Skins - Episode 5: Chris

Previously on Skins, Tony's willy went wonky, Anwar acted weird because he's fucking Sketch behind Maxxie's back, Sid came back from looking for Cassie in Scotland while Cassie went looking for him because she was supposedly shagging some guy who turned out to be gay...so not, and Sid's dad's died (super duper sad), and Chris contemplated the effervescence and vanity of life vis-á-vis the bubbles in his cold one. And then Michelle and Sid get caught by Cassie for falling in love...

Tick-tock, tick-tock. "Chris...Miles...?" some lady of authority says to my third favorite Skinnie. Though I should say, I actually don't have favorites. He's in a prim office, and probably not voluntarily. Chris is playing with a Newton's cradle, focused on the moving balls and the Law of Conservation of Momentum, like bubbles in a beer glass. Headmistress: "In life we are all walking down a path, and when that path lacks direction that's when people get lost." Lady, that could be like the motto of the whole city of Bristol. "And we don't like lost people. Because no one should get left behind." Which is the maxim of everyone in Chris' life. Chris agrees he's a bit lost (read: stoned out of his gourd) and the headmistress puts an end to the ticking of the juggling balls and then lays it all down.

She explains that Chris is "no longer permanently affiliated", a "less discouraging" term for expulsion from Roundview College because: he's stolen prescription meds from the nurses office, pissed on the side of the science center, and fucked some lassie over the very desk he's sitting in front of. While Chris has plenty of good reasons for all of these transgressions, Headmistress Umbridge explains that she's not giving a shit about them because Chris has only fed shit into her mediocre (at best) school system and she's gonna be in her own shit because of his undoubted continued shitting up of her grades and her shitty system, which amounts to a river of shit and she didn't pack a snorkel. Her words, not mine. Oh, and Chris is homeless. Then she brilliantly mocks his protests and deliciously spits: "Welcome to the real world." Yeesh. I love how British women can serve your own ass on a platter and offer some tea and crumpits along with it.

Chris is on a bench by the river because all his bubbles just popped and beer doesn't taste as good flat. Jal's with him! My second favorite Skinnie (I don't play favorites). She's got some weird bling around her neck that's either her name upside down or in Arabic or musical notes...can't really tell. But she's looking fierce. "Wanna hear a joke?" she asks. I hope it starts with one time at band camp! "What do you call nacho cheese?" Chris is still sad while she fucks up the joke and while she calls Michelle and asks for how the joke goes and then tells it the right way while Chris knows the punchline is nacho cheese and Jal asks "Have you heard it before?" because she's smarter than you and her jokes are meta like that. Chris lists his woes. But instead of sympathy he gets Jal telling him to man up and do something about it.

"Fuck it!" he cedes.

He takes out his skins and starts rolling a fag. Jal calls him on his attitude and being irresponsible, and he calls her right back on being negative and being too responsible. So they make a cute little pact on Chris's skins: Chris to not say "Fuck it!" and Jal to say "Yes" and that's the game. They look directly at each other and paste the skins/pacts to their forheads. So, Chris asks Jal for a fallafel and she has to say yes, but she really does because they are in llllllllllluh...lalalalala!!! Omg! I'm so excited!

So, Chris goes back to Josie, that barmy counselor who was amazing in a few of last year's Unseen Skins episodes. She's hardcore retarded, like complete Boo Radley, with the creepy hat where she probably keeps the mice she accidentally kills. And so we know Chris is in the shitter because this is his resort and he asks her to help him get a job. They're both totally enthused with "Totally!" and "Fucking A!" on Chris' part...which bums out Josie and she points to her sign. Oh! I forgot she really like rhymes...her sign rhymes: "Be daring, try and express yourself without SWEARING." There are hearts and stars and thumbtacks and giraffe stickers, and that's how Josie does daring. And she is just as true to her enthusiasm about the jobs.

