Play That Funky Music, White Boy

Skins 1x03 - "Jal"

Episode Grade: C


Previously, Sid's in love with Michelle, which is a terrible shame, because Michelle's in love with Tony. And that's a terrible shame because Tony is mostly in love with Tony. And Sid and Tony are good friends. Really good friends, if you catch my drift. So, it's more of a real love triangle instead of a love V-shape like most of them tend to be. And I'm sure most of those could probably be solved if people would accept the threesome as a valid long-term relationship plan, but alas, most humans just haven't progressed to that Cylon level. Also previously, Sid was and still is being hunted with extreme prejudice by a man who managed to stand out as being the most irritating thing in an episode that involved Tony yakking on the phone for a few hours and Harry Enfield using "James Blunt" as rhyming slang.

We Plink Plink Plink! Plink! Plink! our way into a close up of Jal's eyes, and an offscreen voice tells her "No repeats. Don't get ahead." Jal starts playing her clarinet, and we zoom out to see this in case we do not know what a clarinet sounds like and have quite reasonably forgetten that she was also playing the clarinet when we first saw her, being as it was part of the Tony Is A Smug Git montage. She is soon joined in both sound and vision by the rest of the orchestra, who are, unlike her, an absolute shambles. The music teacher who is attempting to conduct the rabble yells "No, mezzo. Fucking mezzo, for fuck's sake!" See, because she is sort of posh, and using fancy musical terms, and yet she is swearing at the same time. It's a humourous juxtaposition indeed. I'm sure it will be a lot more humourous if we repeat it five or six times in the next ten seconds. Anyway, Jal tries her hardest to hold it all together for the rest of the orchestra, or maybe just block out the distraction of their uselessness, but either way, she's fighting a losing battle. According to her myspace, Jal likes the correlation between maths and music – Pythagorean triples – "my friend Cassie knows what I mean". Oh, mmm. Maths and music, science and art. Truth and beauty. It's a fine dichotomy indeed, and I love that she has the sense to realise that Cassie gets it. That Cassie gets things at all, outside of her own crazy little wild world. Cassie and Jal are probably the most intelligent of our kids, in their own ways; she might be the clarinet player, but Jal's clearly the maths/science/truth to Cassie's music/art/beauty. OK, Tony's levels of skill at manipulating clearly require a pretty keen mind too. He probably falls more on Cassie's end of the scale; there is a certain artistry to what he does, even if it is about as far removed from beauty as you can possibly get. It's possible I may be moving off point a little bit here, so let's get back to what's actually going down on screen.

Right, some time during all of that, the rest of the orchestra managed to slip away, leaving Jal alone with the music teacher, who is being encouraging about Jal's ability to win the competition she's entering. A camp Welsh chap enters to delicately raise the point that he's noticed the swearing during the orchestra's practice is a little excessive, and during this conversation they helpfully name each other as Doug and Claire. I'll leave you to fill in the obvious joke about filling in which is which. It's a really crappy joke, by the way, I hope you are ashamed of yourself. Claire promises to have a word with the orchestra about the swearing, which Jal finds highly amusing. Some exposition is clumsily delivered about Jal being a Young Musician Of The Year finalist, Doug ensures again that Claire will deal with the swearing and leaves, and Claire and Jal go back to rehearsing. "Yeaaahhh, fuck my donkey, that's good!" Claire declares of Jal's performance. Oh, Skins. If you stopped trying so hard to be down with the kids, you'd be a lot more down with the kids, I swear.

Elsewhere (and, as it turns out in a second, elsewhen), Tony and Michelle are making out on a couch. Slow pan across to show that Jal is on the same couch, attempting to distract herself from them with the TV. Tony's sister Effy is also hanging around, being her usual ineffable self. She's in more episodes than I remember her being in. It doesn't take long for Jal to decide she's had enough, and she flatly asks Michelle is she must "suck Tony's face off" in her every waking hour. Tony nauseatingly shrugs "She loves me", Jal exasperatedly reminds Michelle that they are supposed to be shopping, which according to her myspace, is not something Jal enjoys doing either, though I'm guessing it's the lesser of two evils in this particular case. Tony and Michelle do some irritating whispering and giggling, Tony feigns interest in the shopping for a moment so that Michelle can explain that Jal needs to buy a dress for her competition, which they will get right onto just as soon as they've gone upstairs and inserted tab A into slot B. By which I mean THE SEX. Jal disbelievingly asks "Jesus, are they really gonna...?", Effy answers her with a nod and an obscene gesture, Jal says "Fuck this" and walks out.

