oh, look what you've done

four years ago (or something like that) a friend told me to watch skins, and i did. i stuck with the show for a while, and when they announced that mtv was making an american version i was rightly outraged. i am not a very big fan of mtv (read: i think they have a poisonous touch and destroy everything they even think about), and america doesn't have the greatest track record with turning good british shows into good american knock offs. (i know, i know, everyone loves the office. i get it. really. but for every show like the office i can give you five that are awful.) plus, america's tv laws or whatever are waaay stricter than the british ones, so i really didn't see how they would get a show like skins to comply with them.

after watching the first two generations of skins, i opted to not follow the third one because, really, i just don't watch anything anymore. it's kinda sad. and as i had already decided to not watch anything even related to the american version, i thought that me and skins were through. (well, at least until they made the movie if it had the original cast members.)

but then the articles started to flow in. the show started to air here, and it is apparently the most scandalous thing to hit our tvs despite claims by the british actors that it is extremely censored.

the british skins boasted from the start about how, unlike american shows, all the underage characters would be played by underage actors. no twenty-somethings playing high school students. they went and got the real deal. the american show then decided to do the same. only problem is, here in america, we have strict laws concerning a little thing called child pornography. child pornography can basically be anything (picture, video, whatever) of children (under 18) that is sexually suggestive. so when shows were casting older actors in everything that wasn't aired on the disney channel, they were kinda saving themselves from child pornography charges. something the american skins might be facing.  major companies - like taco bell, gm, and wrigley's - are even pulling their advertisements from the skins time slot because they do not want to have any association with such a controversial show. if it can't make any money, i can't see the show staying on for too long even if it doesn't get charged with child porn.

with all the media about the new show, i finally caved and decided to watch the trailer. i was shocked by how amazingly similar it was to the british show. if you were going to copy exact story lines to the t, you might as well have just aired the british show (which in fact was/is? aired on bbc america only censored a bit) and which is probably loads better.

the show is not the most family friendly show on tv, or anywhere close, but the characters were real and the acting was good and it instilled in me a love for british cussing. is it only me that prefers it over american? anyway, here's some youtuber's comparison between the american and british skins trailers. i would not suggest you watching it if you are easily offended by bad language, sexual references, or really anything else.

*Look What You've Done - Jet