Classy Dames: Tyra Collette

The day I bought an engagement ring for Tyra Collette:



This is just so Tyra it's perfect. I'll miss you, young lady. Love you forever!

Classy Dames: Kate Winslet

Somebody get this girl an Oscar! Though I guess what she does isn't technically acting...it's WINSLETING!



She had me at "Gather..."

P.S. I can do her entire speech.

No One Does It Like You, NYC

Buy, borrow, or steal In Ear Park by Department of Eagles. Now. It’s the sexier, more romantic side to Grizzly Bear. If Grizzly is Prospect Park, then Eagles is a little more Union Square. Eagles are blessed with the pitch-perfect, languorous strum that Grizzly is so awesome at, but with a little more of the experimental, divergent oomph of Iron & Wine circa Woman King.

Best tracks, in order of sexiness: 1)No One Does It Like You 2) Phantom Other 3) In Ear Park 4) Waves of Rye 5) Floating on the Lehigh 6) Teenagers

And the always awesome Blogotheque totally followed the duo around as they terrorized respectable Chinese families somewhere around Apotheké:

#71 - Deartment of Eagles - Part 1
by lablogotheque

That and Gossip Girl ("No One Does It Like You" being the soundtrack for the S2E14 "In the Realm of the Basses" opening montage, ;-D) have kind of married this band to New York for me. Department of Eagles, I love you, and can’t wait to see you live!

Back to the Beginning

"You've always like our little songs...right from the beginning. And that's where we'll go. Right back to the beginning!"

Oh my gods, it's been a while. I'm not going to start this off too crazy, or melodramatic (I was almost thinking of posting right on January 1st), but I do want to get back to writing again. Getting these thoughts out seems like a nice way of keeping tabs on myself, and a nice way to share. Since TV, Music, and Interwebbings media are like the Tarot of my life, I'm probably going to keep talking about all that stuff. So here's a little something something to check out.



Just. Can't. Fucking. Wait. Already love them all...got my favs, but won't be sharing that just yet.

So here it is. The last term. We're starting up anew, and we're going back. Right back to the beginning...not the Bang, not the Word, but the true Beginning..."The next few months are going to be quite a ride. And I think we're all going to learn something about ourselves in the process. You'll learn that you're a pathetic schmuck, if that hasn't sunk in already...look at you, trying to do what's right. You still don't get it. It's not about right...it's not about wrong.

"It's about power."

Skins - Episode 7: Effy

Watch the episode here!

Previously on...Big T, the eponymous Boy that it's all About, was having nightmares, but he was really trying, he just needed some time, so he gave Michelle a fancy shmancy watch that was too heavily symbolic for her so she started going with lightweight Sid, but Tony dragged their asses out of a bathroom and made sure they knew that Sid was still in love with suicidal, anorexic lightweight Cassie, and that he, Tony, loved Michelle; so Jal was not going through the whole cheaters thing with Chris because she is so done with all that after her all of her Dad's bullshit and stuff, besides she can't deal with it because she's soooo pregnant; and again with Tony, because it's really all about him, and his accident, and everything being fucked up because of it, and he loves Michelle and that's the way it goes, because he says so!

The phone rings and rings. We step gingerly on our way to pick it up. The floor is a bloody mess, the kitchen smells stale, the food's a week old, the clothes are unwashed, the living room is ragged. There's too much left lying out, cluttered, an unholy wreckage. It's like a Jackson Pollack. Or more like a Robert Rauschenberg mixed-media assemblage. Frankly, it looks like a goddamn hurricane up in here, and that's saying something because I've seen some hot-fucking-messes on this show. The answer-phone picks up. It's Daddy, gone for the week. No order, no system, no structure. Somehow it all just fell apart, because no one could be bothered to care. That's what happens when you sweep Daddy under the rug, it all goes to hell, and you get Neo-Dadaism shitting all over the place. Dad's complaining about Paris, where's he's flown off to for their business trip. He wanted to see the world. Get a job that would make him travel, France, America, wherever. He got his wish. But nowadays, he just can't stand it. He wishes he didn't have to travel now, for many reasons, but he got what he wanted. There's nothing better than making fun of the French when you're in Britain, so artsy fartsy, so smelly, so expressive. They don't live under any system he'd want to. Thank God we didn't take a holiday there...It's interesting to see what happens when we get exactly what we wish for. But anyway, Daddy's got to be a way for another week, so keep a tight ship, and don't let anything wreck! "All ship-shape, you know. This is your Dad, by the way. Love, or what you will--"

"Hi, Dad," Effy says, picking up the phone before she loses him. She's just slinked down the stairs, all bright pink, real pink, the forever maiden. She has on the flowering color of a virginal intimacy, but she still wears the midnight behind her eyes; Effy is the dreary laughter, the nighttime high. Persephone, forever walking the world around by its hand, keeping it together, circling to and fro, soothing it towards and from death. She sits there, blowing smoke rings, as she listens to her Dad's voice, some semblance of structure in a chaotic peace. Sweetheart, that's what he calls her, and sees if she's being good for Mum. Effy assures him, all's well, but she's got to go, she's washing, "woman's work," a polite laugh, bye. She knows real woman's work, she is the albatross by which they all navigate. She has to keep it together, before the bubble pops, and the ships wreck. There's no other choice.

The house is full of nightmares. It's just the nature of it being an in-between place. Nightmares are just tremors, a fever, shaking off what doesn't work, burning it. But when it doesn't go away, then everything shakes itself apart, burns itself down. That's the house, a constant nightmare. It's a wreck, and no one sees it. "Good morning, Mom." Effy tends to the fallen queen, gazing at her first through the mirror, like a glass prison. Sleeping beauty. She jolts up from her slumber, the nightmare/the reality, all one. "Tony!" Mom calls out. Is it as awful as her dreams, as awful as she remembers it? It is. And it's worse. It's taking too long to get any better, easier to devolve from the sensation that structure imparts, forget that you're even on a ship destined to some shore...just lay down and feel the rocking of the waves. Forget that there's a storm out there, because you can't fix it. Why weather the storm when the ship's going to wreck no matter what?

"But Tony's better, Mom." How can she explain that the storm will clear up? "Are you going to get dressed today?" Sure, sure. Funny, though, it still feels like the boat's rocking. "Sure," means we'll see, which means if the sun comes out, which means, not today, or not ever. Effy serves up a smile. It isn't a gift that she's giving, but a message. The smile, this isn't love or respect, faith or charity. This is hope.

Mom pops some more anonymous meds. They're Tony's meds; they were a cover, a protection, a mask. He doesn't need them anymore. He came back. Here's the thing, the coma, the fracturing, the oblivion...that was all a punishment. But the problem was, that people forget that justice actually does work. People do change.

We never realized just how fucked up it was here. We thought it was a joke, and the Stonems, out of all of them, could roll with the punches. Instead, their home's a deserted island, after the tempest comes clarity...and the realization that nothing is going to be the same again. Tony and the bus were more than just the 9/11 of the show, his falling apart didn't just make it all collapse, it wasn't just that the walls had come tumbling down. It was that he showed us the walls were all pointless, why put them back up at all? Why even try and have that good ol' happy family, when we were never happy to begin with? When you wake up in the morning and you realize that your kids aren't really who you thought they were, that they never were...you loved them, cared for them, cherished their gifts, and brought them up true and proper. And you see that they'll never be the people you thought they were going to be, the people that all your love was meant to turn them into...safeguarded, sound, rightly judging, sturdy, and well-founded members of a family. What's the point of it then? What's the point of waking up at all?

I mean, for a moment, you're Anthea, just a year ago...you've got two kids, and they're just...they're just great kids. My God, they're nothing like you were when you were young. How are they at school? Great marks. Friends? Always on those bloody mobiles. Ambitious? Hmph. They'll be taking over London in just a few years...they're own flats, they're own jobs...families...children. I mean...they're just growing up so fast. Tony's got that brunette girl, dresses like a floozy-bint, sure, but who doesn't these days. Girls are always calling anyway, if, you know, it doesn't work out with Michelle. And thank goodness he's not...well, there's nothing wrong with it...but he used to be good friends with that kid in the flats on the other side of the downs, Maxxie. Should give his parents a ring, but just haven't been able to make the time these last few years. But can't help that nagging desire, every night...just wish that Tony would act right, you know? Pray for him, hard, really do. He plays way too much, and gets into trouble. Sure they adore him, but still, it's just no good. Effy, well she's another matter. Always home, straightaways right after school, like clockwork. Tried to get her on the flute or the cello; she's always changing her mind, and never really like to stick to one thing...but you know, that's ok too. Full marks last year, phenomenal. She always does hang around the batty girls though, doesn't like the drama of the snooty councilors’' girls, that's all. Likes to be in charge. Bet she'll be in business, a manager, a president, in corporate or something. God...just...it goes by so fast...It could be perfect, you know, if Tony shaped up a little. It's good, just wish it was perfect.

Last year, this time, Anthea went to bed with these thoughts in her head, good dreams. She prayed for perfection, and she was so close to getting it. She hoped for it with all her might, and she got it. It was the middle of the night and the phone rang. It was Tony calling from the hospital. Anthea woke up right away. It was Effy in the hospital. Anthea never could go back to sleep, not really...not peacefully, after that. She went to the hospital that night and sat the vigil over her daughter's sleeping body. Sleeping beauty. Drugs. She blamed Tony, of course, but even the next day, she knew that wasn't right. It wasn't right...it wasn't right...none of it was perfect like she'd hoped for.

It all came apart that night. The night she couldn't fall back asleep. Just a few days later Tony had his accident...and the world went black and white. It was like there were three voices in her head. One just said, "This is the voice in my head, this is the voice in my head, this is the voice in my head, this is the voice in my head..." Another told her what to think, "Pick up the dishes, they're dirty. Put them in the sink. Turn on the water. The water should be warm. Pick up the soap; you ought to buy more next time you go out...but can't go out, the hospital might call, and Tony may come out of his coma. The doctor said any day now...any day now...but he might not...He might not! What? How could this have happened? How could my children have been like this? All along. They never were bad kids. No, they were always so sweet. How could this happen? What did I do wrong?" The last voice just sounds like an alarm, constantly, incessantly, waking her up. It goes: "EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!" Just like that...forever.

How did the ship get off course? There was no storm. The compass and the map were all laid out, the sextant worked just fine. Everything was shipshape. Heh. How did it all go wrong? People change, and you never see it until it's too late.

A boy walks into a kitchen. He looks different, changed. "How long?" Tony asks his sister. She's hanging pink laundry from the ceiling, after the tempest. Like a ragged sail, the bulwark and the foremast, the underwear is strung up high to dry. Pink: red blended in white, blood on canvas. Don't rush me, she says, this is woman's work. "I'm down to my emergency underpants," he explains. They're a silly pair of boxer-briefs, a "Mind the gap!" pointing to his bollocks and his crack, and so they wait a beat for a laugh, but none comes.

"Milks, off, I wouldn't bother with breakfast," she says. Only in their underwear, the sister hoists the load back up to the skies, turning a wreckage into a mobile, a piece of art...the brother sits waiting for a call, a sign. He stares at his phone. "Still nothing?" she asks him. A shake of the head, no. "How many times have you called her?" Thirty-nine. "Texts?" One hundred and forty-one. (Shit. It's a lot any way you look at it.) "Nothing?" Nothing. Wow, Michelle really hates him, Effy remarks. She's gearing up for woman's work. This is how it looks like to guys, vigorous berating, loud, unruly stomping...that's how you get things clean. Tony really fucked things up. "Just stormed in there and fucked it right up-" Yes, alright. But...Tony loves her, he explains this, and states it as a fact. Girls never buy it. "Love? Love, love, love...what is it good for? Absolutely nothing." It's a bulky and unwieldy reading of the line, but it does have some heft to it, like a hammer between the eyes. Puts it all back in focus. Overhead, she continues her woman's work, drying the clothes, after the storm.

Effy leaves for school in the public school getup, which I can only liken to the Beauxbatons uniform, or Madeleine. Tony watches her leave from his window, like he used to do everyday. But this time she's leaving, not coming in from a hard night in the Underworld. Tony retreats back to his desk, on the side is a small portfolio, pasted in are pictures of Michelle. We don't know who made this. Was it made by him? For him? It's very Sid, which would be great if the whole Sid and Michelle thing had never happened. But none of these questions cross his face. Tony's smiling at the memories, like Sid did with her all the way back from day one, episode one. Like a goofy puppy dog in love. Mooning over a pretty girl, always unattainable, always close enough to touch. He dials her number for the fortieth time, and the phone rings, and rings, and rings. Like an alarm calling you to wakeup.

Michelle's in her room. She can't bear it. She can't answer the phone, nor can she turn off the alarm. It blares, it encroaches. It's in her mind now, not just out there, above the covers. She tries to hide the phone away, put it in a drawer, lock it up. Keeping quiet, that's woman's work, too. She's in bed, alert and awake. But the alarm still sounds, and it rings, and rings, and rings.

"And that, ladies, is why Monet was shit." Heh. It's true. Because there is nothing so banal, harmonious, clear, and oppressive as the singular perspective of nature. All of that intake, the plants, the animals, the open-air. Impressionism as oppression. Impressionists, their passion necessarily insular. Monet tried to kill himself, and Lady Deluca here, the woman with the vermilion, permed hair and the noir, over-stuffed collar and baggy-yoked blouse, she knows real pimps don't try to commit suicide. "As Lucian Freud once said to me, 'Waterlilies my arse.' I was modeling for him in the morning, stroking him to thrilling climax in the afternoon." The reverse conundrum, Oedipus' riddle to the sphinx: What's clean and dry in the morning; worked over, wet, and caressed all afternoon; and left hanging, fully consummated and disposed of at night? An artist's canvas. "'Enid,' he said. 'You'll never be an artist, but your breasts are tremendous.' And with great breasts come great responsibility. My task, one hundred percent A-grades through the medium of art. And we need coursework in the subject of emotion."

The girls look around from their easels, following her sermon. They continue to brush into existence their own landscapes, of their souls, not impressions of nature. This art room is about the human. The studio is a salon. Madame Deluca encourages each young girl, an emotion above their canvases, to continue to explore, to stroke, to stir, to push forth, to flower, to wake their feelings to life. One girl tries to creep an inert concept through: "horse." It's close, and Madame Deluca is patient about progress. But not with Effy, "Ah yes, Effy. Is there any hint of creative flowering, of gushing forth of self-expression?" No. There's just a blank canvas. "Well, as I understand it, for about 13,000 pounds of your parents money, we guarantee total success. So I suggest you unblock your gush, by Thursday." I swear, if you just whisper the word "penis" in that classroom, Madame Deluca will be on the floor, naked, knees up, and on her back in two shakes.