Or, she would, if Sid wasn't standing right in the doorway about to knock. He looks confused, as per usual, and asks if Tony's in. Jal says nothing and lets him hear the moans from upstairs by way of an answer. Sid says he'll wait until Tony's done, and steps aside to let her past, but Jal's too intrigued and/or disgusted by Sid's pitiful life to just leave now, and asks if he really spends his entire life hanging out with Tony. Sid shrugs "Pretty much, yeah." "And Michelle!" he realises, after some thought on the matter, which gets an eyeroll from Jal, after which she decides that Sid will have to do for someone to go shopping with her right now, since Michelle is all tied up. Sid gets mildly affronted that she assumes she can just drag him along without giving him any say in it, and at her lack of enthusiasm in doing so, but of course goes along anyway.

In a changing booth, Jal appraises herself in the mirror and comes to the conclusion of "Fucking hell." Outside, Sid fiddles with a rack of bikini bottoms and puts up a gigantic neon sign above his head saying "I HAVE NEVER KNOWN THE TOUCH OF A WOMAN". Jal drags him into the booth to zip up her dress, Sid does so as awkwardly as possible and comments "Looks... nice." Jal rolls her eyes and disagrees; "I can't breathe properly, look." Sid does as she requests, for a second, then relises where this requires him to look and quickly stops in case she notices. And then looks again, and there is pretty much a repeated cycle of all that throughout the scene, with Jal totally ignoring it. It's kind of funny. Jal asks how she's supposed to play clarinet when she can't breathe properly, Sid asks why she can't just where "normal stuff", Jal exasperatedly tells him "It's the Young Musician Of The Year!" Sid feigns interest in that, which just earns him some more eyerolling and condescension, and all the while Jal is sending his "Oh God, Where Do I Put My Eyes?" cycle into overdrive by taking off the dress to try on a nice shiny blue one. She asks Sid to zip her up again, Sid hesitates because the zip on this one goes way lower than the other, or, as he puts it, "it's in your arse, Jal." This, of course, earns him yet more exasperation, because 'exasperatedly' is Jal's Personal Adverb, and Sid gets on and does it. Or at least, he attempts to get on and do it, but somehow manages to be inept enough to get his finger caught in the zipper. Which cause him to cry out in pain, and Jal to say things like "Oh Christ, let me get hold of it", which means it's time for the Hilarious Misunderstanding Wherein People Who Do Not Have The Full Picture Think That There Are Sexy Shennanigans Going On When Really There Are Not, which I'm sure we all saw coming, certainly when Jal dragged Sid into the booth, if not earlier. They do manage to squeeze a little humour out of this dry, dry well though; Sid leaves to hand the first dress to a shop worker and a passing shopper tells him "You're disgusting", and Sid sniffs him armpits in confusion, assuming her disgust was a result of him forgetting to apply deoderant. Yeah, I did say "little", OK? Commercials!

Sid cheerfully sings to himself as they take an escalator down to the shopping centre's exit, which seems a little off considering all the misery that we know is being heaped on him right now, but I guess we're supposed to be focusing on Jal's pain at the moment. "It's just not right," she complains. Sid tells her it's just a dress, Jal snickers "You really know how to talk to a girl, Sid," and Sid's incongruent cheeriness makes him hilariously ask "Do I?" as if there was even the slightest chance she was being sincere. Jal moves onto the topic of Michelle and Sid's other gigantic neon sign regarding his infatuation with her, which puts a bit of a damper on Sid's mood, because it's yet another person who is able to notice the gigantic neon signs above his head, shattering his wild illusiory world a little bit more. Jal asks him honestly how he thinks this Michelle thing is ever going to work; Sid's plan involves copious amounts of alcohol, natch, and also the phrase "she goes crazy when she realises my tongue's double jointed", which will be leading me to copious amounts of alcohol right about now. Anyway, this epic fantasy gets our first smile of the evening out of Jal, and those things are pretty hard to come by, so I guess the boy done good. He suddenly declares "I want a cookie!" pointing in a random direction and happening upon a Starbucks, inevitably. I'd assume from the uncharacteristic happiness and sudden desire for food that he was stoned, but he's already indebted by three waterlogged ounces, even Sid wouldn't be stupid enough to buy even more at this point, right? Sid buys himself a chocolate chip cookie with gusto. (That's modifying 'buys himself', not 'chocolate chip cookie', obviously. Although requesting gusto as a condiment would be a pretty excellent thing to do, thinking about it.) Jal is amused by his enthusiasm for his purchase and says "There's more to life than sex, eh?" Sid nods sagely and agrees "You and me both", which gets Jal scoffs at in surprise, but if even Sid can see it, she's clearly about as obvious as he is. Not that there's anything wrong with that.

