wolkenfuehlen

Yes, the two tour guides are straaaaange.

I think it's worth noting how every character knows everything Tony knows...the girl knows he can't get hard; the advisor knows what he's been up to all day,...

"I'm a bad dream, mate." There's the word dream, again.

Finnegan

Yes, it's all totally surreal.

Somehow the guy on the train knows what Tony's been saying to Cassie the previous evening. And yes, his newspaper refers to dreams. And he's the same guy who turns out to be the lecturer, played by the same actor (yes, I've checked the credits at IMDB).

And the music played in the pool scene, "Shake your earrings over my head, lay down your dreams on my pillow." Tha't's from a totally surreal 1970 Czech film, Valerie and Her Week of Wonders, by way of an Englishing by the "dream pop" group, Broadcast. And of course, the girl just appears and reappears inexplicably throughout.

And I just love the tour guides' plugging "The Super Irony Splash Fun."

s e r e n i t y

'bet you thought youd died and gone to heaven'
'im a bad dream, im you befre you shriveled and died'

Ok this is all making sense now

This was my keast favorite gen 1 episode cause it was too weird but I think I may need to reconsider

s e r e n i t y

Yeah those tourguides are freaky
And thats definitely worth noting, it makes sense that this is all in his head, his characters are so weird they just cant be true.

Aww Sid and Tonys bromance god I miss these two

wolkenfuehlen

Tony breaks out, tells his advisor what he thinks of him, and finally solves his... other problem, too, with the help of the girl. Who's in those other two guys' room. Alone. Where are they again?

and what a sweet goodbye scene the two of them have... he thanks her, and she tells him to "don't look back". To move on, and stay this new version of himself...and to make things right again, with everyone. Awww.

I love that the episode ends with him in bed, closing his eyes

I gotta say, I didn't really enjoy the episode the first time around either, but watching it a second time, and with an idea of what it might mean, it's certainly a lot more enjoyable!

Finnegan

Great! And yes, it does. The lecturer is what Tony will become if he doesn't learn to love ... reminds me of Will Krudski's dad in YA -- an older version of himself.

For explanations of the wall art in the room where Tony screws the dream girl, "Gavin Turk never worked here" and "A short walk in the light of the world, with breaks for coffee and snacks," see my posts on the episode thread of the Skins board of this forum, to which I've given links in a prior post on this thread. Suffice it to say that "the light of the world" is an image for life by contrast with the underworld from the Orpheus myth, and the "short" reminds us that life's brief.

s e r e n i t y

Also Im being nitpicky, but arent they in a club? Why is there no noise in the bathroom? Shouldnt there be some sound from outside? And why isnt it more crowded?

Effys bedroom, its just gorgeous
I think her make up in the final scene resembles the imaginary girls make up, right?

s e r e n i t y

I was just about to mention that, its very ... Symbolic somehow, that a dream episode ends with him closing his eyes and actually going to sleep.

Yeah I was wondering about the significance of that line, Ill have to check out your post then .

Like Anja, the episode was just too weird the first time around, and for me it had a way more graphic than usual sex scene, plus it didnt have any of the other characters in at least half of it, but this time with an idea about what its trying to say, sort of looking for 'clues' it was certainly more fun.

wolkenfuehlen

Eeeeeh, I think it might?

Finnegan

"Don't look back" is what Orpheus must do to save Eurydice, Anja. But Tony is both Orpheus and Eurydice in this dream episode. He saves himself by integrating the two halves of his personality, dissociated as symbolized by his bedcover: the "male" side that's into sex, the "female" side that's into love.

Note, too, that the "passion" tattoo magically moves from the dream-girl's back to Tony's in the very last shot -- it's all a dream.

By the way, more proof that it's all a dream is that there is no reference in any subsequent episode of Skins to anything that happens in this episode. Including Tony's talk with Sid and Michelle in the restroom at the end. After all, would Michelle really do it in a restroom stall?

Yeh ... Skins is a lot like YA in that. But that YA is the mature Krudski's dream is way more subtly indicated than that Skins s2e6 is Tony's dream.

For something comparably subtle in Skins, try this: Everything in the Tony story-line from the last scene of the last episode of Skins season 1, when Tony tells Michelle by phone "I love you" and immediate "gets hit by a bus," to the scene in Skins s2e7 "Effie," when Michelle tells Tony by phone (with no prior comment by Tony), "I love you, too," is all pure metaphor. The "getting hit by a bus" is to be taken as the obvious, cliched, hackneyed metaphor for emotional trauma that it so conspicuously is. There's no reference in any Skins s2 episode after s2e7 to Tony's "being his by a bus" or to his recovery from that.