Sigh. As an aside: when it comes to art, I'm fairly unabashed in admitting I'm old school. Contemporary art is great and all, but at the end of the day it's about making love, and just plain fucking. There's a duty to art, because it reflects a certain morality. There's nothing wrong in valuing a Jaspar Johns' three time more than a Rembrandt, here in New York a Koons' goes for, what, like $25 million while an El Greco slides by for a paltry $14 million. At the end of the day it's just energy passing in the air. And at the end of the day, people want a certain energy back, they want Fuck. Love, I think, is a compositional, wayward science in this era of technology. It's alchemical when the world is technological. Love is mixing one and one of a thing and making a new color; Fuck is you and me putting ourselves together for a little bit of darkness in an altogether bright, shiny world. It's unfair that contemporary art be reduced to mere commensurable analogs of energy: cold, hard cash. Yes, money plays a part of it. You have an artist elite, saying this is worth this much, which of course comes to the ears of the prospect as this costs this much. You lose perspective in the economics, because the trade fundamentally singular, insular, evaluation as revelation. You see the irony here. 13,000 pounds becomes a lifetime of success, of expression. But that's contingent on the fact that you don't open your eyes and say it's worth something else. So it's not about what really is better, because that's impossible to say. That's all relative. But put into a system, with money, with message as energy instead of feeling...that's trying to put up walls around a system that doesn't quite get walls. It's human. It's the mind rejecting it again. That's the Stonems. Forever an alarm clock questioning your perspective, waking you up. That's Effy. That's woman's work.

Madame Deluca's back on a trip down memory lane: "Georges Braque once said to me-" "Uh, is this Mrs. Deluca's class?" A young Pippi Longstocking comes in, round and shiny like a tuppence piece. Madame Deluca rolls with the interruption, "No, child, this is Madame Deluca's studio. And who, pray tell, are you?" Pandora's new in this world, virginal in her innocence, her hair in pink knots, over a pink backpack. Even as she struggles to understand first and foremost this world, Madame Deluca tells her who she is. "Sit or strip? Either sit down, or divest yourself of your clothes so that we may feast upon your form with graphite and rubbers." That's woman's work if I've ever heard tell of it. The bell rings and Effy is pensive, Pandora's appalled and apprehensive. Poor girl, she's just going to die here.

The bells ring. The bells are an alarm. "The bells, ladies, they speak of achievement; they speak of the ecstasy of what...?" "Self-expression!" the chorus sings. Success and self-expression, the paradise we all seek, and everything that Madame Deluca promises. "Self-expression! Yes! Yes! Oh, yes!" The girls file out, a couple gossip about Madame, how one of their Daddy's knew her in Morocco, and how she was just gaga for Arabs. Yes, well, dur, young ladies. I bet the sand accounted for some necessary friction down that cavernous canal. Before Effy can leave, Madame calls her back. Thinking it's about the coursework Effy hesitates. But in fact, it's about Pandora. "I don't think we can leave a young girl to bloom unaided." Pandora sits there in her hat, sucking on a pen, ink innocently dribbling off her lips and down her chin. If only she could get it on a canvas instead. Madame tells her to not do that, and Pandora just doe-eyes a "why?" right back. "You see, an innocent," Madame says to Effy with her gooey, nectarine charm. "She needs a mentor, a guide, wouldn't you say." Effy's reluctant, but Madame pushes. Pandora admits she'd love the help, her being so useless...that's why she's there. "How perceptive you are. And Effy, one hundred percent success, or it's farewell to Westfield College for Young Ladies." This is the gun in Act One. Effy resigns herself, reiterating the threat of expulsion. "Well, yes, or it doesn't work at all does it?" This is that thing I was talking about. Bully for success and self-expression, but if self-expression naturally doesn't breed success, then we'll just give you back those 13,000 pounds, because at the end of the day we all just want Fuck, and you're a prostitute, and even if you know how to read, write, and make art, you're still getting money for being a fucking toilet. Madame Deluca sends them both off. "Off you go! Enjoy! Dampen yourselves with the thrill of art!"

Pandora's chasing Effy across the lawn. "Madame Deluca said we had to be friends!" Effy justifies that she doesn't have friends. "Great," Pandora assures. "I don't either!" She goes on to make a deal with Effy, who pretty much says she doesn't do "deals", which goes something like if Pandora can do something Effy can't do then they must be friends. Effy straight up tells her that there's nothing she can't do. Pandora's like, yeah, but watch this, I've got my rope and everything! Pandora's up in a tree, a regular primate, barely evolved enough to get it. This part's weird, and it seems like an awful expensive gag to pull for a bra joke. And I get that it somehow will tie into the magic-ness of Effy throught this episode, but it's lame. But the scene is saved, by Jake! He sidles up to Effy while Pandora's in the tree. Jake looks like an auburn, Bristol-version of McLovin' from Superbad. Effy's like, whatdya want? Jake winks and says she knows. Effy michelles that "that's not going to happen", all prim and falsetto in composure. And not even just as friends...ha, in his dreams. He reminds her she wasn't such an ice queen last night when they were necking, but Effy's just like, that was because he promised to help sell spliff for her tonight, remember? And then Jake's like, I wanna rub myself all over your body and I want to feel your deadly nightshade in the dark, oh yeah! They're totally the Ron and Hermione of next season.

So, this is all just a blatant exposition scene, because we all know that we're just waiting for Effy to become Queen B and Lord it over these peons. So who else thinks that next season they're all going to turn into highway bandits and Pandora's going to be the grease monkey? I feel like this show is going to be touching on some latent class thing that has been virtually intangible this entire series. I know I've been watching too much Gossip Girl but I can't help but thinking that this is like the last taboo subject that actually has relevance that'll be tackled next season. The whole "I can do something you can't do" is like Bristol code for classicism, because all these kids have as currency is their talent. Pandora somehow does this pointless bungee trick and houdinis out of her bra, and it wows everyone enough to get us to the next scene. Like this doesn't even have anything to do with anything else in this episode whatsoever. Whatever. Jake and Effy are all impressed, and I'm not.

Effy comes home to find Sid sitting next to the dustbins, Pandora in tow. Effy asks him if he's alright, and he nervously fuddles around not asking for Tony, so Effy has to do it for him. I wish she weren't such a bitch to Sid, because Sid probably's been scared of girls since his mom was never at home, and whenever he used to go over to Tony's to play Pro Effy probably shrieked at him and made him play dolls and pinched him and he's been traumatized by the female race ever since. And if she'd just smile at him once then I bet you ten bucks he'd have more than enough confidence to straighten this shit out himself.

Tony's sitting in the same spot he was in this morning. Tony's face struggles between snooty, relieved, and ecstatic to see Sid standing there. Sid asks how it's going and Tony says it's brilliant. Sid says he's worried about him since- "You stole my girlfriend." And we're back to this bullshit. Which is like...huh, ok...I get that Tony's been sitting at the table all day flipping his goddamn mobile trying to blame his shitty circumstances on someone. But Tony isn't stupid, in fact his whole shtick is that he gets what motivates people better than anyone else. So to poke Sid in the gut like that is kind of retarded, when Tony knows that Sid's whole thing with Michelle was 100% reactionary due to his abandonment-issue mechanisms kicking in. Tony knows that. And this isn't his usual narcissism brimming over, it's just the fact that he's been in his undies all day and sorely lacking some vitamin D and exercise. These kids need to take a page out of Pandora's book and climb a fucking tree.

Sid reminds him that Michelle's left him, too. So he sits and takes the carton of milk, that's been there since before that morning, and probably before that morning last Wednesday. Tony says help yourself, the usual trickster. Sid sips it and calls it "Tangy." The kids notice the post on the table, one is a package with Michelle's handwriting on it. Pandora picks it up, she loves the post! And I love saying "post!" Sid's looking at the package, which just came in with the rest of the post, like there's going to be a hibernating pit viper inside. Instead it's Tony's watch. Effy's deliberative. And Sid's scared about being abandoned again and likes the hot, tangy, poisonous milk from Tony's teat, so he blathers about how it was his fault for filling the gap between Michelle...no, not that gap, well figuratively, but also literally, but meant to be purely figurative...and cue Anthea Stonem. She drags herself in a cigarette in one hand, her robe off one shoulder, her mascara barely holding her face together. And in her dirtiest gin-voice she asks, "Who wants to hear my best cock gag?" The kids are all like, oh my God, no! But Anthea's like, "No, shh listen," and begins to fellate an invisible rod and after a second starts gagging. Pandora practically vomits and the rest of them are a little discomfited by this throwback Anthea that's landed in their midst.

But OMFG! Anthea Stonem is legend! I mean, I know how it looks now...but just imagine what she had to have been like to in the present fall into this jokey pattern as a safety net, while high on painkillers, while dealing with her children that she is spending all of her conscious effort not to deal with, while suppressing any maternal instincts that haven't been pharmacologically liquefied, and still make a cock joke tick off what little serotonin receptors she has that are still serviceable. Yeah, it's pathetic and unbecoming, but she delivered it just right, exactly like you know she did back in the '80's. I guarantee you that Anthea Stonem was fucking boss back in her day; like you think Lily van der Woodsen and Rufus Humphrey were hardcore all those years ago...you ain't seen shit! Anthea was bona fide. You just know it went down with her crawling across London June, '77, on absinthe or something, not much older than Effy, dirging to see the Sex Pistols in Chelsea, trying her best to avoid this fucking Uxbridge Teddyboy named Jim Stonem, but he thought it was so funny this little blonde girl was making cock jokes outside a pub at 3:00 in the morning....they fucked in the alley after she refused to give Glen Matlock a gobble. "Thank you very much! My name is Anthea Stonem, and I shall be here all week!"

Effy takes her mother back to bed. This is woman's work. "Did they not like my gag?" Effy serves up some more hope, "Yeah, they loved it..." Sid just sits and stares, wondering what would have happened if he's drawn his circle just a little bigger. It's comforting to keep insular during crises, to see things only as your eye catches it. That's Impressionism. Like Sid knows that there was nothing he could have done about anything in his own home...his mother was going to leave, and his father was always going to die. There was nothing he could have done. His circle was always really small, just around his computer and his bed, waiting for Cass, day in and day out. That was his world. He's wondering now if things would have been different, if the circle had been bigger, could he have saved the Stonem's home from the same pain? That's Constructivism. But upstairs, Effy is working hard to have a circle at all. She puts her mother down, reassures her, takes out her cigarette, and let's her fall back asleep. This is a throwback, like Mannerism, or something. A gentle touch. "Just have a nice little nap, after that, everything will be..." The light through the curtains is a bloody maroon, red on white, blood on canvas. Effy takes her pills away as Pandora enters. "Is she mental?" little P asks. No, just...tired. Pandora picks up the bedside family portrait, the four of them, the family. "Your brother's really nice..." He's not nice, Effy explains in earnest. He's amazing. Pandora notices a placard with an "I am a brain trauma victim" insert title. He was hit by a bus, you know, he had to learn everything again. How to swim, how to write his name, how to be her brother. This is Lyrical Abstraction.

All we ever saw season 1 was Tony covering for her, putting on her socks and hiding under her covers, to hide her from their parents. It was a nice relationship, it showed us a different side of him, how "nice" he was. And that wasn't wrong; he was a good guy at the end of the day, and undoubtedly loved his sister. For whatever reason, that's how they were raised, just like that, Effy was the good one, and got away free of consequence, while Tony took the brunt of it. They smothered Effy with so much unwarranted compassion, for better or for worse, she drank it in everyday. She would wake to it. Soon, she just stopped sleeping, she couldn't bare opening her eyes to that stifling feeling. Soon she didn't even spend her nights at home, it was everywhere. And there was Tony, eating shit, puking up his guts on the other side of this glass cage. Effy knew what would come at the end of it all: heartache. Tony couldn't help but shake the glass, just full on slam himself against it; he had no other out. It was a silly tragedy. Broken glass, and spoiled milk. It was everywhere. Effy did what she had to, ate up the compassion and the love, like lemonade. They sent her to a public school, 13,000 fucking quid a year. Out of love. She did that, accepted it, to be with her brother, to save him. Drank up the love, pushed it down. There's only so much you can drink, you know...before it's worse than eating shit itself.

Downstairs Sid admits that they, the two musketeers, aren't getting along, and Tony agrees. They're on the couch, Sid with his bong water in a milk carton. "I was lonely. Sometimes when bad things happen. You just need-" Michelle. "No!" Sid protests. She was Tony's girlfriend. But Sid makes the ultra-valid point that he didn't want her, that he'd dumped her, that she'd not wanted a thing to do with him at the time. But Tony anwars that, well, now he does, so fuck everyone else. For boys it's always going to be about dick-wagging, the girl's just...a girl. They reminisce about the first times; this is pre-Underworld, before even anima and Eurydice were on the scene for Tony's Orpheus. Tony asks Sid if he remembers how whenever they had a fight when they were little - "like the time you blamed me for shaving the class hamster?" - and Sid would come over on his pink bicycle - "it was magenta" - and they would do their little handshake and everything would be alright. Sid does remember, he remembers easy...but Tony's in the pink shirt now, so...

They try it out, the handshake, the ritual, the initiation rite. It goes smooth, but things aren't fitting properly. Aristophanes and Plato both knew Orpheus as a figure less adulterated by legend. As the historical king of Thrace, he was known for the Orphic rites of initiation, the teletai, the first cataloged in Hellenistic culture. They were the spells which brought a boy into manhood. Sometimes the gods just aren't listening, though, and the mystery rite must be performed again, and again, until you get it right. "That didn't work did it?" No, it didn't. Tony leaves for revisions, but Sid begs him to stay, to sort everything out. Tony says, the only way that's going to happen is if Sid somehow magically brings Michelle back to him. I wouldn't even joke about asking that type of thing around Sid, because I can't see any scenario where Sid wouldn't fuck it up and have that shit blow up all over Bristol.

Sid takes another swig of that shit, which looks like hamburger grease mixed with a little bit of turpentine. Whatever it is, he starts hearing voices: "You're an idiot. You were fucking the wrong girl. It's Cassie you like. You were only screwing Michelle, because, let's face it, men are dicks and there was no one else to screw. Which is totally fucking pathetic, isn't it?" Sid nods in agreement, until he realizes the voice is Effy sitting next to him on the couch. He asks her if anyone's ever told her that the whole sneaking up and getting inside other people's head, isn't cool. But it is fun! She's right though, she's always right, Sid explains. Both of them, Tony and Effy. Always fucking right. She warns him that the milk's two weeks old, but it's ok, cause he's got cocoa powder in it...chewy. And tangy.

Effy's got her eyes everywhere. She watches Sid and calculates. "Why do I always screw up?" he asks rhetorically. She agrees, he does seem pretty good at it, though. He shows her a picture from Cassie (it came in the post!) that invites him to fuck off and die, and then lists his woes, which are many. Effy, like a good woman, lists them right back, but puts them in their most utilitarian form. "You'd give anything to have it all fixed. But you're incapable of anything involving effort, focus, or subtlety. (Woman's work.) Women are a total mystery to you. (For the above reasons.) And you're good at art." Huh? She lays down her plan, to have Sid do her coursework, which is on emotion, and Sid seems very emotive. And in return, she'll sort out his fucking soap opera. Just this once. OMG, I can't wait!

