| "Tony" | |
| Season 1, Episode 1 | |
| Centric Character(s): | Tony Snyder |
| Original Airdate: | January 17 2011 (US) |
| Written by: | Bryan Elsley (US & UK) |
| Directed by: | Scott Smith |
| Episode chronology | |
| previous N/A |
next "Tea" |
"Tony" is the pilot episode of the American adaptation of Skins and the first episode of Season 1.
The episode is adapted from the UK episode "Tony", which was also written by Bryan Elsley.
The episode primarily focuses on Tony Snyder and his relationships with his girlfriend Michelle Richardson, choir member Tabitha, his friends (predominately his best friend Stanley Lucerne), and his family (including his sister Eura Snyder).
Plot[1][]
This episode starts with Tony waking up in his room.
Tony flirts with the married woman next door as she poses naked in her bedroom window and bamboozles his buffoon of a dad twice while Eura sneaks into the house. Tony continues to irritate his father by locking him out of the bathroom and exiting through the window, leaving the door locked.
As Tony sets off for school, smirking smugly in his fitted leather jacket, he calls each of his friends in turn. Smart, manipulative and self-satisfied, he's also the ringleader of his clique.
There's Michelle, Tony's girlfriend. She's that tragic, pretty girl who doesn't realize she deserves better than a boyfriend who calls her "Nips" because he says her nipples look funny and then nominates her to deflower his best friend, Stanley. Asleep in a bed full of porn magazines, awkward, nervous, shaggy-haired Stanley splits the difference between stoner and nerd. He's about to turn 17, and Tony is mortified that any buddy of his could reach that ripe, old age without losing his virginity. Tony gets scolded
To complicate matters, Stanley is in love with Michelle. Tony knows it, Michelle knows it, and just about everyone else seems to know it too. But this is just how Tony operates: He realizes that, by dramatically devaluing their relationship, he'll force Michelle to work even harder to win his devotion. As the day wears on, it becomes clearer and clearer that Tony is using Stanley's feelings for Michelle to manipulate both of them.
Tony also calls the rest of the gang: Tea, who answers her phone amid difficult turns and jumps at cheerleading practice, is a beautiful, confident lesbian. Chris, with his baby face and shaved head, may just be the biggest partier in a clique where that's really saying something. When we meet him, he's in a tent with a giggling blond girl. Daisy seems serious and self-possessed; she certainly isn't under Tony's spell. Abbud picks up his cell while praying at the mosque, and all we really learn about him this week is that he desperately wants to get laid but hasn't had much success. Stanley gets scolded. Stanley's dad fell with a crash.
Michelle extricates herself from Tony's machinations by supplying a replacement for Stanley. Tall, gawky and skittish, Cadie has just returned to school from a mental hospital and is in the Life Skills classroom, carving phallic vegetable sculptures. She speaks quickly and nervously and uses her mental illness to keep Stanley at arm's length. "When my hamster died last fall, I embalmed him and hung him over the bed, and I just lie there, watching him twisting." Cadie offers, practically out of the blue. "Sounds a little crazy," says Stanley. "That's because I am crazy," she says.
During class, Tina, the gang's teacher, and the object of Chris' affections, breaks into tears in the middle of class, and the students calm her down.
Later, Tony aces an audition for the sole male spot in the choir at a nearby girls' private school — the pointedly named Edith Damp Collegiate for Young Ladies — with a heart-melting rendition of "Let's Do It (Let's Fall in Love)" and sasses a male faculty member, who calls security on him. By the time a pair of burly matrons arrive to remove the Y chromosome from their midst, Tony is out the door, and they pounce on the guy who summoned them. By the end of the episode, we see that the woman Tony's been flirting with is none other than this man's wife.
While at Edith Damp, Tony has also begun to hatch a plan for the night's activities. Tabitha,the lead singer in the choir has invited him to her party. Now all he has to do is send Stanley to buy an ounce of weed so he and his friends can unload it on the rich private-school kids.
Tony agrees, but most of his friends, however, have other plans. His friends Abbud, Chris, and Daisy are planning on attending their friend Tea's all lesbian party. Tony finds out that the town is awash with bud and tries to call Stanley to tell him not to buy the drugs but Stanley is not picking up.
Stanley fulfills his mission but only after trekking out to an unfamiliar house in the suburbs, where he's greeted by one black and one white prostitute, who offer him the "Britney and Whitney special." A rough-looking, middle-aged gentleman who goes by "Le Dong" finally advances him the pot — 3 ounces more of it than he wanted, which Stanley will have to sell within 48 hours or risk grievous, testicular harm.
Tony, Stanley, Michelle, and Cadie arrive at Tabitha's party, but inside the house they regrettably find out they can sell the weed to the rich kids because she won't allow smoking in her house due to her new expensive wallpaper.
While they talk, the other kids arrive having found big gay night out boring. Tony and his friends dance dirty, steal, take drugs (or, as Tabitha puts it, "get amoral"). While Chris dirties the floor, the posh kids gang up on the crew causing a fight.
Outside, Stanley and Cadie talk while bouncing on the trampoline. They began to kiss but stop due to Cadie knowing Stanley has feelings for Michelle. She then tells him t
hey can have sex but he would have to be quick due to taking "a busload of pills" and passes out. The fight happening inside is broken up as Stanley runs in with an unconscious Cadie.
They steal a car and drive Cadie to the city hospital, where Cadie wakes, seemingly fine. As the kids pile into a stolen SVU to drive her to the hospital. But Cadie wakes up just fine a few minutes later, and Tony parks the car near a lake while she gets out to pee. Stanley accidentally hits the car's handbrake while searching for papers (in British slang, the titular "skins") in Tony's back pocket, causing the car roll into the water.
After a few horrible moments, everyone surfaces. The only casualties are Stanley's bag of marijuana and some rich kid's car. Tony, Michelle, Stanley, Chris, Abbud, Cadie, Daisy and Tea saunter home, soaking wet and not particularly traumatized.