Later, Jal's at home, preparing once more for clarinet rehearsal, this time with the added burden of the dress she bought in the previous scene. In the end, she opted for a pretty drab brown one, apparently, which I guess is a nice safe, sensible option, as befits a nice, safe, sensible character like her. She only manages to get a few bars into her practice before she's interrupted by an overpowering thumping noise coming through the walls. Jal let's out an irritated sigh and goes to sort this out, it's her brothers and their nerdy white friend, who are, to a man, like Kenneth without the sense of self-awareness and irony. They're doing practice of their own with their rapping and phat beats and what have you, and... well, they certainly need it. Jal pulls the plug on their equipment, Lead Brother yells "Oi, ba'ers! Why you messin' my flow, you get me?!" Jal, enunciating each word very carefully, tells him "I'm trying to do some fucking practice". LB's all "Who's stoppin' ya?" and Other Brother backs up his sentiment. Nerdy White Friend tries to get in on the action, and absolutely everybody finds it highly embarrassing; Jal, her brother, me, all four actors, I don't doubt, everybody. Jal slaps him on the back of the head a couple of times, he appeals to the brothers for assistance but just gets another slap from OB, who tells him not to call their sister whatever it was he called her. I don't know what the hell anyone is talking about right now; this is why I never recapped Shameless, every scene would just be like "Frank and Fiona yell some shit, and Steve nods sagely even though he has just as little clue as me as to what anyone is talking about. Debs is fucking awesome some more, I think." Anyway, OB tells Jal they've got some "seeeeeeeeerious balls goin' down", and would like to demonstrate, but NWF is just not in the mood to beatbox any more because he's still sulking about everybody slapping him. LB give him some reassuring words and they do the fist high-five thing which is basically the MANLY TESTOSTERONE GRRR equivalent of an emo hug. [Yes, this is indeed one of those gratuitous and pointless "HEY CHECK OUT THIS SHOW I JUST STARTED WATCHING" links I always do when I start watching a new show. Shut up.] And so the demonstration of mad skillz is back on. Jal is highly unappreciative, and storms off downstairs to tell on them to daddy.

Daddy, by the way, is one Ronnie Fazer who is, in the world of Skins, a pretty big name rap artist/producer, apparently. Anyway, on her way to a meeting with the esteemed Mr. Fazer, Jal runs into a ridiculously tall dude who is in some unspecific employment under Ronnie, I guess having something to with the bar he's standing in the doorway to. He compliments Jal's dress, or 'compliments', anyway; "I like it, it's... brown." For some totally nonsensical reason, Jal insists that the brown dress she is wearing is actually green, and will continue to do so throughout the episode, even though it is browner than a PS3 game, and everybody else tells her so. I don't know if this is supposed to make some cunning subtextual point about how Jal is extremely stubborn about things, or if it's just supposed to be funny or what, but... the dress is brown. This simple, unalienable fact makes the whole running gag or whatever it is just utterly fail.

