say something

It was, yes.

a new hope

Michelle is such a cute drunk

say something

It made me feel so bad for her though.

a new hope

Yeah definitely

say something

You can just see how torn up she is by everything.

a new hope

And things just got worse and worse. *huggles Chelle*

say something

Definitely, so many things just kind of hit her at once. And she found the strength to deal with them, which is amazing.

a new hope

She's my idol

Enigma

I didn't care too much for Michelle before this episode, but after this one I really started liking and feeling for her.

And finally seeing her realize that she deserves better and standing up to Tony was great.

I also think it's interesting on this show how we get little glimpses into everyone's home life/family and it really sheds some light on the character of each person and why they are the way they are.

TaftCat

Michelle is awesome

a new hope

I've always loved her but this episode definitely increased my love for her. That last scene with Tony was awesome.

Enigma

I loved that scene.

And definitely love her now.

Artemis

Ugh. That ending..NO! Michelle/Tony. I know he's a prick, but I love them!

I love what Tony did. He totally pulled a Sebastian Valmont from Cruel Intentions. WIN!

lisztomania

I hated Michelle during the beginning. Started to like her when she slapped Abby during the choir presentation in the Sid epi but then love love loved her in this spi.

Finnegan

In Skins s1e7, "Michelle," Michelle Richardson quotes Lauren Bacall's famous "whistle" line from To Have and Have Not (1944), playing opposite Bogart:

Bacall's line is at 2:52 minutes into this clip, which is long enough to give a sense of the context of the line. The full context is that To Have and Have Not is a classic love film: based on a Hemingway novel, with a script written by Faulkner, following up on Bogart's success in Casablanca and set, like Casablanca, in an overseas Vichy French territory in 1940. Bacall, an unknown 19-year-old playing her first film role, succeeded Bergman as the female lead opposite Bogart -- and so outshone Bergman that one is reminded of Romeo's line that Tony cites while throwing pebbles at Michelle's window early in Skins s1e7: "Arise, fair sun, and kill the envious moon, / Who is already sick and pale with grief, / That thou her maid art far more fair than she."

Michelle's repetition of the same line in Skins s1e7 is from 36:00 to 36:25 minutes into this whole-episode clip. She says it to Josh Stock just before leaving his in a taxi with flowers and gifts he has bought for her.

Whereas Bacall uses the line to entice an emotionally wounded and hence reticent Bogart, Josh Stock is not emotionally wounded and needs no enticement. Before Michelle can say the last word of the line, "blow," he kisses her passionately. He seems, indeed, to recognize and to respond to the quote.

Why does Jamie Brittain have Michelle quote Bacall in this context?

Perhaps Brittain does it, at least in part, to suggest that Michelle and Josh, whom Tony is in the process of separating by a clever but thoroughly nasty subterfuge, are a couple with the potential for real, lasting love, like Bacall and Bogart, who married, and stayed married until Bogart's death. Their "screen chemistry" is rightly legendary; they were totally in love. Thus, Brittain's point in having Michelle quote Bacall may be, at least in part, to underscore the nastiness of what Tony is doing.

However, Michelle's use of Bacall's whistle line precedes, by less than a minute, Tony's quotation of an even more famous dramatic line, as he cell-phones to Michelle, in the taxi, from Josh's stolen cell phone, lascivious photos of Josh's sister Abigail:

Romeo is, of course, not merely mad, but suicidal, when he speaks the lines Tony quotes as he implements his scheme to separate Michelle from Josh; he has come to the Capulet family crypt in order to kill himself at Juliet's tomb. Paris, to whom he speaks, is there to place flowers of Juliet's tomb. The central prop of these scenes in Skins s1e6, the bouquet of flowers that Josh has given to Michelle, neatly fits the Josh-as-Paris metaphor. But the "whistle" line reminds us that Josh is not an unwanted suitor like Juliet's Paris -- however much Tony may view him that way -- but rather a guy who is offering Michelle that real, potentially lasting love that Tony refuses to try to give her.

Together, juxtaposed, don't Michelle's quotation of Bacall's "whistle" line from To Have and Have Not and Tony's quotation of Romeo's line to Paris from the crypt scene of Romeo and Juliet seem to suggest that while Josh is offering Michelle a prospect of true, lasting love, Tony, while breaking Josh and Michelle up, can offer Michelle only death, a sharing in his own emotionally suicidal behavior?

The "Tony must die" theme continues, of course, in the following episodes. In Skins s1e8, "Effie," Tony descends into the underworld to rescue Effie, acting out the Orpheus and Eurydice tale that she reads so lovingly to him at the start of s2e6. And at the end of s1e9, the series finale, comes "the bus" -- love -- that kills not the physical Tony, but his flawed character, permitting his rebirth in s2.