Chris goes through jobs faster than Josie can glitter a congratulatory collage. Then he's changing wardrobes like a bandit: spliffing at the burger joint, handing out porn to underage social work cases, putting pubs out of business to stop obesity or something...and poor Chris gets the ol' "puck off!" from "pitty bosses" and "pastards" and "pricks" and then poor Josie is disappointed, and also voices her concern about his swearing. "Stupid punt," he corrects a stray remark, and Josie is still visibly concerned. And while her IQ may be actually ten or twenty points lower than even Chris's her sympathy makes her the most responsible adult in all of Bristol. Which makes me miss Angie (but I won't by the end of the episode), only because she was probably the most morally concerned adult in all of England never mind Bristol, or in Russia for that matter, even with having illicit relations with an underage student. So, Chris explains how he never liked coloring books (who did?) and that he preferred to draw his own way.

Chris is sitting in a pub with a group of twatters/punks/counter-culturalists. I'd call them emo but I'm not sure if they have that over in Bristol...I'll ask someone! Kate? Anyway, they're going on about the same song and dance about hating the same ol' plastic, conformist, oppressive society dominated by "the Man" and Chris reacts the only way I'd know how. He stifles a yawn as they compliment him for having drugs, and he passes a couple of g's of snow to a perfectly manicured, black nail-polished hand. Chris never liked coloring in the lines. The pansies starts dissing on Tony while Chris spots 'Chelle and Sid on the other side of the room...I smell trouble.

Jal watches as Posh Kenneth and Anwar shotgun some beer cans. Jal comments on Anwar's hair, which is combed down with hideous bangs. Henceforth, he will be called Manwar (coined by the hilarious Sketch!). Jal tries to shotgun herself, kind of fucks it up, and says no to trying another. Chris overhears her protestations, and protests them. The boys notice the band coming onstage, the lead of which has a "mad strong hat game" apparently...I guess they don't have H&M in Bristol. Chris challenges Jal to a "hat trick" where she has to get the hat from the lead guitarist of the band onstage, which must be a British thing 'cause they did this exact thing back in one of the Unseen episodes. These kids love disrobing strangers. I think this show is taking some liberties with all the clothes business in this scene, because it's always awkward to put wardrobe into a script like this, and I'm really not supposed to be suffering from so much culture shock. It's just, I feel like these kids already represent such a specific fashion, and the wardrobe people are doing an awesome job being subtle what with Manwar and Jal's cleavage, but then they have to contend with silly, scripted clothing gags...going crazy! So Jal goes ahead and shotguns the beer successfully! The boys are slightly stunned by her hardcore-ness and they take a seat to watch the show as Jal goes to work; she makes her way to the front of the crowd and right after the chorus, she jumps on stage and full-on tackles the lead of this indie band and starts making out with him on the floor. Tipsy she gets up with her prize and starts stumbling to the beat while the boys look on, chagrined and very surprised.

Chris looks all ga-ga. Maxxie comes up (Maxxie! My first favorite, but not really...) and is freaked by Manwar's appearance. Security starts dragging Jal off the stage, but she spots Cassie in the crowd and she's all like, "Oh my God, it's Cassie!" And I'm like, Oh my God, it's Cassie! Ahhhhh! I'm so happy she's back for realz now. They all group hug...and Cassie whispers, "It's too loud!" Which just cracks me up for some reason.

And so Sid and Michelle meet the gang and Cassie starts channelling the Erinyes. There's a lot of awkward greetings. Long story short, Cassie wastes no time to out Sid and Michelle in front of everyone, even Tony.

