Relationship Spotlight: Emily Fitch & Naomi Campbell (Skins (U.K.))

Like most aspects of Skins, the show doesn’t always get Naomi and Emily right.  Their relationship gets tangled up in much of the messiness that permeates series 4, rife with overwrought drama and out-of-left-field plot twists.  However, when they work, they really work – at their best, their plot is easily the most successful part of series 3, and Naomi’s centric episode in that season is probably in my top five for the show’s entire run.  Here’s Emily and Naomi (relationship-specific spoilers, especially for series 3.)

On the representation front, there are a few things that I really like about this relationship.  First, while it deals with apprehension and uncertainty of two girls beginning their first same-sex relationship, it doesn’t beat around the bush or use queer sexuality as a bombshell.  A number of shows play coy, especially with girls, for an awfully long time:  teasing and suggesting without defining.  Granted, Skins has one up on many U.S. series in that it has short seasons and can’t really afford to string things out, but I still appreciate that the show is upfront that this is a will-they-won’t-they plot.  And at the same time, it doesn’t go for the shocking surprise-kiss! twist.  Rather, the storyline is laid in dialogue before it explores the physical side.

Technically, there was a kick-off kiss, but we don’t see it.  On the girls’ first day of college, we hear Emily’s twin sister Katie warning others off Naomi on the grounds that she kissed Emily at a party.  This positions outspoken, politically-minded Naomi, with her cropped hair and atypical style, as the pursuer while quiet, clean-cut Emily, forever in her sister’s shadow, is inexperienced, intimidated, and possibly curious.  It’s a perfectly acceptable plot, one we’ve seen before.  Quickly, though, the narrative realigns itself with the reveal that Emily was the one who kissed Naomi, and even when she comes clean to Katie, she pretends she did it because she was high.  But with Naomi, Emily makes it clear how she feels, and we suddenly see that Naomi is the one who doesn’t know how she feels.  (Yes, it’s still a plot with one girl pursuing and the other reticent and “confused,” but it also subverts expectations a fair amount.)

And that’s the real story we get.  Naomi isn’t a straitlaced blushing violet and Emily isn’t some symbol of an alluring but forbidden other world.  Instead, Emily is a confident but closeted girl overwhelmed by a crush, and Naomi is a solitary, guarded girl who doesn’t know what to do with the feelings she can only deny for so long.  (It really helps that we get perspectives from both girls.)  Their hesitant courtship unfolds slowly, with lots false starts and retreats, but it always stays equally rooted in physical and emotional attraction.  Emily initially weathers the storm of Naomi’s insistent downplaying; as they take their first tentative steps toward romance – kissing, touching – she doesn’t protest when Naomi blames it on drugs or booze or casual experimentation.  She has it so bad for Naomi that she’s content with whatever she can get.

She doesn’t stay content for long, and that’s the beauty of this plot.  When the morning light falls on their first time together, it gets too real for Naomi, and she tries to bail once again.  This time, though, Emily doesn’t take it quietly.  The wallflower twin, the doormat twin, is done with being tossed aside.  She demands to be acknowledged and challenges Naomi to face up to her feelings, pleading, “Be brave and want me back!”  This terrifies Naomi, not Emily’s words but the truth behind them, the truth within her.  It’s a terrific journey, and in a stunningly uneven season of Skins, these characters and their hard-won romance is a knockout.