So! Jal and her COMPLETELY BROWN dress go to see Ronnie, who is thankfully not an absolute caricature like most of the dads in this show, because I've had quite enough of that from the brothers, thanks. What that means thematically, of course, is that Jal is mature enough to actually see her dad as a real human being, unlike most of the kids. Good for her, I guess. Anyway, Ronnie's entertaining guests, including a young woman sprawled out on the arm of his chair, which Jal looks fairly disgusted by, because there are some things that no one of her age (or a lot older, probably) would be totally comfortable with. Jal registers her complaint, Ronnie tells her the boys need practice too, his friends laugh and agree that they really, really need practice. "Because those pussies are bad, and I mean fuckin' BAD." Subtly put, there. Ronnie defends his boys by pointing out that he didn't sound great either, "way back when". The woman on Ronnie's arm nervously tells him that she and Jal haven't been introduced yet, Ronnie does so (her name's Alicia), Jal gives her some major cold shoulder. Alicia attempts to shake off the awkwardness by announcing that Ronnie's going to be remixing one of her tracks later, Jal snarks "Has he shown you his special slider yet?", which Ronnie's pals just love. Alicia is either completely oblivious or chooses to ignore this in the hope of defrosting the atmosphere a little, as futile as it may be. Jal reminds Ronnie that her competition is this weekend, "not that you care", and storms off upstairs, as per her usual routine for moving from one room to another. Ronnie grumbles about "rooty-tooty music" and "dancing for Whitey", but it's pretty clear that his heart is not in it and he really does want his daughter to succeed. Ronnie's pals giggle some more about Jal's "serious attitude" and then randomly decide to throw an anvil at me; "She's looking more like her mother every day." Ow. Ronnie just stares moodily into space.

Upstairs, Jal gives Michelle a call, and I'd say it's pretty easy to establish the jist of the conversation from just her side, which goes like this; "'Chelle? Yeah. No, I bought one. Green [WHATEVER.]. Fucking horrible, of course. You don't sound very sorry. What's that noise? Is he...? Yeah, ring me back when you aren't actually being penetrated, OK?" And then she says "It's just you and me" to her clarinet, which is a sad state of affairs indeed. Jal needs to hang out with Maxxie more, I think they'd get along damn well, and they're both kind of lonely souls a lot of the time, but it seems like they only know each other in sort of a 'friend of a friend' kind of way. It's a damn shame. Jal's clarinet practice is once again interrupted by her brothers' intrusive pounding, so she heads out into a room labelled "STUDIO NO ENTRY", but Ronnie and Alicia are in there and I imagine it's probably quite difficult to play the clarinet whilst vomitting. Jal and Ronnie share a Significant Look, while Alicia's totally get into Ronnie's mix of her track, which features the lines "In my dreams/You're not what you seem/Pour sweet cream/On my strawberries". Awesome. Ronnie tells her "Needs work" and hands her a glass of wine.

Next morning, the Fazer family is gathered for breakfast, and Alicia is there too, wearing (I presume) one of Ronnie's shirts, so there is quite a lot of tension in the air. The brothers slurp the milk from their cereal with quite ludicrous volume, and goddamn, outside of scouse drug dealers with ridiculous moustaches, there are not many sounds more irritating than that. Jal just glares, which I think gets the point across far more effectively. Alicia makes another futile attempt to connect by saying "I hear you guys are musicians too?". The brothers respond, of course, by overplaying the lingo so she doesn't understand a word they say, and Jal smiles quietly to herself even though she hates that shit. And then Alicia commits a horrible faux pas by suggesting that Jal could maybe play her "flute" on one of Alicia's tracks. Oh, poor, sweet, stupid Alicia. Jal responds in the same way as the brothers, and she's pretty good at it, for all that. The brothers are impressed, Ronnie is not, and slaps them both upside the head and WAVES A STERN FINGER at Jal. And, OK, the kids are all upset that Ronnie appears to be replacing their mother so soon, because they are not ready for that, yadda yadda yadda. NEXT SCENE!

Mad Twatter. NEXT SCENE!

...Naw, just kidding. I'm sure I'd get through these a lot faster if I did that, but I guess that would get old pretty fast. So, actually, Jal is back at school to practice with Claire accompanying on piano. No oppressive drum 'n' bass to interrupt here, thankfully. But there is a camp Welsh fellow, bringing news that "the Director" wishes to see Jal right now. So Jal gets on to do that, Doug lags behind in order to unexpectedly declare his love for Claire, and oh boy, that sure did take me by surprise and astound and amaze me or some shit. Whatever.