Now, usually I'd go into the fucking screen right about now and sit Sid down on the couch and explain to him that listening to creepy girls three years younger than him about how to live his own, big-boy life is never a good thing. Because little girls are evil and they will fuck you up. But, because I know that if I even tried to get close to the screen, Effy would come out onto my side and grab onto my bullocks until the blood vessels in my eyeballs burst, so I'm just going to stay back here and hope Sid stays safe. Effy, please be good to him, but not too good.

Pandora's all squealy upstairs. She's trying on Effy's wardrobe for the dark months; at the moment she has a casual, black, frilly number on, something from last season's Tartarus party Sisyphus hosted, I think. She's twirling in the mirror, and right on cue, Persephone comes in "Oh, Effy, you have such a lovely lot of clothes. Pals always share don't they?" Pandora's phone rings, and she retrieves it from her bra. She doesn't have anything to hold things in yet. No purse, no jar, no box. I have a feeling it's gonna take an industrial strength can opener to pop the top off that one, when it comes (next season!). Pandora tells her mother how uber excited she is about her new friend, no not like the last one, no not one from the internet, and no, she really is a girl. Effy has better things to do than feel disgust or embarrassment or pity, and so do I, frankly. Pandora just isn't working for me yet. But that means she's doing her job really well.

The gods created Pandora bit by bit, each put a little into her. Her name means "gifted by all". Hesiod called her a "beautiful evil". She was the first woman. She was the first plague. Perfect in her femininity and also in her duplicity; and no one could predict the scope of the havoc she would inflict upon mankind. We thank the gods for such a humbling gift.

Effy and Pandora hit the streets. Big sis is teaching Little P woman's work. Effy's in her wind swept, Elysian Fields look. And the hair, my God the hair. It's soooooooo big. She'd fit right in with that in North Jersey where Carmela Soprano and Adriana Lacerva would spend all morning to make it look that trashy for Sunday mass. P's mum rings, wants to know what's up. Pandora: "Where we going, F?" F? (Is she fucking kidding me, this isn't the UES. Initials are MY domain!) "Yeah, where we going, Eff?" Pick up. "Pick up, what?" The phone rings again. Mum wants to know what they're going to pick up. Drugs. "Salad," Pandora lies. See, she didn't even need to learn duplicity! She'll be a real woman in no time! They arrive and Effy knocks the secret code. Cassie answers, crazed, looking like the Lady of Shallot. Easy breezy, they make their way in. Whose the new kid on the block, Cass wants to know. Pandora: she's a virgin, Effy explains. Cassie's like, yeah duh, when I was a Greek goddess in my last life, my gift to her was unconditioned, greasy hair, I'm sure that doesn't help her get laid.

Some woman comes around, "cool"-ing about the virgin, and announcing that Cass is an "awesome shag". Cass and the completely unremarkable woman start making out. Cass doesn't look that into it, to be honest. But Pandora's completely weirded out and says what the rest of us are thinking, "They're man and woman kissing!" Effy's too cool for school, and rolls up her sleeves for the hard part. She gets the blatantly useless option out of the way quickly: Sid's sorry, Michelle's bad, Sid loves you, 'nuff said. Of course it does jack shit, so Cass is like, "Tell him I've discovered the power of the pussy." Uh, ok. Whatever. I'm so done with this storyline. Like it's not even Skins hyper-real extraordinary. It's just plain extraboredinary. I mean, it's sexy...kinda...but, you know what I feel like, it's mostly just lazy writing. The writers needed like three words placed at dramatic moments, regardless of how unrealistic the scenes were, to catch your subconcious' attention, to weave together some semblance of thematic undertones for this to be even a passingly intriguing episode: woman's work, pussy, and sleeping beauty. Watch for them! Frankly, this whole episode could have been cut down to like six minutes, and would have been an awesome Unseener, but people aren't watching them like they should be! Wake up, people! The future is here, and it's multi-mediatastic!

We pan up from a couple of slugs (yes, real live slugs), one fucking huge as fuck and the other oozing delectably over it, and move to Cassie's mega-witch face. She looks so fugly! "That one's called Sidley (the tiny one, I'm sure) and that's Mischa. Isn't Mischa so pretty? Isn't it disgusting, Sidley sliming all over her?" Pandora makes an adorable face, and I just want to shake it off her. Are they doing it? "Yes. They. Are. Doing. It. When I'm ready, I'll pour salt over them, when I'm good and ready." Effy knows better than to tamper with voodoo mystery rites, so just asks to pick up the shit from Cass and wonders if she can pay her tomorrow for the goods. Pandora offers to pay now, and Effy looks at her and is like, oh, well I guess this purse does go with my dress. How much is it? Effy takes out the appropriate amount and stuffs the wallet back into her purse...er, I mean, between Pandora's boobs. Little P asks, "Are we gonna put some weeds in a reefer now and get honky?" Effy only hears the "gonna" and guesses the best answer is, "Not yet." Someone raps on the side door and Cassie invites him in. Shag #341 for her for the afternoon. Effy tries one more time, "And Sid? Any other thoughts?" Cassie replies that she's on a one way train to Dick City, and she loves it. If it's anything like Fuck It!, the town's in for one hell of ride. Pandora asks if Cassie's a whore (sorta, Little P, but actually she's just a toilet) and Effy just looks on and smiles.

Tony's sitting a vigil in the blood red room, next to his mother. Anthea named her son Anthony. St. Anthony is the patron saint of lost things. His phone in hand, he tries Michelle one last time before he throws it all away in resignation. He holds the watch. How much time do you let go by before you call it a loss? "I'm sorry I messed everything up. I'm sorry for not looking when I crossed the road. I'm sorry you got depressed. I'm sorry Dad couldn't handle being around at home. I love her, though," he confesses, giving her it all. Maybe if he throws it all at her, and he gets her to be a mum again, she'll wake. "I keep thinking...I'm keep thinking that she's just going to turn up at the door. What's the point? You can't hear me..." Effy's in the doorway, in between the wreckage and the room of blood and stillness. "She's our sleeping beauty," she explains. "Waiting for a prince." Tony's startled, and admonishes her for being so quiet. "Want some spliff?" It'll ease the nerves, but it makes him weird. "What, weirder than this?" LOL. I love this show and weed. If you watch this show and don't smoke, I'm not sure there's much you could possibly find gratifying about it. Just fuck it. "Why bother?" With what, Tony asks. "Caring about people."

He comes in close, by her ear. Heh. "You don't fool me, Effy Stonem." They gaze at their mother for a moment before they leave.

Let's talk about tragedy. How do you cope with loss; when your son died a year ago, and you know you'll never get to see him again, to touch his face, to hear him sing? How do you measure loss; when every time your daughter tells you he'll come back, that he'll be fine, that he's alive somewhere, all you can do is nod your head and let your heart be burdened with that sin, that knowledge that he's not? How do you accept loss; when you spent your entire life burning off everything that was you, striking a balance, waking up to a new world where you could forget the pain; a new world that you could paint on your canvas, with your blood, and your love? How much time do you let go by before you call it a loss; when the truth was, it always was for nothing?

Let's talk about art history. How do you cope with a new movement; when it comes on the scenes, challenging old thoughts, forcing you to glance directly at something you've never seen before, something askance, colors blended never conceived of? How do you measure art; when you must take into account its materiality, how it will fit somewhere, how it will be accepted, its originality, its potentiality? How do you accept this new theory; when your perspective and values have suddenly changed, along with everyone else's, for better or for worse, forever? How much time do you let go by before you call it what it really is: shit?

So, we have Lucian Freud with his avant-garde expressionism and surrealism. His was about the non-event, the silent, and the everyday. His subjects were the behind-the-scenes, and the lost. The meaning and intention, those were clear enough, but it was his drive to juxtapose and to weave together a perfect scene. Then there's Georges Braque, that takes the subject itself and doesn't just place it in the esoteric, but finds the hidden and the secrets in it. He explores perspective ad infinitum. Count the perspectives as they multiply. There's a sense of nothingness to it; there is a truth that says that no one can really see the truth, as there are infinite perspectives. It leads you to think like Madame Deluca: we're all whores; no one can ever truly love us, because no one can ever truly see us. Deluca is Effy last season, what with the objective morality, absence of higher meaning, and God and Daddy are dead. Well, that's just great, and yeah we all LOOOOOOOVED it when Effy was partying in the factory and all the goddamn secret parties she was secreting herself into, and all the sex, drugs, and tecktonik. That's Delucaism. It's fun, it's freedom gushing forth. It's perfection of youth. It's the crossing of wires, the secret beneath you, it devours from below, and it is perfect. Don't get me wrong, I love that shit, but in small doses. Because day in and day out, all secret parties do is expose a big bottomless hole beneath your feet.

It inflates our sense of self, when all we do is "feel". We seem unique to ourselves, our existence special. But feeding a hole in the earth keeps us locked to it. Inevitably, something happens. Call it chaos, chance, God...something happens on the individual level, or on the level of the human community and it hurts. September 11, 2001 : Tony hit by a bus :: an accident that changes everything, forever. It wakes us up! It's a burning. It makes us stop, shows us what doesn't work. It feels like death because it is. In that split second we get the greatest gift we can ever receive: we get a chance, we can see ourselves, see what doesn't work and see what's missing. Nihilism is great until something breaks, and you get poked hard in the eye and you're forced to understand that all things being equal, the universe isn't equal, or fair, or just. This is why we need the law, the opposite of feeling...which is the reverse of last week, but this is Effy Stonem, and her animus looks like Tony, the most amazing man in the world. Shit happens. Every generation, every time.

So now, you have a giant fucking hole under your feet, and you've already sacrificed everything to it. When all you are is your sense of self, an idea at its most selfish, what happens when that sense is hit by a bus and it just pops. It's so fragile and so delicate, it scares me to see people living like that. It's not "wrong" in the moralistic sense; it's just sad, that people can know how to live so well, and think that entails not knowing how to be happy. Everything that breaks comes from the things we refuse to acknowledge. But by the same token, things that are broken allow us to stop, to think, to examine and see what doesn't work; it allows us a moment to burn off what doesn't work, and in that heat and glory and grace, to rise. Everything that breaks can be "never broken". Linguistically, that doesn't make any sense, but think about it. It's not fixing the problem, but realizing that it was just you that refused to see that it was never broken, that you were too busy in the backyard burying all the shit in your life that had value. Never broken isn't the same as fixed. Just like infinite angles of Cubism isn't that same as just opening your eyes and seeing the truth. They sound like the same thing, and the subject is the same. But count the perspectives as they multiply. Art is just an alarm clock, and that message, whether it comes from nihilism or expressionism, I'm thankful for.

I want Madame Deluca to sit down next to the bed of a sleeping woman in a blood-red room for two minutes and explain to me how in this very Cubist world we live in, all I can see is sheer love. With infinite perspectives, how can there be a true one? Well, they're all true, none of them are wrong. But I want you to be sure that if you are going to really believe that, then you can do nothing but simply love everyone. That's the endgame. Mercy, forgiveness, kindness, growing up, balancing, rising, these are things you do for yourself. To love everyone is good for no one else better than it is good for you. That you need that final perspective. You looking at you. There is no failure or shame in Anthea Stonem, that was all burned away years ago. Where, in this little tableau, is there anything but the compassion of a mother who for too long stood on her feet and was strong for those she loved, until she was too exhausted, so she knelt down by her children's bed? I can't bear the cringe-worthy notion that there is nothing of value here but pure "emotion" just "gushing" forth. There is more, I promise you; there is hope.

Madame Deluca's Cubism and Expressionism are a little too nihilistic for my tastes, and just don't suit the show...or I should say that it does in a much too heavy-handed manner of form following function. Then again, this episode is about waking up to what's really obvious. This show's dialectic follows a different trend, like avant-garde in the original sense. I'm thinking Pre-Raphaelite, realism and anti-traditionalism done right, you know? Like I think this is a really Classical show, and really for reasons beyond the evident Shakespearean, Greek-tragedy narrative tropes; more, its sheer sumptuousness. You know what would be really cool? If the promos for Series 3 were prints of all the cast in various poses of mimesis of Hellenistic culture...or wait! Even better! Something like Quattrocentro Byzantine frescoes parodying various saints! Omg! The debacle! It would be awesome!

Count the perspectives as they multiply. All those viewpoints Effy holds in her hand, that she carries with her, as she works them together. She is Persephone of the springtime, potentiality, the flower bud in anticipation. Speaking of bud, Pandora's on the couch with a mega J, her head whirling, suddenly heavy in the wrong places. Her eyes lay anchor somewhere around Tony, sitting next to her. An alarm goes off; it's her phone, and she tells mom she's fine, super-duper fine, in fact. She is merely one girl, and she merely wants one boy. She stalks about her territory, as she answers the questions: "Yep...with my friends...and they're like so fucking amazing...well, I guess I'm looking at Tony's cock...he can't tell!" Tony crosses his legs, uncrosses them, stares, does whatever the hell he can to get away, wishes Effy were there. And thank goodness for the doorbell!

Pandora takes a nap, while Tony finds Sid at the front door. He smirks as Sid asks if Effy's in. Sid looks like a puppy and has his hands full of some things in a paper bag. Sigh...long story short, Tony chest pounds about how Sid's trying to steal Effy or something, and remphasizing that she's all young and still smarter than you. Blah blah blah, bullshit. Shitty writing, shitty narrative structure, shitty scene. We get it! Tony and Sid don't like each other right now, they aren't best friends! Everyone clear on that? Ok, well it sorta makes sense in light of the next scene: In Effy's room, she's almost naked, pre-flight prep. She gives him the rundown. Dip your brush in that, move it up and down like that...like he's a retard, which he is. "And don't even think of leaving this room until you've done it!" Sid's anxious; where's she going anyway? She tells him she's going out. He starts to backdown, saying it doesn't look like it's going to work. Effy doesn't have time for this bullshit, so she pulls the anxiety card again and starts bouncing on the bed, crooning to Sid, telling him it's so big, yes, yes, yes! Tony's nightmare again, and Sid doesn't want to try and deal with it either. He concedes. Effy buttons up and leaves; in the mirror Sid says a quiet prayer for respite, but I tried to warn him about little girls and their big hair! Watch out for girls who demand to be on top...remember what happened to Adam!

