Skins, despite being one of the most realistic teen shows ever created, had a formula nonetheless, and there were certain parallels along the storylines of each new gen. Aside from the fact that a main and beloved character died dramatically in every friend base—let’s just presume it’s pretty uncommon for your therapist to bludgeon your boyfriend—it pretty closely hewed to the notion of a gravitational center becoming unseated, rather like adolescence, that forces a person to evolve. But by Season 5, the writers had perfected this formula and were able to paint their characters and storylines with a wider viewpoint. This is how Mini went from timid virginity to sexual fluidity to teen pregnancy with a “Farmboy,” and how Matty was a bad boy loner whose love for Franky was too overbearing for her to take. It was all the pursuit of love and acceptance, a tale so old it’s the only tale, but especially acute for the teen years. It was so acute that when Rich started being visited by Grace’s ghost in Season 6, it made a sort of sense within our imagined context of his grief—a grief better fleshed out than that of any of the previous seasons. We could even excuse her posthumous voicemails.
The third generation sprung forth a wealth of talent, like Seb de Souza, whose intense Matty was faraway and forlorn.