So, right, Director. She's got the typical prim librarian look and mannerisms. Ah, joy, another caricature, I do so love those. Doug enters a little after Jal and hastily adjusts his tie, and explains "it's a little hot in here." Really, what was the point of that? So, the Director says "We're just delighted that we've produced such a talented pupil", Jal hastens to point out that "we" had fuck all to do with that, other than Claire, which the Director ignores in favour of blathering about how it's a particularly great acheivement considering Jal's "background", by which she means skin colour, and even goes so far as to refer to it as a "handicap". Ugh. Anyway, she wants Jal to do TV interviews bigging up the school and all the wonders it's done her under the I'm Not Racist, Some Of My Best Friends Are Black campaign and the If They Can Say Nigger So Can I It's A Fucking Double Standard Is What It Is initiative. Jal gives this all her "If you thought Alicia got it bad, baby, you ain't seen nothing yet" glare, but then Doug brings a little needed levity to the proceedings by listing all the interviews she has to do, which includes "Channel 4, they're ironic, OK?" which is some pretty fabulous meta what with the upcoming episode written by Simon Amstell. Anyway, Jal basically tells them to go fuck themselves, of course, but their heads are too far up their arses to hear.

But I guess Jal agreed to do the interviews in the end, and just completely ignored the "checklist of things to think when she loses" (not a paraphrase, by the way), because we now get to see her on some anonymous news channel, answering every single question with a moody "No." "So, if you win, will we see you in the charts?" "No." "Right. And... your family, they must be very proud of you?" "No." OK, that is pretty awesome. We're in Michelle's room now; 'Chelle and Jal watching Jal on TV, and I think it's pretty damn doubtful that that would actually get to broadcast like that, but whatever. Michelle sort-of-not-exactly-jokingly asks Jal is she has to be "so fucking sulky" all the time, Jal claims that she isn't. LIAR! They watch a bit more of the news ("Will you take a lucky mascot on stage with you?" "No." "So, tell me a bit about the clarinet, it's a kind of flute thing, isn't it?" "No. It's a single reed woodwind instrument." OK, this interview should absolutely be fired based on that last question. It's a kind of flute thing, isn't it?! Get out.) and then Michelle moves onto to despairing over Jal's choice of BROWN BROWN IT'S FUCKING BROWN dress, and squeezes out the fact that it is ridiculously cheap, or it would be, were it green, but seeing as how it is TOTALLY BROWN, £14 is probably a pretty reasonable price. Michelle throws the dress on the floor, Jal complains that she paid good money for that, Michelle eyerollingly tells her "You did not!" and goes to her wardrobe to find her some more suitable attire. And so the sprucing up of this ugly duckling into a beautiful swan is afoot, and oh, how wonderful it is that makeup and a slinky black dress can transform Jal into a routine vision of conventional attractiveness as perceived in today's modern culture. Rah rah rah. Jal doesn't look particularly enthused by the prospect either, at least. Commercials!

So, the lads are all outside this club, making an incredibly lame attempt to convince the bouncer that they are all over 21, complete with stupid moustaches drawn onto IDs. Not even Tony's mad manipulative skillz can make up for Chris and Sid in this case, and things are about to get ugly when Jal appears from inside, (because of course it is Ronnie's club) and says it's all OK, they're with her. Cue the boys all foaming at the mouth because Jal! Has breasts! And once inside, nobody will stop staring at them. Jal frustratedly reminds Maxxie that he is supposed to be gay, he's sighs "Yeah..." and continues staring, and then eventually his brain catches up and he's jerks his eyes away, embarrassed. Hmm. Jal turns next to Anwar and reminds him that his Muslim upbringing tells him to respect women's bodies, he points out, quite reasonably, I think, that he is certainly doing exactly that. Jal gets bored with it all a little later than me and exits in the direction of the toilets, Tony tells Michelle "Nice work," and wanders off to some unspecified location without making any mention of the equally nice work Michelle performed on herself, much to her consternation. On her way to the bathroom, Jal is accosted by some swanky geezer who appreciates her fancy get-up with a little more panache, and this sets her heart all aflutter. From the shadows, Ronnie glares at all this.

