irritated by their mockery and goes to take an empty seat instead.

Cassie appears with just an apple in hand and asks if she can sit with him; Sid is cool with that. She notices the lipstick too and just asks if he's been home today, which obviously he hasn't. They converse a little about how wrong everything went at Michelle's and her mum called the police and Sid starts off about how "Tony had to go and ju-jitsu Mr. Michelle". Cassie observantly notes "You love Tony", Sid is all "Wuh?" so Cassie repeats herself and adds "You always talk about him." Sid obliviously says "Do I?", Cassie sweetly tells him "It's cool you have someone to look up to" and then weirds him out a little with over-enthusiasm about how fun the food fight last night was, "just, like throwing it! Everywhere!" There's even a double wow in there, so you can tell she's really excited about it. Then she suddenly notices just how much food Sid's grabbed himself and notes that he must be hungry, which in turn causes him to notice how little she has, and that she is not even eating that. Cassie distracts him and/or succumbs to OCD by arranging his chips into neat rows and columns, and insists again that she's "totally better". But Sid, despite being oblivious to so many things, entirely sees through this one. It's weird how that works sometimes. He curiously asks how she does it, Cassie feigns ignorance of what he's talking about, Sid admonishes this with a little harshness and then softens again as he clarifies; "I mean, you never eat anything. I mean, your parents must notice or something." Cassie looks him square in the eye; "I like you, Sid," she says, "So I'm going to show you." How deep the rabbit hole goes. I don't know if I'm ready for this.

OK, Cassie pulls one of Sid's plates (turns out the chips 'n' pilchards weren't actually his entire lunch... he's a growing boy and all that) over to her side of the table and grabs a knife and fork, and the performance begins. Hannah Murray puts so much into this, and it's seriously mesmerising in an awful sort of way. Without ever pausing to breathe, or let Sid point out that no food is actually entering her mouth at any point, this; "You have to do a lot of talking. I'm good at talking. You do that a lot when you're cutting things up, and then: questions." She raises a forkful of food to her mouth and then stops just before it reaches; "Where's your student card? Your ID, have you got it?" Sid says no, he's lost it, and before he has time to dwell on that, she's off again. "Change the subject. This is great! I love these sausages. You should try one! Go on, delicious, mmm." She forks it over to his plate, and Sid starts to get the idea; "Hang on, you didn't..." Cassie doesn't let him finish that thought; "You're not quite sure what I'm on about, but I keep distracting you. Then I up the ante; yum, I love this stuff! Really delicious." She grabs Sid's plate and steals a few chips. "You're really sure that I want some more. I'll keep waving it at you until you stop looking at me." And then another forkful to the mouth, and pause; "Where'd you lose it? Your ID? I mean, they won't let you use the library, will they?" While Sid's pondering that one, Cassie checks her watch and says "God, I've got to go!" and scrapes her food onto another plate, putting the now empty one on top to disguise how much is still there. "So full. Gotta dash." And, scene.