Cassie leans forward and gives Sid the most endearing, sympathetic, and compassionate little kiss...like Judas. Because it's Skins you know what's coming next. Faster than a sonic boom, which means she planned it exactly, a perfectly aimed slap - - Ok, so Cassie is so wrong here I can't even think of a proper justification for her actions. Cassie's whole thing has always been "mean people don't count" and because pretty much everyone's mean, well then I guess no one counts. Which is all great and makes sense with the whole affected air of detachment that Cass has going on, but at the end of the day that whole mentality, and the persona that follows is bullshit. If you think that mean people don't count, that their actions are by their very nature unjustified and undeserving of understanding, let alone compassion, well then you, my friend, are both mean and also don't count. It's lazy to go through life interacting with people so superficially, forcing them to always reach up to your level. You walk down the street and the guy you run into is on his cell phone and he bowls you over. You say, "Fuck you, jack off!" not ever knowing he's on the phone with his son, who he only gets to see twice a month, or he's yelling at the doctor because his wife's in the hospital, whatever it is. But that's ok because his actions were mean. So you give yourself a free pass to twirl in the wind and cut other people off on the street. But you've already forgotten why you don't give a shit about other people and can't understand why people call you a ditsy bint. That's how you make a Cassie. It's about responsibility for yourself, or lack thereof.

So of course Cassie's got eating disorders coming out of her pores and pretty much all of her angelic orifices. Her sense of personal responsibility has completely flown out the window, but naturally with that goes self-control. So Cass sublimates the lack of identifiable clout through her anorexia and bulimia. She can be all lovely and have a juvenile simulacrum of personal agency with a perfectly convenient set of eating disorders all to cope with her lack of responsibility - lose weight and be lazy and irresponsible, easy! Bully for you, Cass!

So when you aren't responsible for yourself then everything goes on other people. You fall in love with Sid and it's his fault he doesn't reciprocate. Because it's alright to love someone and then blame them for not loving you back, right Sketch...oops, I mean Cassie? So yes, it's Sid's fault that he ditched you again and again and didn't love you back and so you had to attempt suicide. Ok, in all honesty, I get how it was kind of Sid's fault there, he was just as self-centered as Cassie in that respect. But if Cassie was truly as psychotic as she was portrayed then she doesn't belong with Sid, or anyone. Not because she doesn't deserve him, but I'm just saying, I think romantic relationships are like graduate level...let's get through grade school first, ok luv? And I understand Jal's thing back from the Chris episode last season when the whole suicide attempt occurred: that the only way that Cass is going to learn to grow up is if she has some foundation to base a trusting, loving relationship, which is where Sid should have come in. But it's always going to be Cass who needs to learn to love, not Sid, because she doesn't even know how to love herself. And let's be honest, Sid did the best with what he had to work with. So yes, all y'all out there, I agree Cassie deserves some love and attention. She certainly never got all that, or learned personal responsibility, from her parents, who are some self-involved, hippie artists or something. But on this show they come in at like the top 3 out of all the parents so that excuse doesn't really work.

So Cassie is all like super-sacrcastic, "So you sweet Sid and you sweet Michelle have been fucking. Since when? Over Tony's coma bed...No, no. It's ok if I accuse you falsely. Because your dad died Sid but that doesn't give you an excuse to not play by the rules of a regular, decent relationship." By jove, I think she's got it with that last part! But Cassie never played by the rules in the first place. She's right that Sid isn't innocent either. He probably could have made more of an effort, but he had a lot on his plate. That's in no way an attempt at excusing Sid, but from this angle, Sid tried a lot harder. He played by the rule of a relationship. That was the game. And he played by the rules until the game ended. He was bloody decent about it. I mean, if Cassie isn't even awake enough to reality to be in the same country as Sid, then she doesn't have much of an excuse, know what I'm saying? Cassie had her head up her ass so far she couldn't find the "video" button when Sid called on her Skype thing, which they needed to use because she was on the other side of the fucking mini-continent, because she couldn't handle the pressures of rehab, because she really needed to get over her drug addictions and eating disorder, because she never had the responsibility for herself to act like a decent person in society, or even to bother to learn to use a fucking simple program like Skype.