Before Hesiod wrote his Theogony or his Works and Days, authors somewhere farther East wrote about the first women. You see Adam didn't have just one wife, not at first. Adam had three wives. When God first blew His breath into the first human being, what arose from the clay was an androgynous titan, perfect in His likeness. The poor creature was of two minds, naturally, its duality forced it into a state of perpetual indecisiveness, so God split it right down the middle, and so formed Adam and Lilith. The two were partners and equal in every way. When it came to sex even, you see, Lilith refused to perform a subservient role, demanding, rather, to be on top. Adam never did get accustomed to this and asked God to intervene; angels came down to Eden and demanded Lilith to allow Adam the dominant role. She would not acquiesce, not ever. She screamed God's ineffable name; the screech, an alarm to the heavens. The world shook in fear at the consequences. She banished herself from paradise, preferring wicked freedom to slavery of her will. She made her home far away, by the red sea, by poisoned waters; there she copulated with demons and angels that still roamed the earth in those days. Because she was the first woman, her amazing fecundity allowed her to produce vast amounts of children, the Lilim. The Lilim were legion, and still remain haunting the world today, vampires and succubi, in the shadows, awaiting their prey, the sons of Adam.

Effy leads them down the dark paths, east of Eden, where she's been many times before. Nestled behind a narrow alley, the three approach Jail Bait. Tony worries about leaving the house, concerned about comatose Anthea. Effy warns Tony to stop being such a bore, and I'm with her. Pandora graces us with her opinion, explaining how Tony's a good boy, that her mum can sniff out bad ones like a blood hound 'cause all they want is to get into her knickers. Pandora's mum isn't wrong, not really ever, it's just mum's such a shrewish head-wound of a woman it's hard to see Pandora for what she really is. All Pandora's mum ever hoped for, wished for, and prayed for was for her girl to grow up into a woman. That's it. It's hard to see that little P's doing just that.

Effy smoothes everything over, tells Pandora to shut it without hurting her feelings, and suggest Tony stop being a prick and to just follow her lead. "Hi, Reg," Effy bats her eyes and slithers into her cutest smile. Reg calls her sweetheart and brightens when Effy asks him about his novel. He confesses to having trouble with the denouement, his publishers are having trouble with his post-modernist chapter structure. And like, word. He's talking about this whole episode obviously. Actually, this episode isn't even the denouement, the writers have made it some dreary act II recapitulation instead of a fun party episode getting everyone back up top so that we can have the emotional shock of the oh-so-fun act III crazy disaster they've got cooking up for the finale. But I suppose classic story structure does go out the window when you have such an amazingly crazy show like this. At least their admitting their problems.

"Hang on!" Reg stops himself. "Who's this?" pointing to Pandora, a "21 and over" sign blaring behind him. "How old are you love? Twelve?" She tries for thirty-two, and everyone sighs. Like a baby with her first steps. Effy stays her hand, maternally letting the young ones fly by themselves. Reg lumbers over towering over the little girl. "I think you're taking a piss little girl. And I don't like it when little girls take a piss. You wanna know what I do with little girls who take a piss? DO YA? EH?" Pandora shits herself but Effy just smiles. "I give 'em a lollipop! Go on in girls, have a good one." Tension eased, they enter Jail Bait, with Tony queuing in to go, but Reg stops him. Hey! ID! No lollipop for him! That would be Effy's doing, if there was ever a doubt in your mind.

Effy stalks through the club. She tastes it on her skin, the pomegranate glow. It tantalizes. Burns like a fire in the throat; the music a hammer on the senses, a forge in the dark. She's home. Pandora's never been to the Underworld, her mother never taught her that being a real woman required going way down, getting really dirty. She wows about it with the lolli between her teeth. Intrusive hands creep over Effy's eyes. "Want to make fuck-fuck with nice sexy boy?" he asks. Effy drops back into her roll, telling Jake to piss off. Effy, the virago, only allows a few more lame attempts at a pick-up before just full on giving him a wedgie like a ridiculous little boy. "Holy--!" She takes his breath away. Then without pause, she maps out the night for him as he literally cries: spliff to sell, he deals the weed, she's got the pills, dickie back in the pants, 'nuff said. Pandora watchs mama bear taking notes with her eyes. "Make over a hundred quid, and I'll make sure you get laid," Effy ensures. Just as friends? "Just as friends." Effy says exactly what it takes to get the job done. They nod to each other then look around, they're alone. All of a sudden Pandora's gone utterly honky, and I just can't even describe the beauty that is Pandora's utter cringe-worthiness and lameness, played out in a wonderfully choreographed contemporary dance lyrical. It's Julia Glick-tastic, and I'm starting to actually fondly tolerating her for it. Anyway, Eff and Jake look at each other and bounce, work to do, woman and man's alike.

Pandora dances with movements not her own, a little bit of Apollo, a dash of Athena, a heck of a lot of Hephaestus. She isn't a unity yet, there are many perspectives, and the music brings them together. Across town a myriad of emotions flows through Sid's hand, yet the final work is a constipated mess. "Hope," it reads across a lame heart. It won't do. He takes out a cigarette, but nothing will manage to unblock his gush. It's...hopeless. He searches in vain, for something, anything. In a cupboard, a bottle of Courvoisier, a note: "Don't even think about it!" stuck to the front. Effy says exactly what it takes to get the job done. He slugs it down, breathes in the message. The message is hope. He gets to work.

Effy sits on her thrown, a toilet in a ruddy stall. Taking a break from the easy-bit, the legwork. Next stall over, Pandora's learning how to be a woman. She wows about how they're totally besties going to the loo together, like in the movies, because Pandora's mom totally made her stay home Friday nights and watch Lifetime movies with her about teen, statutory rape, which is why she's into 32 year-old, pervy internet boyfriends and whatever. Just saying, Mom...you ain't got no one to blame but yourself! Pandora asks for some paper; Effy shrugs that she doesn't have any in her over-stocked stall. Be a woman, Pandora, use your hand! Pandora asks for some pills, as if getting honky weren't enough for one night...Effy's counting down the seconds, 'cause she's gotta time this right, and finally agrees. "Oh, for Christ's sake! One! And you puke on your own!" That's woman's work. "You owe me three quid." So, Tony should be about ready outside, and she moves all the pawns into check. Effy says exactly what it takes to get the job done. No more, no less. Watch as she performs the greatest escape act, and doesn't even have to get out of her bra! Oh, see I knew she would one up Pandora on that one. I love Eff so much!

Annnnnnnd....she was right! Tony's finishing his job, getting an unhappy bouncer to bounce with happiness. Tony's reading the manuscript in the alley, and the dude asks him what he thinks of it. "Oh yes. But..." BUT? "The character arcs are immaculately achieved with a good degree of stylistic control." (I completely agree.) "I especially like the doorman with superpowers." (Ha! This wink is a little less clear, but I'm pretty sure they're talking about Effy. I'll explain why later.) "Vaporizing Reeboks...very nice. But you need to move the climactic development back, so the orgy scene comes before the disemboweling of the elvic horde." (I won't parse it, because it'll give away the finale. But again, I'm glad the writers are fessing up to their suckiness, albeit in this oh so too cute Skinsy way. I still love you, show!) The bouncer looks confused, then starts to warm up to it. (Like me!) And that's Tony's ticket in to Jail Bait, lolli complimentary. Right on cue, Tony enters just in time to see Effy selling off his broken watch Michelle sent him (in the post!) and he kind of goes mental. Effy's great, just daring him to do something, and he's shouting all, "What the fuck are you doing? You just sold Michelle's watch!" Let it go, she demands. Effy says exactly what it takes to get the job done. It's time to let it all go. How long do you go before you call it a loss? Michelle did. And right on cue, Pandora springs into action, all over, rubbing herself all over him like Jake wishes Effy would do. Little P thinks Tony's a lolli, but before she can get to the tootsie roll center she shorts out. Effy's like, pick that up and come with me, and of course he does. She takes them all home, a little wiser, and a little more awake.

Hopeless. Nothing makes sense, it's a silent form behind dark clouds. The emotion reverberates through the dark room, like an owl's face turning upside-down: Sid's painting. Hope. Hopeless. Effy stares up at the ceiling, Pandora safely clings to her in slumber. On the other side of the bed, a figure stirs, and Effy let's it wake just enough. Jake, another sleeping beauty, stares up at his dark queen: "Well hello...one hundred and thirty English pounds. I come to claim my prize. American pie." Effy let's him know he'll get exactly what he wished for. Lucky him. He can't tell if it's a dream as her beautiful face comes close. "Just..." she says and he wakes fully. "One thing." He thought they were gonna get jiggy! Come on! "I said you'd get laid Jake. And you will. You will. Don't worry. You're gonna love this." Oh yes!

Jake knocks on Cassie's door the next morning and it all but takes a wink to get him inside. Cassie tries out some foreplay, which, as we see, is having Jake caress Sidley on his arm. Cassie's Delucaism is even weirder than the Madame's; it isn't Arabs or French artists. She's got a slug fetish. And that's some Skins bullshit right there, only they could come up with something like that. I guess the humane society doesn't give a shit about mollusks biting it on-screen. But the metaphor is there somewhere...androgynous giant piles of slime. I like that! Adam way before the Fall, Adam before he was human, before we were imperfect, before we broke down in division, and the one perspectives that broke into two, then into three, then into infinite. We were all just slugs. Cassie likes that, the singularity that she tries so desperately to get back to. Cassies listens to Jake's story, about his friend that screwed him over or whatever. The vengeance gets her even hotter than the slugs and she's like, yeah that shit happened to me to, fuck relationships, I'm into mindless sex now! Jake's like, oh yeah, me too, mindless sex good, do me here, by this window. And how old is he? He says older than he looks. "The grief, it takes years off you." Tell that to Monet. Isn't it disgusting how Cassie slimes all over him, albeit just as friends? Outside Effy pulls a Sketch and clicks away with a camera.

We pan away from an empty bottle of bourbon to Sid's dimpled face and he wakes up super groggy still in Effy's room. He realizes soon enough that he has pictures taped to him, and to the desk, and the wall, and everywhere...all of Cassie in compromising, groping positions and it's a message. Cassie, the love of his life, acting with eyes open. The same message it's always been. With a scream, horrified, he wakes himself up, an alarm. From hopelessness to hope.

Adam had another wife, after Lilith, before Eve. Alone and hopeless, Adam tended his garden, until his prayers were answered. God created her from nothing, with open eyes, drawing together the substances and elements: blood, mucus, marrow, membrane, tissue, bile, and slime. Together, piece by piece, inside out, He breathed in her a special life. Before his eyes, Adam saw all that made her, and in that all that he, too, was made of. Horrified, he couldn't even bring himself to touch her. He couldn't even bring himself to love her, or to name her. Nameless she remained for a short time before God shut Adam's eyes.

On the ground lies a broken mobile; Tony sits in a dark shirt and his pink underwear. Effy slinks nearby. He looks up to his sister, telling her that the phone is buggered, broken. He's given up sounding the alarm, trying to rattle the cage, getting a sleeping beauty to wake; hopeless. There's no use in calling anyway, her voicemail's off, and if only he could leave her a message...but it just rings, and rings, and rings. " You really don't understand anything do you?" Effy asks calmly amid the wreckage of a storm. "As long as it's ringing, she knows you're there." Like an alarm. Telling her that you're still hoping, praying, needing her perfection. He tells her he's disappointed she sold Michelle's watch. Effy takes up to leave, "Who said I sold it? Here, use my phone. Call her. I'm going out."

Michelle, a sleeping beauty, sits in bed waiting for her kiss. The phone by her side doesn't ring, but the front door does, and her mother calls for her to come get a parcel. Inside the package is a purple box, the color of Pandora's royalty; at the bottom is the last thing in the universe we need to make us whole, to make us human. It's a message, and it's the same message we all tell, every generation, every time. It's Hope. And as Michelle pulls out a perfect, shiny, new watch, both fixed and never broken, she reacts to it like the most beautiful piece of art she's ever seen. "Forever."

Across town, Sid runs through the streets until he comes to a house full of slugs. He knocks on the door, and knocks, and knocks. Chris answers, telling him she doesn't want to see him, to leave it, to give up hope. Sid shoves through anyway, and walks into the room, pointing at his love, the one that woke him to life, that tempted him to manhood, that showed him he could stand up. He demands to know what she thinks she is doing. Chris gives him a warning, to watch it, or he'll..."Bite his head off and spit in the hole." Chris looks intimidating, adorably nodding in agreement ("Well, wouldn't do that...but...Yeah, watch it!")

Cassie sits demurely on her own thrown, another toilet filled by her own shit, slime and fuckery. "What do you want, Sid?" To stop what she's doing. The fuckery. "You started it." It doesn't matter. He hates her, what she's become. Her cruelty. "Hate you right back. Why don't you pop over to Michelle's and give her one? Oh, another one!" Sid's like, just give it a fucking rest. (And I'm kind of in agreement. Didn't we already have this talk, Cassie? Vengeance and magic destruction = bad!) It's Sid and Cassie forever. That's the rule. She knows it, and she's just refusing to acknowledge it. "My turn!" Why did she have to go away? He begs the question, which is at the crux of the whole thing. He needed her, and she just pissed off. She looks down, not knowing the answer herself, but knowing what the truth of it means. Sid explains how his dad said that Cassie was special, now Sid knows better. A slut. Like all women. "Michelle, Sid, Michelle!" But he never loved Michelle, he always just loved Cass. He sits down, on the verge of tears.

Sid lays it all out for her: "Where were you? Dad fucking died...And Michelle, we had great sex for three days. Then lousy sex for the rest. But so what! I don't care. I don't...hate you. So...just go fuck fifteen year olds, I'm sick of saying sorry. I love you. And I'm so sorry." She feels the pain, and plays it out on her face. Hannah Murray returns from Fugly, finally. Cassie explains that she never fucked Jake, and that his mother had sewn his name into his trousers (a prayer for his chastity and well-being), and he'd, well, gotten a bit excited. Besides he crushed Sidley. So she threw him out, and all the rest of the fuckery with it.

Sid grabs her and they slide down to the couch all horizontal like. Chris comes in to check on them, and promptly checks out, hopefully taking Jal with him. Well, you can't get rid of all the fuckery.

This episode is about women. Mothers and daughters, virgins and whores, maidens and witches. Watch as they do women's work, all of them: hoping. They all had hopes and dreams, wishes and prayers. Watch as they all come true, or came true, and the consequences of that immense power. All from a single emotion gushing forth. Hope.

When you become a mommy, you enter into an age of dreams. You live perpetually under the fractious tyranny of hope, the world bleached an unholy white of utter potentiality. You fall into one perspective, one dimension. All you know is the future, the need for it to not be just better, or fair, or safe, or optimal, but perfect. The world must be this way, because these are your children, your flesh and blood, entering into this reality that you fucked up. You do everything you can do in your power, things you never believed you could accomplish so that all is perfect, because it needs to be. Period. That’s Anthea Stonem and Pandora’s mum, fighting so hard for perfection that they close their eyes to the fact that their children already are. As a mother, you do things even beyond your power, you believe, you pray, you hope. I have nothing but the utmost respect and love for my mother. The thing is, count the angles as they multiply. When someone loves you like that, can see all your angles, and still love you more than anything, and push you again and again, with love; after you've hit rock bottom, they are the rock. They hope with everything they have. When those dreams finally come to fruition, in whatever form, they're spent, body and soul. Michelle and Cassie and Anthea and Pandora's mum, sleeping beauties, each exhausted, because their prayers for perfection all came true. But how do you come to realize that, how do you wake up, how do you let the prince charming take you by the hand and let you stop hoping and finally live.