Cassie returns to the table for a critique; Sid is impressed, for which Cassie cheerfully thanks him. "But aren't you kind of... lying to everyone?" Sid says, under his breath so she might not hear it, like he can't quite decide if he should take the red pill or the blue pill. Cassie insists again that she's "so better", and adds that she got discharged from the clinic by way of proof. Sid, even more mumbly, says that seems "a bit fucked up", which is certainly no overstatement. Cassie doesn't hear this one, and asks him to repeat so he looks at her straight and says again "That seems a bit fucked up." Cassie's totally taken aback, and wows while she tries to think of something to say to that. It takes her a while. "But you see," she starts and then laughs, because she's really not sure which pill to take either, and girl's got some experience on that front. "It's like, nobody's fucking business." The smile is wider and more strained than ever before, it hurts so much. Her and me. "And it's not like anybody cares, so..." she trails off, Sid looks up and hesitantly says "I... care." And for a couple of seconds they stare into each others eyes, awkwardly connecting but not knowing what the fuck to do with it, and I'm just about ready to put my crazy Harry Potter-referencing shipper hat on again, but then fucking Tony has to show up and ruin the moment. Wanker. Things go well at first, with Sid giving pretty clear "piss off" signals to him, but then he points out the lipstick on Sid's forehead, and Sid is totally distracted into trying to figure out how it got there. Cassie opens her mouth as if to own up to it, but the foul essence of Tony in the air is overpowering and the connection is severed, so she settles for knocking a plate full of gravy or something onto his lap and sarcastically saying "Wow, Tony, it looks like you've pissed yourself." Excellent! Kenneth goes crazy laughing at that one, which gives Cassie a quick window to bring Sid's attention back on her while Tony goes to deal with him for that. "I'm a bad person," she giggles, but it's just not enough. Tony leaves to go clean himself up, and tells his lapdog to come along. Sid apologetically tells Cassie he's got to go, she snarkily says "Sure you have." He pushes his plate of chips forward and tells her to finish it off for him, which, really, is only going to make things worse. Just as Sid's about to go, she decides to repay him for his pre-Tony efforts and tells him that Mad has his ID card. After Sid's gone, Cassie takes a look back at the plate of neatly arranged chips, only they're not in rank and file any more; they've been arranged to spell out "EAT". Her expression as she looks back at Sid again is pretty inscrutable.

Tony attempts to dry out his trousers under a hand dryer in a bathroom in which Angie is just finished taking a shower. The camera spends an exceedingly gratuitously long time watching Angie strut around in the nude before either of them notice each other's presence, at which point she quite calmly points out that the room is for female staff, and Tony fulfills neither of those criteria. He lamely excuses himself by saying the dryer in the boys' room is broken, although he does at least have the good grace to look pretty embarrassed. Sid barges into the room at this point (God knows how he knew Tony was there; I'm thinking some kind of homing device because he wouldn't want to stay apart for too long, I'd imagine), tosses off a casual "Hi, Angie" before launching to a tirade about how much shit he is in before his brain catches up with his eyes and he stops mid-sentence to go "Ohhhhhhhhhh, fuck" and stare at Angie. And then his brain catches up again and he hurriedly turns away and starts cleaning his glasses. And then Chris wanders in as well to tell them how hilarious the cafteria antics were. There's at least a small enough time-gap for him to have conceivably followed Sid in. Anyway, he gets in his double-take and then hurriedly bustles the boys out of there because heaven forbid anyone else look at Angie. Although Tony's wearing no trousers, so I think it's safe to assume Sid's not a worry on that front. Now that they've already left, Angie stops being dumbsruck and yells "For fuck's sake, fuck off" unnecessarily, then looks down at herself and grins "Still got it." Heh.

Having successfully got Sid and Tony the hell away from naked Angie (and drawn the stares of every person in the school by loudly shoving Tony, still trouserless, out of a feamle staff bathroom), Chris goes back inside under the pretence of... no, he wants to see Angie naked. There is no pretence.

Meanwhile, Cassie's drifting along an upper walkway, high above the level of the rest of the student body. Take that in whatever sense you will; I can think of at least three just off the top of my head. And when I say drifting, I really mean it; they appear to have filmed this segment by dragging her along on a trolley below the line of the camera or something. Copuled with the breezy music, it's a nice effect, if not all together original. Cassie walks her fingers along the bannister for a time, then presses her face against a window to watch the floor below, where Sid's chatting with Tony. "Look up if you like me", she chants, but Sid does not; instead she gets the ironic attentions of the least attractive people possible, Dirty Old Man, Fat Chick and The Fonz. "Bugger," Cassie declares, and walks away sadly.

