Cassie
is one of the characters who drew me into Skins
in the first place, a sad, unsteady girl whose pain and confusion is so real,
so specific. Even as I recognize that
she causes a lot of her own unhappiness, I root for her to figure things out,
for good things to happen to her, and for her to realize her own strength and
potential. This is Cassie.
In her
initial appearance, it’s easy to confuse Cassie with a classic Manic Pixie
Dream Girl – she’s a quirky, flighty type brought in as a potential love
interest for Sid. She’s not the
flawless, put-together beauty like Michelle, who Sid really loves, but she’s good-looking in an odd, waifish way, and
she’s all trampoline-jumping and funky jewelry and pet slugs. Surely, this is a role Zooey Deschanel would
have played in her youth, right?
However,
Skins has never been one for playing
a Manic Pixie Dream Girl straight. It
loves to toy with the trope – each generation of the cast has a girl who seems
to fit the bill – but it never works out the way the conventions dictate. In Cassie’s case, the first fly in the
ointment is the fact that, while she’s enamored of Sid from the first, he
lightly regards her as a passable consolation prize in lieu of Michelle. There’s no sense that she’s changed his life
the instant he meets her, and he doesn’t come alive under her influence,
getting swept up in the joy and verve of her free-spirited nature. Rather, he receives her advances
distractedly, barely considering her feelings when he bails on her at the last
minute.
Another
reason Cassie isn’t your typical Manic Pixie Dream Girl is that the show is
genuinely interested in her point-of-view.
Since she’s not a catalyst for Sid’s growth, she’s allowed to be a
character in her own right, one with plots, problems, and goals outside of him. Even in their storylines together, the focus
is often more firmly on her than him.
Girl’s got it bad; she lives for him to look at her, and when he brushes
her off, she’s deeply hurt. Her first
thought of him is that he’s a nice guy, someone who will care about her, and
she doesn’t handle being disillusioned well.
Finally,
the show really delves into the darkness that plagues this “kooky” girl. Her dreamy voice and wide-eyed smile often
mask her largest issue, her quiet battle with food. When we meet Cassie, she’s just left a mental
health facility and is easily convincing her disinterested parents that she’s
“better,” all the while using sleight-of-hand misdirection as she pretends to
eat and reverently running her fingers along her hidden stash of
fastidiously-organized candy. It’s all
too simple for her to fool people, because no one really looks out for her
(this is a big part of the reason she gloms onto Sid – a bit of offhand
niceness, and she thinks she’s found the one person who gives two figs about
her.)
This is
where Cassie’s demons come out. Food is
her obsession and her nightmare, her recklessly obstinate way of “controlling”
her uncertain life. She clings to the
people that she needs to care about her, and she lashes out at them when they
let her down, but she lashes out so much more at herself. She wallows in destructiveness, and it’s not
the least bit “fun” or “zany.” It’s
serious business, and her main storyline is ultimately about choosing to be
healthy, choosing to be happy, and finding strength within herself when others
don’t supply it for her. She’s such a
rich, complex character, one that’s almost startling to find on television.
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