Tony tries one more time, on Effy's phone. The phone rings, and rings, and rings. And then...the ringing stops. "I love you, too."

Madame Deluca tells us that time’s up. She and Effy stroll through her studio, gushing with emotion. The alarm's gone off, Madame explains, which means it's time for life to begin again. She commends all the girls' works, even Pandora, who has some mild talent! We're shocked Effy turned in Sid's piece on behalf of her friend, but all smile finally getting the message. Sid's work, the heart etched with a message on it, entitled "Hopeless" but meaning Hope. All that we need is Effy's A-grade piece of art, and the record will be set. Effy tells her it is, in fact, finished, and it depicts the gamut: anger, jealousy, bitterness, tiredness, hope, lust...love. A veritable feast. But where is it? It's everywhere. It's life. Madame Deluca doesn't understand. Anyway, the gun is cocked and Effy pulls the trigger, they both know what it all means. It's the end. Effy says she won't be completing the year, and full A-grades are assured. "Goodbye, Effy." Oh, and one more thing, "Effy. I was going to tell you about Georges Braque. He was a very great artist - but also truly remarkable at oral sex - anyway, he gave me some advice. 'If they don't like it, fuck 'em!'" This isn’t a suicide, because Effy was a whore, letting herself be used to save her family and her brother, but that isn’t who she is. Madame Deluca knows that Effy’s a pimp, and pimp’s don’t commit suicide. “Oh Georges, Georges...Georges.”

The point is to not forget the pain, to run away and hide from it, to absorb it and turn it into a sex fetish or an eating disorder or an addiction...that's all just a blatant reminder that the ego is still in control. It's still in control and its rattling you against the cages of structure, or society, reminding you that you are still you every single time. To be redeemed, you must make a sacrifice, burn off that which makes you, you. It is a process, ask Tony. That's redemption. All redemption is is remembering that we've always been redeemed, and that paradise is right here, right now. It's the hardest thing to grasp, and we don't ever want to make the sacrifice. If you do, then you're not doing it right. It's about burning, burning and fighting to burn, from now until forever.

The episode is a disaster. It's all this shit pieced together. It's a ringing in the ears, and in the heart. The alarm. It's a Kitsune remix of everything Girltalk you like together beat once Crystal the break stutter shutter Diplo the Castle breakdown. And put together again in a beautiful song. It's how all the songs play. You recognize a little bit of it, and suddenly you're slammed into a tangent that produces something new. A different angle, a different perspective of the same thing. You don't get it, it's cutting it up, and putting together again. In the meantime, you have this din, a cacophony. It sounds like an alarm in the head, "EEEEEEE!" forever and ever. It sounds like a cell-phone call from the same person, the only person that matters, calling you again and again and again. The cacophony is an alarm telling you to wake up. It's what this show is best at, cutting it up, like your favorite music, and piecing it back together again.

I didn't like this episode because it fits wrong. This shouldn't go here. This redemption, it makes Effy's work look foolish and juvenile when compared to the sacrifice we saw last week. It feels silly logically, and logistically. There is an error that points us to the very baseness that is our humanity: that we blind ourselves from the truths around us. Tony is awake, but Mom is blind to it; Sid always loved Cassie, but she needed to jolt out of him a consolation; Tony always loved Michelle, but she needed to see the act before she could accept it. It's all about opening your eyes, to seeing what was always there. To wake the fuck up! The world doesn't go away when you close your eyes, it doesn't pause when you sleep. You wake up and see the truth that you always knew to be there. I'd like to reprimand them all for being lazy, for not just opening their eyes, but then I remember that I've had my eyes closed, too, that we're all just human. It takes great poetry to even remind us that we're alive, that we're awake..."Miles to go before I sleep" and all that jazz. And that life wouldn't be worth living if everyday we didn't open our eyes and just wake.

This show has been about watching eight kids define their roles in this world; if that's what this show is, then this episode is about how we define the world itself. It's a bizarre episode, anti-structure to last week's labyrinthine hyper-structure. Effy's been a character not just of mystery, but intentionally calculates exactly how to hide in the shadows...keeps close to the walls of the maze, and goes through it at her own pace. So, I'm starting to get what's going on with her. It was never a mess, the ships never wrecked...it just looked like a fucking tsunami from this angle, it only felt like despair through this mirror. Art, good art, makes the most difficult processes and mindsets bearable. Good art is about changing perspective, adjusting the light, shifting your stance and your trajectory, to see the goal, find the goal, and bear down on it. You do that with the entire world, change your perspective. This is your life. It only looks like a disaster from a certain angle. Step back, and let the colors blend. The world goes technicolor when you discover the truth.

Daddy comes in to a clean house. It’s ordered, neat, tidy, completely fixed. When Daddy's gone, you haven't got a voice telling you your role and your function; therefore you haven't got any choice but to take up a new one. "Hello!" Daddy calls out. "I'm back!" Tony hurtles down the stairs to meet him in a well-organized brown shirt and matching tie. Tony's smiling, and so is Dad. "Let me come back early. Where's Mum?" Asleep. Not awake. A problem? "Ah, well she won't mind if I go up. Tired after the flight, you know. Feeling ok, son?" Tony nods. "Good, that's really good. What you been up to?" Tony says "revision" and that it's good to have his dad back home. Truer words he's never spoken.

Dad enters a blood-red chamber and crosses over to where a beautiful maiden, or a mother, or a tired old crone sleep, we can't tell which from this angle. But as he crosses the threshold he approaches her, and wakes her with a kiss. She sighs awake and her eyes flutter. "Jim. I've been asleep. Is everything alright?" Yes. Everything is. They kiss.

God created Eve from Adam's side whilst he slept. She woke him with a kiss, like an alarm, and that's when life began.

The other first woman, Pandora, brings this message: we are made up of the stuff of dreams, put together in all our vanity by a disparate committee of gods, never to know anything besides this constant struggle between our sundry identities within ourselves. There is no hope here, make no mistake. Pandora spoke with the gods and knew that there was nothing magical about them...awesome and powerful, but only a group of fucked up teenagers really. At the end of the day, the gods, they are just a structure that you must take over for yourself. There are nightmares out there that even the gods fear. You're born, you live, and you die...there is no waking up from that truth.

Inside Pandora's jar are a million evils, that escape to determine our reality. They are Lilith's vampires, succubi, and demons that haunt us, the vile sins we inflict upon each other and on our selves. Yet, we toil in this existence, our time here dreary and depressing. Only one thing was she able to keep in the jar: hope. It's the hope that we may one day overcome those banalities of evil. We did not lose that. All is not lost. We live not in a hopeless world at all, but we are all hopelessly human. The best, and worst, we can do is to hope, just hope that it all turns out OK. The wise among us will say we ought to not even invite change, that perfection is here, and to appreciate what life brings and the things in life that you have made, the grand and the small. The wiser will say to you that human nature is such that we will always strive for change and for our visions of perfection, and that we cannot thwart that original fallibility etched into our very being, so all is rather pointless. I think, charitably, that the wisest of us will recognize that in this world we live in, in this reality, we tend to get what we want. And the price of getting what we want, in the end, is having what we once wanted.

Count the prayers as they come true. How many times have you been unhappy after getting exactly what you asked for, after praying for it so hard and when it comes to you it's all wrong, after hoping for it and then seeing it destroy everything you'd become? Everyone's got one, and for the most part, everyone's gotten what they wanted: Mom, Tony, Jake, Pandora, her mum, Cassie, Michelle, a bouncer, even Dad. So that leaves Effy, doing woman's work, grown up's work. I think that what woman's work is at the end of the day is not really waking every one up to their hearts desires, but giving them hope.

Remember how I said the hardest part wasn't just learning the lesson but applying it here and now from today until the day you die? It kind of looks like this. You get everything you want, but it takes time for you to wake up to what that means. That's the denouement. It's hard to write, and even harder to live. Nothing really ever changes, hasn't been much different in any society anywhere around the world from way back whenever to now. We all tell the same stories, and they go something like this: somebody wanted something, and they usually get it.
This is perspective; count the angles as they multiply. Pandora was made from a million different gods, but she was only one, a unity. Adam had three wives, but really he only had one. And you see how Adam got exactly what he wanted three times over! All three of his wives fucked him (no pun intended) in their own way. There was Lilith, mother to many; then the Nameless, a forever virgin; and Eve, the crone, the oldest woman to ever live. Effy has been all these women. Silent, gracious, accepting; as a virginal young girl she let them take her to an awful whorehouse of a public school, let shit fall apart, let it all land on her shoulders, let them see her standing there, giving and mute. Moving, caring, compassionate; she played the mother, coaxing out the best emotions from the people around her, bothering to care for those she loved, and those she didn't, making sure that everyone got exactly what they needed and squared it all away. Screaming, rattling, tempestuous; a bitch and a virago, she whored herself out in her own way, enough to get the alarms running, the screams waking people up, opening their eyes, making them see the other perspectives and the truths that were there all along. Woman's work. Women. As mothers, they wake us all to life itself; as virgins, they wake us to manhood; as crones, they wake us to death.

We enter a room, bright with sun, and sweet music plays softly. It's a young girl's room, on the threshold of womanhood, colorful in its pastel activity. Springtime again. She comes home only once a year, when she comes to wake the world from its mournful slumber. That is her sadness and her responsibility, and that is her joy. Three women named Effy sit in their room by the windowsill reading a book. And before you get to hear the melody (the true music behind the alarm), before we get that last treat, we get the wink, the gift given up, of hope, telling us it's all going to be OK.

Here's the final piece of the puzzle, the last perspective, which is us...ours. Before Effy turns to meet our eyes, to gives us a slight nod, to let us known that ours, too, is another perspective in a complex infinite net cast out around it all. Everything she's said in this entire episode was meant for no one but you. Actor, action, acted, and observer, all together. Like a piece of art. Before that, we see her sitting there, reading; the book itself is a message. It's by Braque, father of Cubism and the potentiality of infinite perspective, under modernist theory, yes that deserves a wink; but there is the book itself. The fact that she is reading, the torch passed down from her brother (we know how he loves books). Book: symbol of individuality. Books, by their very form, define this one perspective, this one voice of one perspective; the book, that's linear, a single strand. But the story played out on screen is a system, one a multitude of platforms, a network, a web, a skin. It's multiple voices through multiple episodes, the genre of story re-initiated and replayed by new rules brought together with flesh and blood, skin. The story is this: that the moral of the story is the story. And it goes around in a circle forever. It's the lovely paradox of the network, of that which is woven: individually we are so weak, even together it's impossible to get shit done right most of the time. Then enters that invisible hand, that steers without authority, that corrects where connection needs mending...it's love that guides us, in point of fact. And how is it that this particular connection makes everything right; when really no action was needed? She didn't have to do anything, not really, only had to show you what it was like to see the same things from a different perspective. That's the moral of the story: all we do in life is keep the story going by taking a moment to look at it again with open eyes.

And here she looks at you with those eyes, shining like stars. You'll see them again and again for seasons to come. All you have to do is open your eyes. And only wake!

Skins - Episode 6: Tony

Previously on Skins, Tony couldn't get better for Michelle, Sid was lonely and was having trouble coping with life, ditto Michelle, so they start trying to cope on each other's bodies, Cassie turned into Bellatrix Lestrange and is still kind of thinking about suicide, Chris and Jal kiss...and kids, that's how you get preggers so stop touching each other!

There's a screech and then everything goes blank. That's when Tony wakes up. Have you ever had the dream where you're...Wait! No! Stop, ok, before we go on, I just have to give y'all a warning: reader's discretion advised from here on out. I'll just say that this episode delves into the only form of knowledge I can claim any sort of authority of, only because this is the stuff I bathe in, live in. This is the stuff I eat, drink, and quite literally sleep. We're talking about dreams here. I'll just say this and then get back to the good part. This episode is amazing because it is the truest form of understanding you can have as a human in this world. And I'm not just gushing and pre-cumming over this particular episode like I usually do on this show because we're talking about something I find vastly more incommensurable. Whatever that is, the writers of this show are really pulling out all the stops. If you'd told me season one that they were going to try to tackle principal subject matter like this, I would have probably laughed in your face, and then I would have punched it because I would have considered it blasphemy...but now, I'm glad that someone's gutsy enough to even tackle the notion of story itself.

So back to it. Tony wakes from a nightmare. If you haven't seen the Unseen Skins episodes, watch them; they're getting better and better and more interesting as the season progresses. But one of the Unseen episodes is Tony's nightmare. It goes something like this: Tony's got a jigsaw laid out on the table, he's puzzling through it piece by piece. "How's it going, Pro?" Sid says appearing in front of the door inside Tony's room. Sid's wearing a plum colored cardigan over a white shirt, a slight hint of royalty, sans beanie. "What? What are you doing here? We haven't played Pro in ages." Tony says about an old video game, continuing with the puzzle. We get a glance at his room, plain white, like the underwear that he's wearing, random picture lined on the walls. "Master league! I will be the master!" Sid says. "I've gotta finish this," is Tony's excuse about the puzzle. "Cool," Sid posits, Nonchalant as fuck. "Hurry up..." Sid's looking at his watch, agitated. Tony's trying to concentrate. It's getting harder, not easier.

"Met a girl," Sid continues in the dream. "Oh, yeah? What's she like?" "You know Kelly Brook? Well, she's nothing like her. She's hot and she likes me." In dreams all girls are the same girl. Tony's like, that's nice, but he's all about the puzzle. Sid moves in for the kill: "Can I ask you a question? It's about sex...Well, when me and this new girl are doing it, she's always shouting some other guy's name. But not like she wants him, but like she wants to get rid of him. Like she hates him." "What's his name?" "You're having real trouble there aren't you?" "It's fine, what's the other guy's name?" "You'll never get out of this room..." "What's his name?" " Sure, I can help you."

Sid starts piecing together Tony's mind for him, what he perceives, but can't know; or what his waking life is starting to reflect. His fears. Effy opens the door and walks in, her usual dark princess, Persephone in spring time. She gets in Tony's bed, under a sign that says Daily Express. This is a train station, a limbo, a prison. Sid sits on the bed, looks at Effy, "Cute." To Tony he asks: "Shall we play Pro now?" "Can't 'till I finish this." "Now! I want to play Pro, now!" The music lurches. "So, I can fucking beat the living shit out of you." Tony says what? but no sound comes out. "Fuck it! I've got better things to do." In he goes, under the sheets with Effy to Tony's distanced, echoing protestations. "Sid! I can't move! Let go of her, you sick fuck! Sid! Fuck! What's going on!" They start moaning in the bed and Tony panics, he sees Effy, then Michelle. All girls are the same. Michelle's now in the covers, screaming, "Tony!" Tony jolts up, away from the puzzle, and rushes to undo the undulating sheets, but finds only a knife under the covers. The puzzle complete, a static in the brain, an error; Sid's Brutus over Tony's Caesar, the knife in his heart. The blood, red on his pure white. Everything quiet in the last betrayal. A friend becoming the master over an already soiled province.

