Skins (U.S. Series) Episode 9 Review: Tina's A Sex Offender

Tina Nolan is the 23-year old teacher that Chris Collins has a crush on and has been sleeping with.  For most of the season, it seems that Tina has wanted to end the relationship but never has and during this episode we realize that this is all because Tina just does not want to grow up.  She eats fruit roll-ups while talking to teens in the cafeteria about their problems, she tries to perform oral sex on one of her neighbors in her car, and she admits that she has no friends her own age.  The day that Tina tries to break it off with Chris finally, she comes home to discover that Chris has thrown her a birthday party stocked full with underage kids doing drugs, peeing on her carpet, and having sex.  Tina still cannot manage to pull herself away from Chris and after he kicks everyone out of her apartment, they have sex and are eventually discovered by one of the other teachers who has been stalking Tina.  Tina ends up going to jail for statutory rape, but is released when the police are unable to find corroborating evidence for the charges.  Tina is fired and moves back home with her parents, but not before breaking things off with Chris for good.  I suppose the episode needs some sort of analysis from me.  The thing that the viewer needs to understand about Skins is that it does not try to send a message, but attempts to depict teenage life as it really is (even though, frankly, the plot in each episode is so exaggerated that the impression one is left with is surreality rather than anything else).  Therein lay the problem with the show: because it is so over-the top, Skins fails to achieve its intent of being something like a documentary and seems instead to encourage the sort of behavior it demonstrates.  As an adult obviously I have a filter and can make a decision about which aspects of the show to accept as caricature and not as "cool", but can the same be said for a teenage audience?

Tina looks so innocent, but she's actually a "sex offender".  Go fig.