So Skins s2e6 is a dream within a metaphor. Much as the Jake-Hamilton story-line in YA is a fairy-tale and myth within a dream.

Nia -- Thanks for the "Stonemcest" art. I stumbled across the "Stonemcest" website a few days back. Amusing.

Sheida -- Yes, the dream-girl is a stand-in for Effie. The episode indicates that in diverse ways. I think even in contemporary England, an explicit sibling sex scene would have been over-the-top, so a different actress with strong physical similarity was used. The point is that only Effie can save Tony, because she's really the only person he loves. But she can only teach him how to use sex for love in a dream -- not in "reality."

lisztomania

JB said in an interview that this episode was also meant to show that every person tony meets is an extension of himself. or something like that.

wolkenfuehlen

Nia, interesting! That sounds familiar. I think Finnegan must've posted parts of that interview somewhere at some point ....

I hadn't even made that connection!

Oh, yes, you mentioned that before. As I said previously, I really need to rewatch gen 1, because it's been ages, but I trust you on that

Finnegan

FINN: You know how many guys have sat right where you're sitting? Don't think for a minute anyone one of them wouldn't trade their seat on the New York Stock Exchange to be 15 again, have all their dreams intact and the possibilities of the universe at their fingertips. The sound you should be hearing is opportunity. So make the most of it. Exceed expectations.

-- YA 1, Finn's lesson on the lake

You asked me to write an essay telling you what I have to say, and what I realized is that I've been ordered to listen from the moment I was born, but now I know it's my time to speak. What I figured out is that I've always seen myself as others have seen me. This poor kid, this smart kid, this dreamer who doesn't have a chance.

-- YA 1, Will's essay for Finn

If one day, I wonder, when you look back on your life, you'll see it's not always about the big picture, it's really all about the moments. ... And maybe one day you'll think back and you'll string all those moments together and then you'll realize when you add them all up, your life is more meaningful than you could have dreamed.

-- YA 2, Will's closing narrative voice-over

RYDER: Greetings, gentlemen. I'm making a documentary chronicling the hopes, the fears, the dreams of some of our freshmen, setting forth at the illustrious Rawley Academy. Let's start with you. Tell us child, what is your name?

-- YA 3, Ryder to Harry (a.k.a. Mark) Johnson

Rawley Academy. I still can't believe I'm here. This setting, these people, this world where dreams really do come true. A place where a guy from the wrong side of the tracks lives the life of a prince.

-- YA 4, Will's opening narrative voice-over

MRS. KRUDSKI: You excited? Will told me. Going to the Cotillion, huh?

BELLA: Just standing in for the girl of his dreams.

-- YA 4

Be yourself, what a cliché, we hear it over and over in literature, fairy tales, songs, but we still don't get it, it might be because when we dream we don't worry whether the dream is worthy of us, but whether we're worthy of the dream. so we lose our identities in order to chase what we want, but if we can stay proud of who we are and not run from ourselves, then maybe our dreams, like the prince with the glass slipper will come find us.

-- YA 4, Will's closing narrative voice-over

Expectations. They change as we change. They're born of our biggest dreams and deepest fears.

-- YA 5, Will's opening narrative voice-over; repeated, verbatim, in Will's closing narrative voice-over

wolkenfuehlen

^ I wasn't aware that 'dream' was actually used that frequently in the dialogue of the show! Is there any more of it after episode 5?

Finnegan

No, Anja, there's not, either in the episodes as aired or in the material that Jeweliana cut from the production scripts to make them more like the episodes as aired.

The only other dream reference is Will's self-description in his essay in the unaired pilot: "I am the dream of a better life." That literally says it all.

I asked myself, when I posted those dream quotes, why they stop with YA 5. It's plainly not that episodes 6-8 are "less a dream" than episodes 1-5. Maybe Antin just felt he'd told us often enough already by the end of YA 5's final voice-over, about exceeding expectation and setting new ones -- by dreaming.

But most references to "dreams" occur in Will's narrative voice-overs. In YA 6, "Gone," there are no such voice-overs; our narrator is "Gone," leaving things to chance. In YA 7, "Free Will," his voice-overs are a richly ironic validation of youth's perspective that experience beats innocence -- which is, from a traditional viewpoint, why we're given "free will." And in the last episode, his voice-overs are about learning to be thankful, about his ceasing to be "sure of myself," thinking he deserves "Rawley," and accepting that it, like everything in life, is a gift.