This is what Tony wakes up to, the sound of the skidding bus, a wall, his last fear before his death. Now in the waking world, he can't understand why there's a knife in his heart. But it's just a nightmare. "Effy! Effy!" he calls out to the only one who can comfort him. I like this a lot, of course. This brother and sister thing. It rings true, not just in the show, and not just from experience, but in terms of the whole story. I think only siblings can do this, where they exchange dominion whenever it's needed. It's done without word or complaint. It's done out of necessity. Brothers and sisters, when it's just the two, have this amazing ability to be both child and parent to each other. The power of protection is so transcendent than that of any other kind of relationship I know. Here it starts off our story, the tent pole which the rest of the drama can circle around. This is what anchors us, in this crazy world where people can lose or gain pretty much everything, there is this affinity...where everything else is identity.

We feel Tony's fear and his need for comfort. Effy enters, "What's wrong?" "It keeps happening." The betrayal and the fear, over and over again. "Ok, lie down." Effy takes care and control. She knows her role. "Do you mind?" Tony asks. Of course not, she likes this story anyway. It's Orpheus, and she knows it by heart, because Effy travels to the Underworld pretty much every night. She recites: "Orpheus was the greatest poet who ever lived. His music was so beautiful that when he played the rivers would stop flowing", they would fall in love with him after just one song; "winds would stop blowing", whenever there was any problems, he would find a way to get everyone together and have a party; "and the skies would open up", there was nothing he couldn't accomplish, in school or out, everyone wanted to date him; "so his wondrous melodies could be heard by the gods in heaven", parents loved him, and regardless of any dark designs or desires he harbored, his peculiar goodness overcame it all. "One day, his wife Eurydice was bitten to death by a viper." Eurydice was his life, his inspiration, everything about him that gave him his confidence and his arrogance. Without her, there was no melody. She was the one thing in his life that he couldn't lose, so he did. "Overcome with grief, Orpheus played heartbreaking songs on his lyre. The gods were moved and so advised Orpheus to travel to the land of the dead and sing his songs to Hades to bargain for his wife. So it was that Hades' heart was softened and allowed Eurydice to leave on one condition: that Orpheus would walk in front, and never look back."

Tony arrives at the club, the gang's all there and he dirges the line to join them. Chris and Jal are macking and Tony's like, so when did this happen? Chris shrugs, "The winds have changed, the rivers are all wild, man!" Those used to be his province. Now they're wild, untamed, lost. Jal looks like a million bucks, as usual, with an extra few thousand watts of glow for some mysterious reason...Anwar retards: "Yeah! Him and her, Sid and Michelle, everyone's-! Ooof!" Maxxie knocks him a good one in the balls. "Where is Sid?" Tony asks, speaking of the Devil. "He came here early," Anwar explains. "With...'Chelle...Owww!" annnnnnnd that’s the eighty-third flick to the nuts this season. Anwar and the rest of the crew head into the club. I swear, I can't believe Anwar hasn't had a testicle rupture or his nutsack perforated. That should be the topic of his episode. If he can still have kids, it's a miracle from Allah.

The club is crazy. This is way better than Crystal Castles' night. Everyone's bouncing and dancing British, which is just American except like two years ago, which is also American two years from now because of the sine curve nature of House/Techno culture that I've noticed secretly exists. But it's all kind of new to Tony; it's loud. He asks Jal if she's got anything new cooking, and she's super sketchy with, "What? Me? Haha! NOOOO! What would I have cooking in my oven? I mean, my oven is very responsible, and I don't even like buns, not that I have any buns in any ovens. Why are we even talking about buns, or ovens? I DON'T have a bun in the oven, Tony!" Everyone around is like, are you fine? I'm fine? Everyone's fine! Yeah, dandy, too! But no one's fine...they just don't know why, and that's why we're watching this amazing show! And hopefully, by the end, no one will be dandy either.

Cassie materializes next to our hero, maybe she was camouflaging against Tony's shirt, because they're both rather stripy. "Hey, Tony." "Hey, Cass, are we...going somewhere?" "Oh, yes." Cass leads the way, and gives him a ticket to the E train. Everyone's worried, with everyone's issues compounding and being hammered together by the music, but we all know that they all secretly want shit to blow up just so things can fix themselves, which is actually what would happen in real life. Team Stripes watches as Michelle awkwardly gyrates and sucks face on a passive Sid. Cass says she's sad about them, and begs Tony to be a partner in sadness; but Tony says he's "Fine and dandy!", and so Cassie agrees. Still, no one's fine. Just dandy, in the Anthony Blanche sense. That is, punk. Impotent.

Tony and Cassie decide to drink at the bar, and this sequence is amazing. Cassie suggests that since Sid and Michelle are together, then Tony and herself should be the same. Just so you know, this isn't the vengeance demon we saw taking over last time. This is necessary, and innocent, because it's cathartic. The two kids are just trying to get through their dandy-ness. Catharsis: they'd get dressed up, go on a date, talk, dim-sum, she'd walk him home, they'd go upstairs, he'd knock his head on the door frame and fall back down the stairs, then Cass would run and get the witch hazel (wait, what???), but Tony would be like just get me some fucking painkillers, and Cassie would be like "what's wrong with witch hazel, I was a full-fledged Wiccan last episode and I kinda liked the girl-power, so just fuck me!", but, oh, there's that whole problem because his willy's wonky, for fuck's sake, his cock doesn't work! The music winds to a halt as they finish their rather anticlimactic fantasy and the whole club is in on Tony's impotence. This is what it's like in Hades. Hades is just homonymy for catharsis.

Sid's squeamish about Tony staring at him and Michelle comes back from the bar and consoles him. Cassie likes the tension, and Michelle's kinda like, "Sid, nothing you can do about it and why dontcha grow a couple." Sid's like "but he's my best friend and I'm sad". Everyone says they're fine for the fiftieth time. But no one's feeling it! Especially, Tony who is better than fine. He's feeling so...fucking...good! And he's on a trip...to Fuck it!. Cassie is actually genuinely concerned about him, I mean it. She's like, uh, you don't want to go there, I kinda fucked up the place when I was visiting; but the train's out of the station. Tony meets up with the rest of the boys and Tony's rocking the party, "Yeeeeah, Boi-yee!" It's like prom for ten minutes. Meanwhile, Sid and Anwar are talking 'bout his relationship with 'Chelle; Sid assures him that "it just kind of happened" (note, Sid's total complacency) and Anwar with his usual douchieness is like, "I can't believe you're going out with her...you being so..." Dandy. The word you're looking for is dandy. But Anwar characterizes Sid in the negative: "You're not exactly, you know, a player, a don, an R. Kelly, a baby-daddy, a smooth criminal, an American president, a brudda-brudda-brudda-cheeeeze- bruddah..."

Tony shows up, feeling better than fine, "Like hell on earth!" Sid and Anwar are nervous, and they should be. Tony downs Sid's brew as Michelle breezes in, not with Sid again because she probably got bored. Tony says, "Hello, Nips." Michelle secretly likes it, but Sid says from his seat, "Don't call her Nips." "Why? What are you gonna do?" Tony challenges. Nothing. "I'm...erm...objecting! Strongly!" The dick wagging goes on for a little, which frankly Tony could win even with his impotence, but the effort shorts out his weakened reticulum and you can here him fizzle. "We're a fucking threesome! Peas in a pod!"

Oh, Tony...throuples never work out. And it's not because two of them fall in love with each other and deny the third access, as is the standard narrative trope. It's because one of them could never live without the other two; one of them invested in what the other two meant to him so strongly that any deviation hurt. Sure, it's always an angry and prideful love, a relationship that too easily devolves into narcissism, but that doesn't mean that it doesn't hurt when the three fall apart. Ask Caprica Six. Remember back when her, and Baltar, and Three were all lovely in the same bed together every night on the Basestar? Six was so invested in those two, and it wasn't because of their narcissism that really destroyed them, it was because Six couldn't see herself without the three of them loving each other and making a difference. Remember when Three started killing herself as recreation, how Six couldn't understand it? It was a glitch that sent Six reeling, not able to compute. (As an aside, I just gotta say that right now I'm laughing really hard because I always thought that plot line was so funny, what with Three killing herself and all the other Cylons were so serious about her revelations and everything. I just can't help but imagine a Sharon totally losing it, just tossing and turning all night long, being like, "Why is she dying? Why is this happening? How can you be doing this to her, God? Why, God, why?") Anyway, this was the plan, for Caprica Six it was get the humans and Cylons all snuggly together and everything would work according to God's intentions; for Tony it was slightly more diabolical, it was his melody everyone danced to, but it was still the plan that was invested in. He thought it would be a great joke to turn off the music. When they stopped following it, it all fell apart.

Tony shorts out. You can hear the connections trying to reform, bridging the broken gaps. Tony's still fizzling as he gets himself to the toilet; vomiting, rejecting the rejection and a voice, just there, so close to him, speaks. "It's a panic attack, that's all." The voice, attached to leopard print pumps, scarlet panties...the jungle, the wild, the untamed. "Maybe it's just a panic attack," the voice soothes. Tony can't breathe. "Maybe it's because you want to fuck your sister. Do you want to fuck your sister?" Tony casts off the idea. "It's just that people say, panic attacks come from deeply repressed sexual urges." Or lack thereof. The voice opens the door. The most interesting thing happens, this perfect girl walks into the stall. "Actually, I'm talking shit," she says, and aren't we all, young lady..."Panic attacks are just a fuckload of adrenaline mainlining into your heart. Just how we deal with danger, fight or flight they call it. Are you a fighter, or a flighter, Tony Stonem? (Are you fine or dandy? Are you making the song or just dancing to the beat?) Depending on your answer...well, a lot depends on your answer." The voice leaves. Now, this is just me talking, but this girl is gorgeous and so completely evocative of so many feminine ideals, and not just from a masculine POV. The fact is Janet Montgomery, that's the actress, has been toying with my head since I laid eyes on her. I can't place her, she looks like thirty other actresses at once, not to mention people I know in real life. What's doubly odd, is that's the exact intention the writers aimed for, and that's what creeps me out the most.

Outside the stall, reggaeton's thumping, Sid's watching Cassie go at it with some guy, and Tony's watching Sid, and the boys wish things really were fine and less dandy. Tony's running on the docks, clawing his way back home, and it was all a dream.

It's the next day, Sid and Michelle ring the door to Tony's and Effy answers. Little E stink-eyes the two up and down the block. Sid's capless, the last time we saw him without his hat was when he asked Tony for a blessing after his dad died and Crystal Castles was taking over your senses. He's back with the same prayer. Michelle does the talking, even though she sucks at it, she's still better than the alternative in this relationship: "Hi, Effy, how are yoooo?" "I'm fine," Effy smooth-talks and "how are yoooo?"s right back. Michelle's wearing some crap necklace that makes her face look fat and she's like, "Yeah, shit, I'm getting served by a fifteen year old, fuck it, just take me to Tony."

They enter Tony's room. He still has the same sheets from way back when, the naked guy and girl. They remind him of Sid and Michelle I suppose, but right now he's under the bed. That's where he feels safe. No fear, no desire. Michelle asks him to stop hiding so they can talk, because they want to stop keeping mum about their relationship and they need him to be ok with it, to give them his blessing. Tony tries and flees from his fear and his desire, laughing it off. This is "flight" BTW. They leave, and Tony gets ready for an interview. Effy helps him and sends him off onto his journey, she says he's ready for anything. She's right.

On the train, Tony's tries reading a book, a big Tolstoy bugger by the looks of it. Across the way is sitting a regular senex irratus. The man's in military garb, his life dedicated to Law, the word spoken through action. He's reading Sorry newspaper. An apology: probably the scariest thing in the world for Tony, because the one thing he's never had to look for is forgiveness. The article he's reading? "Why dreams of the rural idyll put our countryside at risk." That's deep. I'll let you think about it for a minute.

"Let me tell you a story," the captain monologues. Scars web across his face, a visage replastered, taken down and spackled over like a garden wall out on the heath. "A bloke. He wakes up one morning, he gets dressed, he goes down the stairs, he makes himself a little bit of breakfast. He walks to the garage, he gets in his car, he starts his car and drives off for, I dunno, a couple of miles. Stops. Gets out of the car, has a couple of blokes pour petrol over his head, and sets fire to himself." This is Tony, of course. This is what happens when you stop the music. When you start flirting with Maxxie, ending the throuple. They have no choice but to immolate you alive. Burn everything that you were. He what? "Sets fire to himself FUCKING BOOM!" It feels like death.

The scary guy's face cracks in the light as he laughs at death, his death, which in dream terms is Tony's death. "What's in the bag?" Lunch, bitch! And it's mine! But instead Tony's like ham and cheese, chicken, and...uh, egg and 'cress. "Egg and 'cress! Isn't life wonderful?" The guy just yanks it from him. Yum! But actually...gross! I mean, I'll eat it, sure, but really? Over chicken? This is the gatekeeper. He always takes his toll, it's always a gift from this side that takes us Under, takes us to the Other side, Beyond. It's what we consider poison because we forget, everything here, on our side, is a miracle. Even our shitty food, it's a miracle to someone from the Other side. That's perspective. Here's another lesson in perspective: "A few scars. A few marks." He points to his face, asking Tony what he thinks of them. It's not the scars that are scary, they're just a mask...it's what's beneath the scars that freaks him out. Tony just wants to go back and read about Pierre and Natasha in War and Peace. Even fucking Tolstoy's less daunting than what the captain is trying to teach Tony. Tony tells him he thinks the scars are horrible. "Yeah, well at least I got them, and fucking wear them, right? How about you? You have any marks?" No, Tony's fine. Tony can't see his scars, not from this perspective. We all wear masks. He's just fine. "Fine and dandy. Aye. Egg and 'cress. It's a fucking miracle..."

Vampire Weekend play for Tony as he explores a well-landscaped Uni somewhere in jolly, 'ol Britain! Poor Tony's swimming upstream, but he has good music to help him get by. I wish I had a soundtrack like this episode following me around to class. I wouldn't learn a damn thing. Just fucking hum down the sidewalk in my zip-up J. Crew sweater and scarf listening to "Green Fields" or any other song off this soundtrack!