Sid needed you, Cass...boy did he need you. And you weren't there, you never were. So why are you crying when he went to someone who was? I hope you're over your problems or whatever Cass, but it's you who need to play catchup and not condemn others for being able to play by the rules and are earnestly trying to be happy. The last thing Sid's father taught him was how to be happy, which puts him 20 steps ahead of everyone else, so he wins by default. Yay, Sid!

Anyhow, I'll practice what I preach and give Cassie the benefit of the doubt, because maybe we'll find out in her episode that the she was raped by the whole Scottish Rugby team or something...but then she probably wasn't ready to come back and yell at Sid then anyway...So, I'm not gonna "wow!" about her Judas kiss/slap like all the boys are. Sorry, not gonna do it, Cassandra you cunt!

I'll say it again so you don't think I hate Cassie: I really hope she gets over her problems, and even that she goes back to being that effervescent pixie we all love and want to be around. But she has to learn that if she wants to reap the rewards of the system, which are having a healthy, loving relationship (which Sid would be amazing at!) then she's gonna have to get her head out of her ass and start playing by the rules. She can have all of it, relationships, both romantic and platonic, as well as being the carefree angel from the moon-sphere. For someone who's so good at being alive, I guess it's just scary for me to see that that entails sucking at being happy. But I think that this whole season is about that not being true. We can have it all. And that just a little smidgen of personal responsibility will make it all work! That's how you play the game!

Sid does about the only thing you can do when you're so grossly, falsely accused: he stays silent. Tony doesn't get it. Michelle might just be too in love to be embarrassed. And the boys are still all wow. And then everyone wows about how Michelle and Sid are totally doing it behind everyone's backs, and Jal feels kind of betrayed. Chris drags her outside for a breather, and I think we all need one too.

Outside, Chris and Jal are really cute together, and they compliment each other on how well the pact is going. They're both playing the game. But Chris says he made money through drugs and Jal harumphs that that's cheating, and not playing the game. That isn't showing a smidgen of personal responsibility at all, she explains. Jal hates cheaters because her dad's a cheater (duh), but then Chris pulls it around and gives her a nice one right on the lips in the moonlight. Jal stops it, and says to "Play the game, Chris! I am." Then she takes him home by the hand.

Chris wakes up to nice music and literally up Manwar's ass (God, I thought it was Jal's for a few heartbeats, there, but I'll be patient). Outside his room, Chris sees Cassie, une ange sans ses ailes, with all of her bags telling him he's been ousted from housing. He says he better pack, leaves for a second and comes out with a garbage bag with the last of his worldly posessions. The two hobos part at dusk, going in opposite directions, away from and towards "Fuck it!"

Chris goes in for an interview, his CV handed over on an empty cigarette packet. He likes to recycle, ok! While his grades may not be up to snuff, he'd definitely make a great trainee. He's a good talker, been doing it since whenever, and he knows words like "apivorous" which really does mean "eating bees". So to prove his sales skills he tries to sell the boss guy a cup of coffee. Which is kind of like selling a house? Omg! Flashbacks to sophomore year. I totally remember having to do this for my job at Auric. So, so awful. But I always thought it was so non sequitor to get me to sell a cup of coffee when the best sales requires specific knowledge of the actual product. Actually, that's just because I prefer marketing, and I was shit at sales, so nevermind. But I still totally get how Chris is all like...uh, ok, sure. But I can't help but thinking that we've seen like four houses in Bristol, and aside from Michelle's shag pad they're all exactly the same. I'm sure that real estate is a really competitive game in Bristol, but I totally believe that a 17 year old boy could sell me a house there. I dunno, the whole thing is so funny, but totally not on the other side of heightened reality that this show usually implants into itself, like Scarlett's ta-tas.

So Chris sells the guy some tea by lighting his tie on fire and asking him to buy the tea to put it out. The guy's like, uh, you're not really playing the game, and that's cheating. But Chris is at least aware that there are rules now. Hopefully. The boss, sans tie, hires Chris and introduces him to the rest of the team.