Later, Chris, Maxxie and Anwar have all disappeared somewhere, leaving Sid and Michelle alone. She's intently watching Tony, who is clearly flirting with Abigail, and angrily asks Sid what the fuck Tony is doing. Sid, also fairly angrily, tells her "I don't know, they're talking. Just talking." And in an actual surprising turn of events, Michelle notes his town, and tells him straight up, with the edge totally gone from her voice, "I know you fancy me." Hooray! No irritating stringing along of that plot then, right? Right? Uh. Anyway, Sid makes this hilarious strangled "Hey?" noise, Michelle tells him "I love you" which momentarily gets his hopes up because Sid is kind of an idiot sometimes. Well, most of the time. Michelle finishes that thought "but more like a..." Sid interrupts to tell her to please not say brother, but she was already saying it, so she does. It's a conversation you and I and everybody has seen so very, very many times before, but it's pretty nicely played, and also after Michelle gives him a chaste kiss on the lips, Sid pauses for a moment and then suggests that they could be "like, a Welsh brother and sister", which is pretty awesome, I think. Michelle tells him he's funny and then goes off to interrupt Tony and Abigail, which is awesome because she has to just sit there looking incredibly awkward while they make out in front of her. Hee.

It's also awesome because Cassie only talks to Sid when he is alone, and now he is. So, she has a pint for Sid already purchased to swoop in with just as soon as Michelle went away, which he grumblingly thanks her for, because he is in a serious brood mode what with all his lame false hopes having been dashed to pieces just a few scant seconds ago. He downs a whole lot of his pint, thanks Cassie again because he "need[s] to be drunk", and then... walks away. Shit! Not awesome! Abort! Abort! ...Damn. Cassie's heartbroken response is of course, well, heartbreaking. Sid, you fool!

Jal's brothers and their Nerdy White Friend are on stage, and one of them drops his microphone and breaks it, and they are awful again, and yet we have to watch them for a damn long time. Why? Eventually it all breaks down into Oasis-style infighting and horrible feedback and the crowd all boo them, and then somebody spots Ronnie and they all start chanting "Fazer! Fazer! Fazer!" even though hey already have two Fazers on stage right there. Ronnie is not going to perform for them, so instead they get a generic DJ set, and so we watch them all dance. I really cannot comprehend what the point of any of this is. There is no advancement of plot, there is no insight being given into any characters, there is no witty or interesting or even dull dialogue. It's just... young people dancing in a club look like this. I actually already knew that, thanks, Skins. Can we get onto some kind of plot or character development now? Even if it involves Mad Twatter? I won't complain, honestly. Well, OK, maybe a little. Well, a lot. Oh hey, wait, Tony's kissing Abigail! And Jal saw it! DEVELOPMENT!

Later. Sid is chilling on a sofa, feeling sorry for himself. Jal comes to join him and rests her head on his shoulder, he asks what she's doing, she explains that she is comforting him. Sid delusionally asks "What about?" even hough he already knows that she knows and all that. Oh lordy, give it up already, Sid. Anyway, once Sid is done lamenting the fact that everybody in the world knows he loves Michelle, he takes another gander at Jal's magically enticing dress and asks just how comforting she is feeling, exactly. Jal begins repeating Michelle's "I love you but..." spiel, Sid tells her not to fucking start, and I'll tell you who might have actually been feeling comforting if you'd had a brain in your head five minutes ago, Sid. Idiot. And then the swanky geezer from earlier shows up and offers to make good on his earlier promise to buy a drink for Jal. She points out that the bar is closed, he explains that a friend of his has a club just up the road that they could go to, and invites Sid along too, in an attempt to not seem totally skeevy. It doesn't work, as far as I'm concerned, but Jal and Sid are totally fine with it. Idiots. Seriously, I do not get why Jal at least does not pick up on the exceedingly bad vibe this guy is giving. Makes no sense.

The camera watches them wander down the road from a distance to emphasise the cold darkness of the night or some such, and Sid finally finds that tiny organ rattling around in his skull when the dude starts to lead them into a secluded alley and tries to call a halt, but it's a little too late for that. Turns out this guy is one of Twat's flunkies, so let's skip past the irritating speech and cut to the part where Mad takes Sid's credit card and demands the PIN, which Sid freely hands over in the hope of not getting the shit beaten out of him. Unfortunately, Mad decides that this isn't enough and sets his goons to ransacking Jal's bag. Sid makes a fairly valiant, if extremely stuttery, attempt to demand that Jal is left out of it, since this all has nothing to do with her, but of course it falls on deaf ears. Anyway, Jal doesn't have a credit card, but she is carrying her clarinet around with her. Yeah, that makes perfect sense. The daughter of Ronnie Fazer, artiste/producer extraordinaire, has no credit card. And carries her extremely expensive clarinet around in clubs, just in case she ever feels the need to whip out a sonata on a moment's notice. Whatever, Skins. So, Mad plays a jaunty tune on the clarinet and then smahses it to pieces, because THAT is the kind of GUY he is. The possible involvement of someone remotely as irritating as this man in your life is a pretty compelling reason to never take drugs, I must say. Deed now done, Mad and his goons fuck off into the darkness, Jal shreiks at them, her buffoon brothers arrive to give Sid the shit-kicking he inexplicably has not already received, erroneously perceiving him to be to object of Jal's ire right here, and basically everything is really, really shitty for everybody right now. Except Tony, the smarmy bastard. And I guess Chris doesn't have it too bad right now either.