The welcome session is lead by a couple of bad-ass orientation leaders, full on with septum piercings, choke-collars, and tats crawling up from under their shirts...just kidding! They're a couple of sweet dweebs that make you feel like burying your face in the softest pillow in the world, made of marshmallows...and ice cream. These lovable teddy bears are in matching getups and everything, notice their colors. So funny how matchy-matchy, and how it draws your eyes around in a circle: her jacket -> his pants -> his sweater -> her skirt -> Ah! that crazy face on Polly, the female guardian, she's like a British version of Peggy from Mad Men. Anyway, they do the usual spiel, except so weird. Check it: Polly's like, "Eighteen years old, the age of opportunity. I bet you can't wait to come here. Imagine it, living away from your parents, and you can do anything you like, like staying up all night and eating ice cream." She politely laughs. The prospects are perfectly straight and awkward-free. "Derek!" she demands like an autistic person. Derek continues, "Thanks, Polly! So, new home, new friends, new horizons, the good times, the bad times-" "The parties, oh my God, the parties!" "The loves that will never be, even though they seem...so right..." Derek flutters in and out of dandy. Polly takes over. "Just remember, if you do drink, personally, I have a bitter lemon." That's such a Peggy remedy. It's just so fucking weird. (When I first heard her say it, I thought it was a euphemism for an abortion or something.) "But if you do, just don't over do it, or you won't be able to get up in the morning for your lectures." The kids sagely ignore everything said in this scene. One guy notices how Derek looks like John Lennon, circa 1959, when he was still with that wench Cynthia Powell who wasn't putting out either, like Polly here, but the kid still wants to know if Derek and Polly are shaggin. "Erm...no. We're not. I adore Derek to bits, but he's more like a brother. And you'll make friends like that here, too. Friends who appreciate that you never, never, never, want that to happen. So, no." Derek's trying to find his balls in Polly's purse, "No, we're truly not." This is desire and fear. The two forces that run the universe. Until you confront them...you're just, impotent. Dandy!

Time for group sessions! They've all mosied on. Tony has lost his way. The school is a labyrinth. Incongruous circles form stairways to corridors of stone and wood. The people flood contra Tony. The map is no use, even if he could read it. The maze is your mind.

He enters the room to the group meeting, and it looks like Old Caprica for a minute, with the sunlight bouncing in just so off the veranda. The group halts at the intruder, a forum in the springtime glow. "You're late," the casually dressed admissions counselor states. Tony doesn't recognize him. We know him, because it's us seeing Tony look into a mirror, with or without scars, marks, or masks showing, it’s just another version of him. Tony apologizes, he was lost. "And yet, everyone else managed to find the room, which I find kind of spooky, really." Tony's sitting in the circle. He, along with the boys and girls around him, are acquainting themselves to the group. One amazing douche is talking about his trip to Peru or something, building bridges (real and symbolic), teaching the locals about teamwork, really helping. The blond next to Tony would totally be crushing on this freak if our hero hadn't stepped into the room. The counselor completely calls out the motherfucker, creamily and sardonically, "So 6,000 years...didn't really grasp the whole teamwork thing?" Fuuuuuuuuck! Well, you know, every generation's gotta learn it all over again, every time.

Counselor points to Tony (gives the old fucker a chance to grab a look-see at the blond next door to our hero). He introduces himself, I'm Tony Stonem. I go to college. I live in- "I wanted you to enlighten us, not bore us, Mr. Stonem. (Woah.) Speak about your self, your motives, your drives, your animus...You do know what animus is, don't you?" Tony nods, he does know... "Good! Because at this university, we don't have room for the inarticulate." The guy scans the room, his explanation a challenge. One kid says he thinks he better go then. "Bye," without a blink. This is fear, induced and consuming. It looks unreal here, because it needs to be exaggerated, to get you to remember what it feels like. That fear is all you, baby. "So, Tony, you were about to tell us how extremely clever you are." This is the trickster fucking with the trickster, or actually the shadow of the trickster.

Ok, break time. Animus means many things. In latin, it refers to your soul, your passion, your drives, your fire. It's all these things and more, as we will learn in this episode. But it's also what is beyond your fear and your desire. Those two things are what make you, you. That is your self. For Jung, the animus was an aspect of the unconscious; to make things confusing, he called it the anima. Little boys have subconscious anima, you see, and little girls, animus. It’s your perfect counter-part. In post-Freudian dream psychology, we had a whole school of thought brought about by more grumpy, old white men who tried to complete the picture that Father Freud painted. We have to learn the basics in order to get past them, I'm sorry. Stay with me. For Tony, his unconscious is embodied in the notion of a feminine-gendered counterpart, in every aspect identical in characteristics...but embodied with the feeling of the path itself, not the law. It is his most important autonomous psychic association; his anima is him. Recognizing your anima (or animus) is the source of your ability, she's your drive, your passion. When you've found your anima, that's when you can truly make your music. Yet, in the path to individuation, this whole process of you becoming you, of you growing up - something awful happens. You confront another complex of the unconscious: your shadow. Your shadow, he lives in another part of your dreams. He's the man you could become, the qualities, both negative and positive found in opposition to your anima.

Have you ever had the dream where...Wait! Scratch that, never mind. See Tony here. He was always a great kid. His music was everything to everyone. Everyone loved him, everyone he met. His songs were beautiful. Parents adored him, his friends looked up to him. His girlfriend fawned over him, and he could do no wrong in his best friend's eyes. That was Tony at his best. To be sure, he was a fucking trickster, and had enemies, but that was just part of the song. When he stopped playing his song, that was him going down a dark road. Why do it? There was no rhyme or reason to it, there never is. It was just a part of growing up, to see what it was like to beat against the boundaries and the walls. When shit really fell apart, it felt like death. What came back was his shadow. The Tony without the song, the anti-trickster...the one constantly getting played and tricked, over and over again. So all this here, this episode, is Tony bringing his anima, and animus, back home. Both senses of the same word. It's really clever.

"I'm not that clever," Tony says.

"Oh he's clever alright." Gasp! That voice, that face, so familiar. The anima. It takes us a minute, too, to recognize where we've seen her before. (OMG! I know who she looks like...Lady Julia Flyte, Diana Quick, from Brideshead, duh, can't believe it took me that long). The counselor blathers blahdy blah *assert-male-power-here* nonsense. Here at this university, one must have charisma, drive, "intellectual-thrust", you see, whether you're a giver, or whether you're- "Willing to sleep with the lecturers?" she says. Atta girl. The best tricks are just telling the truth. "Just making the point, sir, you've been screwing every girl here with your eyes, which suggests that sex ranks higher than substance. And I'll pass thanks. See I don't find intellectual thrust that sexy...or fake tan for that matter." Oh snap! Girl just cost the school like nine prospects. And there aren't that many people in England! Giggle.

Tony chuckles out of instinct. "You think that's funny do you?" guy gets really POed. "Possibly funny? See the thing is I don't actually have to put up with-" The anima leaves the room, "Bye," without a blink. She's the spider in the jungle, her web up in the canopy. Now it’s fight or flight for Tony. The counselor invites Tony to join her, as if he weren't already snared in her web. It’s a jungle out there.

The two Tonys walk through the grounds. The anima berates Tony for fucking up. For flying away. He’s mildly indignant, totally in awe. She tells him they're all there for the same reason. The two stop at the deep end of the school pool. Now remember what pools symbolize. The archetype of the mother, the cunt, the vessel. Here is the place of birth: unavoidable, unplumbed, and abysmal. None of us think we can swim when we first face it. In there, our tools are ineffectual, the muscles we normally use become dead weight. That's us with our first struggles: paying bills, getting jobs, getting soul-mates, growing up. Tony protests he can't swim well. None of us can, either. And secondly, he doesn't think-

Splash! He's in. "Oh, you're such a pussy/I'm such a pussy," the anima admits, before jumping in. Seriously, I'm not trying to be cute here; her pronunciation is rather ambiguous about what she actually means to say. Tony struggles in the water. The water struggles too, struggles to regain calm. She sidles up, and soothes him. Don't swim, just float. It's the easiest thing. Don't struggle. Just let it happen, because it will, every single god-damned time. If you let it. They are two faces on the surface. They look like angels.

Polly breaks the still, "Excuse me!" She beckons him up out of the well. The girl's already gone. "Bit naughty." Yeah, that's how you get the trickiness back, Polly. Little by little. "Tony?" she gives him his name. Your name is a word, it's part of the system, how we recognize you as an individual. Like we ever forget how to do that, but here it helps us place the boundary of the ego. This is me. This is Tony. These are the bounds of you, your actions, your fears, your desires. It’s your identity, when all you need is affinity. "The thing is we are not really supposed to go in the pool, it's only for sporting events." That's another boundary, the system telling you when you're ready for the pool. When you're ready to learn to float, to swim, to breathe, to be born. To live. "And the super-irony-fun-splash club," Derek adds in earnest. "And the super-irony-fun-splash club II. You're supposed to be on the tour." The guides hold stiff in front of their flock. They are the part of the system that define the system, the guidelines and the construct. Even jokes are part of the system, note: the splash clubs. God, it’s hard being an angel. It's time to bring tricks-y back. Take back the jokes, Tony, please.

Polly and Derek are angels. After Adam was kicked out of Eden, God put two Cherubim at the gate, each with a sword of flame. They represent your fear and your desire. They are the immune system to the Other side, or Eden, the place where you came from, your true home, and Paradise. They won't let you in, not until you transcend them. You have to become more than those things. You must become more than what makes you, you. Get past your identity. It’s about affinity. If you don't want to get biblical, then check out other cultures...how about something from the other side of the planet. China? Buddha, the transcendent one, sits beneath the world tree guarded by two lions, a mother and father. One with mouth closed and one with mouth open. The invitation and the rejection, fear and desire, that which seems so right and that which is so wrong. Ask Derek about that. You can't fight these guys head on, you've got to realize that they're just not really what makes you, you. Notice the other kids, an assorted bunch, each an individual. They're focused on their identity: a mohawk, a tattoo, a piercing, a jacket. Superficial. Each holding on to that part of them, that which makes you, you.

Tony explains that there was this girl- "Don't go with her, Tony!" a cherub warns, because she will lead you to paradise and you mustn’t go in there. "You should join us. Yes, we'll find you somewhere where you can dry off." Play the rules of the game, you fucking trickster. Just graduate from college. Come to university, sit through four fucking years studying shit that'll help you in some shitty job. Get paid, buy a home. That's the system. The reward comes later. Happiness comes later. Maybe if you work hard enough, one day you'll get back into paradise. Everyone does this, alone. Every generation, every time. -- But what if you live through your anima? What if you dare to be happy and live your life with passion? Well, that gift is something special...ask Chris, ask Tony what that boon is at the end of the episode. It's hard, but God, it's worth it.

Polly’s like, "And you should get out of those wet clothes...I'd really like to see you out of those clothes." Desire. "I'll lend you my cagulgh(?)." Fuck, I've got no idea what that shit is, and whatever it is, it’s the color of shit. Some sort of Irish slicker or something. I'm guessing it's something they only got on that side of the Atlantic. I'm calling it a gabardine, or a manteau. Whatever. Try it on, Tony, it's real comfy.

The tour continues. Tony follows for a ways, freaked out by the cherubs with flaming swords overhead. In the hall the flock meander towards their destiny, which is a part of a structure older than the building itself, which was built in 1872. You know, I don't think I even went on a proper tour of NYU. I've always meant to. I did something with CAS, and remember checking out Goddard or something, but I've never seen my own school really from the outside. Maybe that's why I chose it.The anima saves Tony from the fucking boringness of all that. She invites him in a room, some chem lab, and he goes in, needing to talk to her. He's sliding on to affinity; realizing who he really is.

The labyrinth is one challenge the mind presents the individual in returning to his anima. In dreams, that's the way the subconscious views the structure of the system. It's what the guardians try and keep you from tampering with. "Don't follow her!" The mind doesn't get "walls" or "don'ts" so it distorts them and twists them. The path just produces barriers wherever you turn, and that's one type of lost. The maze. Walls, walls, walls, hyper-structure all fucked-up. The anima draws him into a different kind of challenge. Darkness. It represents the unknown. All that shit in the chem lab. That's everything that you recognize as valuable, everything you've learned at school since kindergarten. Turn out the lights, close your eyes, and it's gone. She asks Tony to come to her, and shuts out the lights. Here's what you realize when the lights go out: you don't know shit, and you never really did. This is another aspect of what makes you, you. Tony tries his best to get across the room unscathed. He's blind, everything he thought he knew was kind of worthless. We hear crashes. He holds out his hands to grasp for the Other side, and instead breaks everything in his path. It takes trust to even take the first step, and courage to take the next. Once you realize you're fucked, it takes sheer faith that you can make it to get across. It's either that or let yourself be stuck in the dark. She told him, it was an experiment, a test, getting across the room...actually, it was just growing up. "What do you want from me?" Tony demands. At the end, all that "shit" in the lab was kind of worthless anyway. She just wanted him to drop the baggage. Affinity. What a mess. Oops!

They've got a whole slew of Seraphim on their tail, but they manage to out run them. They're giggling and hiding out behind the res halls. She takes Tony by the hand and leads him in. Now to face desire. They sniff out the spliff like trained hound dogs and they enter the land of the Lotus-eaters. "We seek shelter from the fascist oppressors." Apathy is the new oxygen. "And we're wet." The anima makes herself at home, she takes to it like a kid at an amusement park, like the old Tony would have done. Tony's offered some hashish, but his fear is still there, he has boundaries. He shouldn’t be smoking, he explains, drugs do weird things to him. "Aren't they supposed to?" The Lotus-eater takes another bite. The talker is Toby, a tweaker of word and mode, liberal and open. Matt is hipster cool, buttoned up and hidden. They are the demons, fallen angels. Seek them out if you want to see the best parts of the Underworld. "This is Matt, an artist, truly an artist. I'm Toby, his roommate." She's on the bed, the caterpillar with her hookah. The haze is as if it were from a brushfire, it's so thick. Toby asserts he's got the purest, highest possible grade of apathy. The only way to get past the walls is to not care that they're even there. Tony tries some to congratulations and adulation. A knock at the door sends the kids into hiding.

"Polly!" Toby announces. "My little chafinch, how the devil are you?" She casually swings her flaming sword, letting them know who's boss. He can't help but laugh at the ridiculousness of an angry angel standing in front of his door, playing with the Word of God like it was a toy. "I'm going to pretend I don't smell that, Toby." "Smell what, ma petite jeune?" Brimstone. "It's very, very naughty, what you're doing!" If only she would let her feet touch the base clay. "Anyway, have you seen a wet boy running around here, he's lost...he's truly in a lot of trouble." "We've witnessed no moist children of the masculine variety gallivanting these halls." Code-switching like a motherfucker, he shits all over the system, the words, which are law. Switches them up, like a goddamn liberal clown. It's not trickery, it's apathy, apathy for the language, which is a big part of the system.

"Hey, Pol, how's it going?" Matt creeps up, the twerp. Polly brightens, like Peggy with her first copy assignment with Maybelline. "Have you thought about what I'd asked you?" Polly has. Toby can't fucking believe that an angel's thinking about touching the filthy fucking earth for Matt. It's fucking raining angels in south-west England, and only me and Toby think it's the funniest fucking thing in the world. "Alright," Polly agrees. "You can shag me, but only once. You're lucky Bruce is in Guatemala."