Then we meet Jon...who is, in terms of the themes of this show, the embodiment of force, which is energy, or momentum, in Newtonian terms. In the show, and in Western culture energy = aggression. The only place this works well in real life without anyone bringing out a shotgun is in the arena of sales. I should know. Back at Auric, there were about five of us that sat in a cubicle the size of my bedroom, which is the size of a shoebox. You need not stretch your imagination too much to figure out what it'd be like to have all of us making three cold-calls per minute all huddled together, and one of those guys was a Jon. The Jons of this world are great at sales because they speak a different language than the rest of us: douche. It's actually a beautiful language; it's not a romance language, but I'm pretty sure it's related to French or German. It's the language of getting the shit that you want and running over everyone else. It's the language of getting the balls moving, and not giving a shit about everyone else's balls getting pushed around in the process. In its undiluted dialect, it sounds like a guy at a football game after his winning team's scored a goal - Jon gives us a great example of what that sounds like here. Frankly, there isn't much interesting to say about Jon, because in every room we go in we know someone who can either speak douche or are learning to or pretend they can. You've seen one, you've seen them all. So Chris sits down at a desk next to Jon and Jon starts talking smack in douche lingo and Chris can't understand him either.

The boss takes Chris on a sale, and explains to him how not to cheat at the game. You do it by cheating, by lying, and coming up with codes. Chris picks up on it...too well. "LSD," the boss explains. "Not what you think! Lights, space, and drawers!" Sold! Chris gives it a try himself. But he doesn't get the difference between cheating and cheating. It's hard for a kid, believe me. Needless to say, with some pretty classic gags, Chris tries to sell a shitty rat hole, fucks it up and is sad. So of course he takes the apartment for himself.

He invites Jal to show her his flat (technically cheating, but Jal'll turn a blind eye) and to prove to her he's got a job, and that he's playing the game. Jal's looking so posh, I wouldn't be shocked to see an UESer with that dress while vacationing at the Hamptons. Jal explains that playing the game entails some nifty rewards. The Dandy Warhols start playing, which makes me miss Veronica Mars real badly, and they start to get it on! Which, of course, means cue Cassie with her craziness.

The three chill out in the rat hole. Cassie as hobo #2 thanks Chris, hobo #1, for playing by the rules of the game and letting her stay at the apartment. Chris, don't do it! Her train’s just pulling into Fuck it! right now! So Jal puts Chris to bed as he dreams of his "parties and pills and pucking and pillows". So sweet. Meanwhile, Cassie gets a job in the town of Fuck it! as the local witch. She starts voodooing with an apple, skinning it alive, griping about all the beautiful couples around that aren't her. Then with the knife by her cheek she asks Jal, "Have you ever been in love?" Jal's like, "No." And then Cass likens love to an ambulance ride, post-attempted suicide, and it's creepy. Since I can speak Cassie, I'll translate: "I already know you're in love with Chris, because Chris is a disaster that's happened and is happening and will happen again and again and that's your daddy. I can smell it on you guys, because I'm a witch now. Also, I have magical powers and will bring down such fury on everyone's heads because I'm reminding you've I've tried to destroy myself before, and I'm more than capable and willing to do it again. So get as far the fuck away from this disaster hole, ASAP!"

Chris is back at work. More douche-speak. Boss tells Chris to shape up and start selling houses, or douche-speaker will take over the world!

Jal and Chris are in bed at the rat hole, more ratty-ness ensues. They get under Jal's duvet cover, and Chris tells her the story of The Very Hungry Caterpillar by the bomb Eric Carle, yo! Chris's favorite part is when the caterpillar produces his cocoon, burning off all that energy, and emerges into something new. A butterfly. Like a star going nova. But Chris explains that after his brother died, he felt like he was in a cocoon, but that when he came out, he didn't want to be different, he just wanted to world to change. Which is valid, and understandable. So Jal explains to him that you can't expect the world to change, you're the one in the cocoon, burning off the mass, and transforming. What you have to do is direct that energy somewhere. To dream. Jal teaches him to dream, to sell that dream. They kiss, and then Cass comes in and asks for some poppers.

