On Manic Pixie Dream Girls in Skins

This was yesterday's update - sorry, the time got away from me.  I'll give you two today.

Skins loves playing with Manic Pixie Dream Girls.  Each generation of the show has a girl that fits this trope to varying degrees.  Despite plenty of nuts-and-bolts differences between the three characters, they all serve some form of the MPD Girl’s traditional function.  However, at its best, Skins takes tropes and does something unexpected with them, and each girl (with unhappily-diminishing returns, it seems) veers off from MPD Girl standards in her own way.

We’ll start at the beginning.  Cassie is easily the most Manic Pixie-ish, with her quirky dress sense, spacey demeanor, and unusual habits.  This is a character whose first romantic scene takes place on a trampoline and who later names a pet slug after the boy she likes.  Her relationship with Sid has some definite MPD Girl hallmarks, too, the idea that he does crazy (as in odd, not as in ill-advised) stuff under Cassie’s influence.  But, as I said when I wrote about Cassie, she’s not just a kooky vessel for Sid’s life lesson.  She has a lot of real pain, much of which stems from her severe body-image issues, and in part, her cheery flightiness is a way of masking that.  She’s spent time in a mental health facility, she’s tried to kill herself, and for her, eating a hamburger is a major personal victory.  The most important departure Cassie makes from the typical MPD Girl is that her story is about her:  her problems, her fears, her longings, and her growth.

Effy actually appears first in generation one, as Tony’s younger sister.  Already, she catches the eye – she refuses to speak through most of series 1, and in series 2 she’s a shrewd puppet master who quietly fixes everyone’s lives – but she doesn’t really resemble an MPD Girl until she joins the main ensemble in generation two.  Here, the show doesn’t lean so heavily on the Manic Pixie part; if anything, she’s a “free spirit,” mainly in the form of an unapologetic zeal for partying and hallucinogenic drugs.  That said, Effie is a serious Dream Girl.  Freddie, Cook, and JJ are all instantly drawn to her, and all three boys find themselves in love with her at variously points throughout series 3 and 4.  Unfortunately, Effie winds up being the object of the plot far more often than the subject; generally, she’s viewed through the boys’ lenses, making her a less-successful subversion than Cassie.  She does take the trope to new places, though.  Like Cassie, Effy is a bundle of issues, particularly in series 4, where she struggles hard with her mental health.  Although her story still tends to come from Freddie or Cook’s perspective, they start to see Effy as a person outside of themselves, and even more, they see that her “free spirit” life isn’t easy or enviable and their own lives aren’t magically bettered simply by loving her.  It’s complicated, and it’s difficult, not some MPD Girl fantasy of what they want Effy to be.

Franky is in some ways the most unusual version of the trope, but in others, her story is played the straightest.  She stands out in that generation three doesn’t really starting going to the MPD Girl well with her until series 6.  In Franky’s debut season, she’s certainly odd, but she’s a real outsider, not an MPD Girl.  She’s a shy amateur filmmaker with an androgynous appearance who’s been bullied so severely she’s had to switch schools.  She’s no Manic Pixie, and while she does catch Matty’s attention, it takes her a long time to think anyone could want her.  Series 6, however, makes all sorts of slight adjustments to her character that brings her closer to the MPD Girl.  More than anything, as Nick starts to fall for her, she becomes so much less of a person and so much more of an idea, Nick’s vision of who she is and how gray his life will be if he can’t be with her.  It’s… I don’t know.  It’s not quite an MPD Girl story, not in the details, but it feels like one, which takes it even further from the gorgeous things the show does with Cassie.