Sid's chilling out in the psychology classroom. Or rather, paranoiding out. The lipstick mark is still there, which, if I were Cassie, I would take as a more important sign than my own lack of telekinesis. Telekinesis of the mind, I mean. Not in a redundant way; like psychically influencing someone else's thoughts and emotions, I don't know if there is another word for that. But anyway, whatever you want to call it, Cassie does not have it and this fact is making her miserable, because she is a glass half-empty type. And I've successfully distracted myself enough to have only just realised that Cassie is not even in this scene, so I should probably get back to some kind of point. OK, Sid is paranoiding out. Angie walks in, the door shutting noise makes Sid jump because he thinks it's Mad come to collect his collaterals, Sid's lurkiness makes Angie jump, because she's just kind of a jumpy person. I just noticed that they don't show us at all what happens in between Chris walking back into the bathroom and Angie actually putting some damn clothes on and coming into her classroom; this fact does not, however, make me jump. The awkward levels go through the roof with Sid apologising for entering the showers, explaining that he is in something of a crisis and Angie, I don't know, assuming this is some kind of crisis of masturbation or something? And extremely awkwardly telling him "Well, sometimes adult bodies can be a bit overwhelming..." Yeah, psychology teacher sure was the right profession for you, Angie! Sid irritatedly dismisses this with a "For Christ's sake, Angie, I don't care about your tits. I care about my balls." OK, he doesn't actually say that second part, which is actually somewhat surprising given Sid's knack for saying absolutely the worst possible thing in about nine out of every ten situations. He just straightforwardly explains the actual crisis (albeit lacking some of the details initially), and I think we can put this stupidly over-emphasised shower scene behind us at last. Angie tries to give him advice about managing his debts (GOVERMENT LEGISLATION IS HERE TO HELP. Take a drink for that one too.) and suggests calmly asking Mad to reschedule payments, Sid explains the rest of the details and why every one of Angie's increasingly desparate plans won't work, eventually leading her to agree with Sid that he is totally fucked. Sid hilariously tells her that she's taken a whole lot of weight off his mind.

Chris wanders in at this point, and Angie tries her best to put on her Teacher Voice, saying "You've come to apologise, right?" Chris looks confused for a second, then remembers what is going on and starts apologising for what he saw, going into great detail as to what exactly that was until Angie flusteredly interrupts. Sid leaves, and thus Angie is now in a private conversation with Chris and barely even tries to pretend she isn't loving his attention. But this is still not actually going anywhere much as of yet, so it's not all that interesting, so let's gloss over into the commercials. Have you had an accident at work?

Classroom. Cassie watches her phone vibrate its way across the table, and then looks behind her shoulder to see Sid press a few buttons on his and then close it up. She opens up her phone; it's another "EAT!" message, of course. Meanwhile, Sid's bitching at Tony for being so relaxed about the situation, but it's not Tony's balls on the line, so why the hell would he care? If you pay really close attention here, you might notice Sid's phone magically transport itself from his hand to the table when the camera cuts from one view to another. It may well be an accidental continuity error, but I think it's pretty excellent anyway. Anyway, while Tony tells Sid that he's calm because he is "confident in [his] ability to improvise", in the background, their idiot of a history teacher, Tom, is explaining how he'll be away for the next few days, so they'll have a supply teacher, who turns out to be one Mr. Twatter. Like that guy would ever, ever pass the background checks to be allowed anywhere near any kind of school. Come on. Cassie gives Sid a freaked out look that's due to both the text and Mad's appearance in equal parts, Mad does more of his Twattery that I shall not be recapping unless it moves the plot forward in any way beyond his presence as supply teacher, which it does not.

Outside, Anwar and Jal walk along to the bench where Sid is sitting and repeating "Oh God" to himself over and over and ask what's going on with him; Maxxie and Michelle, who have apparently been there a while, explain it to them, and Michelle puts a comforting arm around Sid's shoulders, which he's too paralyzed with fear to even notice, so you can tell this is serious. Anwar lightly taps Sid on the face with his palm in an attempt to snap him out of it, which doesn't work at all, so Tony full on slaps him and takes charge all "Sid is our friend and we are going to solve this". Maxxie and Jal encouragingly agree that they are all there for him, and they are thinking of the answer to his problem right now, but then there's an awkward silence while everyone tries and fails to come up with anything at all, and they all mumble that they have classes to get to, leaving Sid to "Oh God" to himself some more. Jal tells them to hold up, "We can't just leave him like this". Tony promises that they are going to give this serious thought, Jal is still decidedly unconvinced but soon realises that there's really not a whole lot she can actually do right now, and tells Sid with as much positivity as she can muster that they'll get back to him, then leaves with the others.