At his next attempted sale, Chris is doing an ok job playing the game. But the couple are not jiving with the price. Too much. It's just not going to work. But Chris stops them, "Sorry...can I just...money. It's just bits of paper, or numbers on a screen, inn'it?" Energy. "These walls, they exist. If you can imagine memories happening in them, then that's real, inn'it?" Matter. "I want you to imagine dying, for a minute, now I know that sounds weird!" He's been hanging around Cass too much. "You're really old, and you're in your bed, and you remember your life. Your daughters first birthday, shagging on a Sunday afternoon, skinning(?) up in the garden, your kids. If it's this house you see in all of those memories, then a few bits of paper here or there don't seem to matter." In Newtonian physics, energy and matter aren't really interconvertible, that's kind of true, just forget Einstein for the duration of the show. "We'll take it!" the erotic art dealers say.

Chris starts winning big. Beating even douche-talk. Chris even remembers Josie, and gives her a great helmet as a present! How perfect, on so many levels! She thanks him, "Chris I just gave you the crayons, you drew the house." Oh. My. God. How did I know Josie would be the only person on the show to actually get it?

Chris is having a fantastic afternoon and all of a sudden he's hiding his face full on in his lunch. A woman walks next to his desk and it's Angie with her tits all jiggly and shorter hair. "You must really like your lunch," she says. "Maybe you can find me a flat." Chris's eyes tiptoe up the woman with the familiar voice. "Oh...helloo..." he says with a whole salad on his face.

They come out of a flat that looks like every fucking sell-able flat in Bristol. Honestly, I don't understand how hard this job can be. Angie starts, "It's nice-" "Yeah, yeah great windows, ceilings, floors-" "No, I mean it's nice to see you again." Grin. "You look really good in a tie." Ooooh, Angie, where you going with this..."I'll take it!" Chris begins to disrobe. "The flat..." she corrects. I woulda made the same mistake, Chris. He stomps away fanning away his hard-on just about ready to give up. Don't go back to Fuck it!, Chris, Cassie's taken over the town and her powers are scary!

Chris is on the phone again with Josie, trying to rummage through his mess with Angie and fighting his temptations. Of course Cass apparates from the moon-sphere and somehow listens in to the conversation and deduces Chris's indecent intentions. Cassie goes to her usual crazy place in Josie's office, but mostly because she's summoning the Eumenides, who are suiting up with their scorpion flails and their limbic glimmerings! Ahhhhhhhhh!

Jal goes to the rat hole where Cassie's performing a spell with shampoo and detergent, which I should tell you works just as well as eye of newt and menstrual blood and what not. It's all about will power. Jal's all like, what the frak is this about? Cass calls it punch for the housewarming party, and says goodbye to some guy she had over. She's throwing herself to the wind (which is not taking personal responsibility, FYI) but Jal's not taking any of this self-destructive shit, so Cassie has to take her out by telling her Angie's back in town. Bad Cassie!

The party's at full tilt. The powder's blowing, pills are popping, the poppers are piling up, and the rat hold is hopping. Chris comes home to the shindig, and finds Cassie making out with a wood nymph, and she explains that she invited everyone from Faerie over to Fuck it! for a housewarming party, so drink the punch! But Chris wants Jal, but Cassie tells him she's gone, because she wouldn't have let her have Peaseblossom, Tom Snout, Nick Bottom, Peter Quince, Snug the Joiner, or any of the other people she wanted over for her fairy party. Cassie stresses, though, that Jal's gone, like forever, like people do to Chris and that Cassie's never there enough to even do to other people in the first place. Nooooooo!