In the room, the party starts, they've shaken off the fascist oppressors for now. The kids are almost as nude as you can get on television. Of course, things like clothes don't really matter in the land of the Lotus-eaters, so Toby strips too. Toby reminds Matt that it's not polite to be clothed when the rest of the party is nude, it's just not cricket, so Matt gets to it, and displays his whole animus, a swath of tattoos. He has crawling blades, a tiger's jungle, etched into flesh. These are his marks, he did them himself. The anima goes wild for them and invites Matt to mark her. She smiles at Tony.

Her red lips open, exhaling a nebula of ecstasy. It hurts, beautifully. She's getting a mark, passion, want, need...that is animus. My, my. She thanks Matt, invites Tony to observe the mark. The fire, Promethean, grandeur and complexity, as the simplicity, the flame. "Touch it." It burns. This too, he just can't. "So many things you can't do, can't swim, you can't run, you can't fuck." Oh, dear. "But you can, Tony Stonem. You can fuck me right here, right now," she taunts him. Tony's like, "I got hit by a bus. I tried to see what it was like to stop playing the game, to test the limits to the system, and I hit a wall. Then there were walls allover. The bus was a wall and it fucking killed me. I came back with only walls, walls and darkness, all around me. That fucks you up. 'Fucking' means starting the music up again. It's not that I can't do it, but that I may fail." And in that, he does fail. He says that getting better shouldn't matter now. It should just come, let it passively happen. There is safety in the system. He doesn't need to push it, or to do the hard work, right? She calls him a coward. Wanker. Coward. He’s still about identity. She tells him to come over to feeling, affinity. "Why don't you stop being such a fucking pussy, and let the fuck go." Tony bolts, takes his clothes and sets off away from the Lotus-eaters. He could go back to Bristol now, you know. He's remembering his home, and he could go back now. But he knows that he hasn't lost everything yet, and he still has everything to gain.

Outside, the guardians catch him at the bottom of the steps. In matching gabardines, wings folded, they play the pity card. They rain down sympathy tempting him back home. Just stay on the path, it's real soft. The rest of us are cozy and comfy! Warm clothes, and a nice, hot tea, too! They say that they're going to see a school production of H.M.S. Pinnafore: a joke of a joke about traditional journey structure. They sing a few measures, just for kicks. Yeah, we get it. Orpheus and the Odyssey. We're all on ships, and no man is an island. Except in dreams. Tony runs. "Come back...it'll be fun...there'll be cheese and wine...there's always cheese and wine..." The rewards to playing the game the right way. This is your identity. But what if you don't like cheese or wine? What if you don't like the game?

He steps back into the den of the Shadow man. We finally see the admissions counselor's true face, with or without scars. This is the Father, Jove and Jehovah. He sits in the room on Old Caprica telling us who gets into paradise, and who must keep playing the game to get the reward. He invites Tony to take a seat, recants Tony's misadventures and misdemeanors, his beating up against the walls. No good. Naughty. The counselor knows all. He is God afterall. And after all that, Tony turns up to the interview like a...well, even He can't find the words for that transgression. God's amazed Tony even bothered. But He's a fair deity, so bearing that in mind, why doesn't Tony try and convince Him why He should offer Tony a place in paradise. He wants Torah recitation. That's all that the Torah is; it’s about following the system, and going to college, and following that prescribed path. Convincing Daddy to get you into paradise. But here's the thing: the Torah is a trap. If you follow the Law, you are subsumed into a system of pure identity, and you lose feeling and affinity to paradise, or anima. By focusing on pleasing God you will forget what the reward even is. If you don't follow the Law, God of course takes umbradge and you are forsaken. "You think you're so original, don't you?" God feints. "I have met a million kids like you. Vaguely intelligent, agonizingly middle-class, read a book by Camus, a book by Kafka. No real substance. Just a little fucked up jumble of misdirected polysexuality and pure, arrogant, impotent rage." That's reducing Tony to the archetype of trickster, which is not untrue. But you can't reduce an affinity to that nature back to identity.

Tony bursts to his feet. This is a human becoming an angel, leaving the base clay and going straight up God's left nostril. Tony tells him off. This is the scariest thing in all of Western civilization. Take the message to heart: "You don't know a thing about me, you sanctimonious cunt. Since we're playing the guessing game, let's make a few assumptions. A divorced, middle-aged, lonely old lecturer, who lives alone, who gets his rocks off- GETS HIS FUCKING ROCKS OFF trying to sleep with fucking first-years, other hobbies include intimidation and furtive masturbation. I bet you thought you'd died and gone to heaven when you got here. Your own office, and all the students you could eat. Animus: it means spirit, courage, passion, wrath. This is mine." The whole while, the guy tries to shake himself free of Tony's grip. There's a difference between rage and wrath. It's the same difference between identity and affinity. One is force holding power over you, the other is you reclaiming the power. It's a step-wise progression, and you need to have experienced the one before having the courage to take up wrath. They're both sins, and both terrible emotions that God himself taught us. So, hey! Buddy! Can you say "meta-cognition"? How about "functional sapient introspection"? No? Didn't think so. Yeah, well that's what Tony here's doing. Papa Sigmund taught us that for Daddy, it's all about the Word. The Law. That's what's up with the military suit back on the train, and here in this office, the balding dude with the freshman on her knees under his desk. That's the Word at work. Naughty. Whatever the system is, the codified construct, that's Daddy doing what he does best. That's God with his ten or 656 or ten thousand commandments. Words are how we share that structure, it's comforting, but at its essence it's all about boundaries. This form of God is what it looks like not to cross over to the Other side and never take a hold of your anima. You are subsumed in mere words. Words, and no meaning. Words, and no song. Do you know what animus means? It means two things: the potency of the male archetype, complexed with understanding of the Other. It's a great word. Learn it.

Here's the greatest paradox of all. Here's why I study religion. You can't just sweep God, or Daddy, or the system under the rug. You can’t take down the cherubim and put a welcome sign on Eden's front gate. You need the walls, because you need that to define yourself. You need to define your identity in order to learn to use the fire, the very fire which keeps you away from transcendence, fire as fear and desire...well that fire, that's the exact same fire that you use to burn off everything that doesn't work. FUCKING BOOM! This is you going nova. Burning off all that mass that doesn't work, everything that was shit that you spent years learning, everything that you learned to fear, everything that drew you this way and that, your desires. That is you, that is what makes you, you. Ego. Identity. There is more to you than that. It's a secret the system doesn't want you to know, it's what paradise is. If you follow Torah, well that gets your organized, and allows you the freedom to work your way up to Heaven by begging and pleading, bribing and bargaining with the Cherubim. That's one way. So here's the secret: heaven is right here, on the other side of that door right there. All you have to do is let go, feel it. Burn away all your other senses, the faculties that make you feel yourself. Paradise is here.

If there's anything you ought to take away from the show it's this: that the ego isn't running things. That secret isn't really a gift. Nothing new, nothing special. It's how we live. Fight or flight. We don't have any other options. When we think there are other options, even for a second, that's when we die. Or we get hit by a bus, and it feels like death. So we burn off what doesn't work. This is Tony, using wrath to not be afraid; Kara Thrace burning away all her Mommy and Daddy issues alike, being called away to the Other side, burning up in the agony and ecstasy. This is sheer will. It's Blair believing she can fight. It's the rag-tag fleet making heaven right there on an old Battlestar, because when they get to Earth, I guarantee you, Heaven won't look so shiny up close. It isn't fight or flight. It's fighting and flying all at once. Flying up to God's huge-ass nose and punching it as hard as you can, I bet you he blinks. Boom. What you get left is you after the fire, ashes and soot. It's going to the Underworld, it's talking to the big guy and demanding everything you ever wanted, everything you ever needed. It feels like you've died, because you did.

But here's the secret: you control the fire now. Bring it back with you. Light up the world.

Jung taught us archetypes. We had animus and shadow. But in story, in good story, we have the most recognizable patterns. Tricksters, like God and Daddy, are archetypes found the whole world over, in numerous iterations. Prometheus, Loki, Hermes, Coyote, and Raven, all identified by their manipulative personalities, their charm, and their creative intellect. Their stories are analogous, their journey is quintessentially heroic, they bring forth truth from Beyond, the realm of Other. That is their boon, whether it's fire, tools, agriculture, or astronomy, they give to mankind that which is intrinsic to man's nature. Through their trickery, the rest of us are given the tools by which we may know our role in this reality. That is a gift. But every gift comes at a price, and the trickster exacts that price through the very same machinations. It is the nature of the transaction. Concordantly, every analog of the trickster is justly punished for his crimes. No society has ever let a trickster suffer to live in their midst. Loki, broken, chained and tortured in the earth; Prometheus, likewise in Hades; Raven and Coyote on the North American continent, their totemic progeny suffer the stigma of physical deformities and dark skin. Yet, the paradox remains that even without the trickster, his boon remains, providing benefit to mankind for all eternity.

Now the most powerful trickster myth, the one I think is the most inspiring, is the African tribal myth of Anansi the Spider. Like all tricksters, he stole, lied, manipulated, and joked his way through the whole jungle; King of the World and without a care at all. Apathy, no fear and no desire. Of course, he had plenty of enemies but his arch-nemesis was Tiger, who considered himself the greatest animal around. Tiger would monopolize everything, even story, so Spider had the monkeys act wild and bother Tiger so he couldn't sleep. Spider told Old Stripes that the only way to stop the monkeys was to tell them stories, so he did and while he told them to the monkeys, Spider hid nearby and wrote them down. Spider gave them to man, and that was his boon.

Here is why stories are so important. They are endemically about us, about ourselves, and our problems our fears, our desires. But they are paradoxical. They take us out of ourselves, yet they describe our innermost workings. In them, we are free of ego, for just a moment. We see the truth, that Truth that's on the other side of the gates. In paradise, here's what you learn: you are not alone. Not ever. That’s affinity! It’s about relation. It's a message basically of hopefulness, but there's a scary aspect to it, too. We will leave this world one day, and here's the sad kicker: paradise was here all along. We just had to grow up a little to find it. Let go of your fear, your desire. The self isn't everything. Daddy's wrong about that, the system can't provide that to you, because the system is just about keeping the you, you. Rise above. Don't look back. Find your passion, your power, your path, your wrath...your animus. It’s losing identity, and recognizing affinity.

Tony demands his animus back from Hades, and Hades consents. Tony explains exactly who he is to demand paradise, transcendence and his anima. Tony's a bad dream, he's Daddy before Daddy was destroyed by the system. He's Prometheus, Loki, Hermes, Raven, and Spider. He's the one that brings the anima back home, the one that starts the music for the rest of the universe, and the one that brings back the boon of humanity to the world. "So, in answer to your earlier question, you shouldn't give me a place here. I'm the best student you've ever had."

"The Good, the Bad, and the Queen" plays again and this time Tony is found, holding his torch high, he crawls again out of the dark. The labyrinth and the darkness is gone. He's welcomed back and congratulated by Matt and Toby. The pleasure is all his, they assure him. They taught him apathy, and he remembered how to be a trickster, how to be a hero, how to transcend all of it. He enters the room and sees her. He goes to her as the sun rekindles. Their hands sweep across hair, lips on skin. They move together, alive, and on fire. Their caress is inside, it moves, and there is the pleasure: the agony and the ecstasy. This is paradise. Affinity to animus.

Tony invites her to come with. She can't. She invites him to stay there for a while, it's peaceful. He can't. The land of the Lotus-eaters makes you forget home, but home is always out there. You can't live with your anima consciously forever. People who marry their perfect anima or animus become drunkards, have bad credit, never pay their mortgage, and get fucked by the IRS. Jung is very clear on that aspect of individuation psychology. You'll expect her to teach you how to float, when all she'll do is make you swim. You can't marry an image of perfection and pleasure, marriage is about work. Always has been, always will be. No, if there was ever a doubt in your mind, Tony belongs with Michelle. He leaves. The anima tells him not to look back. He won't.

This is Tony returning to the waking world, back from the Other side, from Beyond, from Dream. He brings with him a boon. Have you ever had the dream where...? Wait. Never mind. You've just had it.

Tony returns to the club. It's the same, but it looks different. He find Jal. Hi, Jal! I missed you! He tells her, he knows something’s up, which means she has to deal with it sometime soon, but not now. He's looking for Sid and Michelle, though, so he goes to the bathroom. He finds them in there all fine and dandy, screwing in the stall. He literally pulls them out, and literally drags them buck-naked across the room. The bathroom is where you flush the shit away and where you run clean with pure waters. They barely protest, especially Sid. Michelle asks Sid to do something, and not just object. Tony shows them his gift:

"I love you. I'm saying it again. And you. You little fucker!" Here's the gift: you are not alone. None of us. "Can't you see this is all wrong. You're my girlfriend, and you're my best friend." Sid doesn't love Michelle. "He loves Cassie. And you love me," Tony explains. These are the words, rewritten, anew. Necessarily a new system, to define the me and the you. They bring forth a new place to burn past those difference and fears and desires. You are not alone, because there is no you. Grasp that and you’ve found paradise. That is the story, and there's never been a different one ever, every generation, every time. "That works. We work." Michelle says, why now, that it's too late. "It's always been there, Michelle. It just took a while. I need you." Need. Animus. It was never really about Effy. He never wanted to fuck her. It was about his anima. The anima is mostly him, but in your dreams its shrouded by the people you know. Your mom, your sister, your aunt, your first grade teacher. Whoever had the most impression on you in those early years. That's why your anima looks like your sister, getting fucked by Sid in your dream, like Michelle screaming for you to come get her. Like the angel that brought him to the Other side and back. In dreams all girls are the same girl. It was just identity becoming affinity.

Sid looks in the mirror and leaves Michelle. She's in the bathroom, alone. It's the fifth or sixth time this season. She still has shit to get out, some hands to wash clean. Outside, Tony tells Cassie that everything's going to be alright. She knows this, just not how.

At home, Tony sends us off with a reminder of the boon: this was all a dream. That's life. He won't look back. His mark, his scar. That’s affinity, not identity. A feeling, not a mask. The perspective skewed correct, for once. If there was ever a doubt that it was always just him: their tattoo burns brightly in the night as he lays awake, never to be burdened with a nightmare again. "We are such stuff as dreams are made on; and our little life is rounded with sleep." The Tempest, Shakespeare.

Stories play out like the journey, which plays out like life: the leave-taking, the challenges of the gatekeeper, the guardians, the labyrinth and the darkness, facing your fear and mastering your desire, confronting your shadow, retrieving your anima, the return and resurrection, and the deliverance of the boon. My favorite song this semester, and possibly this entire year, is The Arcade Fire's "The Well and the Lighthouse". Listen to it now, if you've got it. Here we all are. Resurrected. We've done time for our crimes in the water black. Can't you see the funny side? Heaven's only in your head, and the lions and the lambs ain't sleeping yet.