Later, Jal is on the phone, telling Claire "I'm sorry, I should never have been carrying it." That is a good point. That is a really fucking excellent point. I'm so glad you addressed that one so thoroughly. Jal then says "Yeah" a couple of times, and then there is a sudden and extremely jarring cut to Claire, in bed, calling someone a "Welsh studmonkey". OK, I'm pretty sure that was an error in this recording of the episode. But, really, I don't think we've missed anything remotely important, and this episode is not inducing near enough thrills for me to bother finding out. I'm sure you can fill in the blanks yourself which as much wit and originality as the writers acheived on this day, honestly. Commercials. We're onto the last leg now.

Camera focuses on Jal with the background all blurred so we can't tell where she is, while her brothers (plus Nerdy White Friend, of course) make a whole lot of noise about the violence they plan to inflict upon Twat and his goons, so I'm sure it comes as no surprise to anyone when we zoom out to discover that they are all in hospital beds with, like comic-book levels of casts all over every part of their bodies. They make excuses for their absolute failure to deliver a richly deserved beating to Twat, Jal says she's sorry and tells them "I didn't mean you to do that", but of course they were all too ready to take up arms in defence of their sister because deep down these crazy kids all love each other, aww. Jal gives them sincere thanks for their totally useless 'help' and asks if there's anything she can do for them. They all think on it a while, then OB requests a kiss from Michelle, which the others both jump on also, but dude, first come, first served, finders keepers, losers weepers and all that.

And, OK, this next bit is actually pretty sweet. Ronnie's in his studio, totally unaware that Jal is watching from the room next door. He gets a phone call from one or other of his sons and tells him "I know you took a beating, but your sister's grateful. I know it. You did good. ...Yeah, I'll come down again in an hour. I love you too. I love you all. Even that [stupid, or something that sounds fairly similar and probably has much the same meaning] white boy." And then, right there, he starts laying down some impromptu rhymes, and it's pretty awesome, he's got a real Maxi Jazz style going down.

I'm inspired
I'm offline
A renegade
Disturbing the peace while I'm spitting a serenade
All this tension, miscomprehension
I'm in informed, on the level and might mention
That when I scream, it's just passion
I ain't angry at culture, I ain't angry at fashion

...and so on. I'm not going to transcribe it all, because there's a lot, and it does rather trail off at the end. Jal watches the whole thing with a smile slowly spreading across her face as she and Ronnie both remember what it is that made him such a big name in the first place, and she realises that he really does love her, even if he sucks at showing it, and it works pretty well right here. And then Ronnie finishes and Jal flicks on the light; he bitches at her for watching him when he's in his private place, she yells "Don't you talk to me through glass!", and his face softens and he comes outside to talk to her. And then they ruin it all rather by having Jal exclaim "It's not my fault! It's not my fault I look like her!" Jeeeesus, would it really have been so hard to bring that point across without beating me over the head with it? Who do you think you are, Chris Chibnall? Bah. So, Jal tells Ronnie to stop wasting his talent, he churlishly tells her to go tidy her room.

Except, not so churlishly, because there is a brand new shiny clarinet sitting on Jal's bed. Because, by the way, daddy loves her under all that gruff exterior. Had you noticed? And so there's just enough time left for the orchestra build-up to Jal's big solo at the big competition (though not Jal's actual solo; much like last week, we cut out just before the inanimate object that is the focus of our central character's life meets their mouth) to play over a wonderful scene of Ronnie and a goon of his own driving up next to Twat on a deserted street and dragging him kicking and screaming into the car, never to be seen again. It's a seriously lame cop-out to Sid's whole mortal peril storyline, but I don't care because I never! Have! To watch! This! Twat! Again! YEAAAAAAAAAAAAAH.