Alone now, Sid calls up his mum and, voice a few octaves higher than it ought to be, tells her to please ring him back as soon as possible. A way away, Cassie sees Sid with his phone out and gets another "EAT!", at which she strides purposefully towards him and asks if he's OK. Sid tells her that he is not, as such, of course, Cassie apologises for that and then tells him "It's, like, totally kind what you're doing, but it won't make any difference." Sid is confused, she tells him she's talking about the messages, Sid slightly pissily tells her he has problems of his own to deal with right now and points out that a) he hasn't been sending her messages, and b) no one else has either, there are no messages on her phone. Cassie looks perplexedly at it and discovers that that is indeed the case, and says in a small voice "I thought you liked me..." It's quiet enough that Sid doesn't hear, and Cassie tells him not to worry about it and heads back into her shell, because Sid's problems are clearly more important to him than hers right now. Now, in this case, it's actually true, but Cassie goes on believing that, or rather, letting it be an excuse not to open up, in far more situations than she really should do.

And then she runs off down the street, trying again to find a way to get away from life, just for now, and The Sleepy Jackson's "This Day" comes on the soundtrack. Check out the lyrics; I wrote all of this recap without remembering this song was coming up, and it is nice to see that I am somewhere in the vicinity of the same page as the writers as far as Cassie goes, if the use of this song is any indication. Cassie leans against a lamp post to catch her breath, to let everything overwhelm her for a second, and then she makes her way home. She walks and stands in the kitchen doorway, watches as, in slow motion, Neil Morrissey cracks open a bottle of champaigne and Mama Cass feeds Reuben, and the three of them celebrate the wonders of the world, not noticing Cassie stand there. Never noticing that Cassie isn't inside their world of frivoloty and happiness. Cassie runs upstairs to her room and pulls out a drawer from under her bed that's stocked full of choclate bars and things, in case of emergency. She grabs one, turns it over in her hands a few times, but just can't will herself to open it. She looks through her bag and finds the card that Dr. Stock gave her when she left the clinic, then gets out her phone. "Hello? Yes, it's Cassie. I think I need to see you again."

The music fades, as we move over to a cafe, cars zooming by in the night. Cassie's put on a hoodie to protect her from the cold and make her look as tiny as possible. A waitress delivers something to her table, and Alan the taxi driver appears and kindly asks Cassie what's up. "I'm having a few probs," she tells him, and he calmly assures her he's listening. "There's somebody I like. I thought he was sending me a message; texts and things, but... he wasn't." What was the message? "EAT." Which, by the way, is also written on a big blue neon sign behind Cassie's head right now, awesomely. Cassie asks if it was really Alan that sent the messages, already knowing it wasn't. "I don't tell you what to do, Cassie, I'm just a taxi driver." And anyway, there's no way he could have done the thing with the chips. Cassie continues asking questions she already knows the answer to, deep down; "So, like, who's telling me to eat?" Alan just asks who wants her to eat, and Cassie thinks about it and silently reaches understanding, and looks at the gigantic burger in front of her. That thing is bigger than her head, I swear. But, you know, not really; Cassie's reality is shaped by her perceptions of it, to an abnormally high degree. Cassie tries to back out by saying she has no knife and fork, Alan tells her he doesn't need them. She tries the same distraction tactics she demonstrated so ably to Sid earlier, and asks how his day was. "Fine," he says emphatically, and continues to stare at the burger. Cassie tries again, asking if he has any more cool tunes, Alan doesn't even answer that one, just nods at the burger, pauses for significance, and tells her again that he loves her. Cassie reciprocates and finally accepts that she can't push this away any more and lifts the burger up again to take a bite. We cut away right before teeth meet bread, because nobody gets to see that but Alan, if he even really exists, which is not something I am wholly convinced about.

And that's the end of that chapter; come back next time to meet Jal.