Maxxie arrives at the party and his sixth sense automatically tells him a crazy Welsh rabbit is in his midst. He chivvies out Sketch, who tells him she's there with "Anwie..." LOL. And right on cue, the final incarnation of Manwar emerges, perfectly blond and coiffed just so, with the wardrobe to boot. Maxxie freaks and shows Manwar a mirror, because apparently he hasn't looked at his reflection in three weeks. And he subsequently dumps loopy, loony Lucy on the spot. And on the other side of the room, Angie materializes, summoned by Cassie's moon magic to tempt Chris away from playing the game. Needless to say, it almost works, but Chris breaks through the Fuck it! spell while they're humping in the bathroom. Too little too late, we all know where this is going. The knock on the door is Jal, of course, and of course Chris tries to stall the inevitable, but he's all disheveled and sad and generally pathetic to make her understand that what she's about to know isn't really what she's about to know, even though it was, but not spiritually. Have you not noticed that half of the fucking Faerie kingdom is in the rat hole, which suddenly grows thirteen extra rooms, so something isn't right, ok Jal? But it doesn't matter. The game is done.

The next morning, the spell is broken, and the apartment is back to its normal dimensions. Jon comes through trying to sell the place, but finds something even better to spend his energy on: the destruction of Chris. He tattles about the trashed rat hole, and a midsummer night's dream is done for Chris.

Sacked. He meets up with Cassie, the witch queen, who knows her powers got out of control. She's packed the Eumenides back to the moon-sphere and the Wendel's gate is closed once again. "I'm sorry I got you sacked." Sitting on the very last of their worldly possessions, he forgives her. "It would have happened sooner or later." "Jal was my fault, too," she admits. "Naw, that was mine," he says. They're both right. They just pushed things, not realizing that no matter what direction they pushed things in, it would was just always going to end up coming back smacking them in the face, and everyone else around them. That's the nature of Fuck it! If you don't have a reason to play the game, well that's a good one right there. Cassie man's up and says: "Do you know what hurts most about a broken heart? Not being able to remember what it felt like before. Try and keep that feeling, because if it goes, you'll never get it back." "What happens then?" "You lay waste to the world, and everything in it." Sigh. I knew you'd get it Cassie. I'm so sorry I yelled at you, because I love you. You have so much beauty, and power, and I never want to see you destroy anything ever, that includes more than anything, yourself.

Tony's learning to swim again. He's with a bunch of toddlers, and he's wearing floaties. It's a great scene. We're in the pool, which is a womb, which is like a cocoon. When you grow up, you have to enter into the womb a second time. Whatever that is in your life, it's where you do the grunt work, the piecemeal work. It can take you months, years, decades. Some people don't grow up for a very long time. This is what it's like, learning to swim again. But it's not something new, like Tony, it's just remembering. Remember what it was like back in the womb, and then learning what it was like to be born, to breathe again. To live.

Tony's doing great, little by little, well done, don't panic, good boy. Chris talks to Tony who's eating a sandwich after class. "I've fucked it all up!" he says. "Shit dude, try getting hit by a bus...that'll really put a damper on your day." True. Tony tells him to eat some of his sandwich, reminding him that he's still not quite out of the cocoon. One of the little girls from class says bye to Tony, which is so cute. "You're going to get it all back," Tony explains to Chris. "Piece by piece. What else is there?" And all that's left for us to know is that Jal's pregnant. Which we knew was going to happen, from the moment she told Cass she didn't know what it was like to be in love. What else is there? Get it all back. Piece by piece. Play the game. It's the only game in town.

Here are the rules of the game. 1) A body remains at rest unless a force acts upon it. Force is energy, and between people it's violent, it's aggressive. Aurally it sounds like douche-speak, physically it's making money and doing work. 2) The force on a body is equal to its mass multiplied by its acceleration. This means two things. Your mass is everything that you start out with. Your stuff, your property, your home, your family. However big your circle is, that's your mass. For Chris, his mass has been practically zero for so long, he's gotten used to it being so infinitesimal. When someone gets used to having such a low mass any added mass feels like a ton. The second thing has to do with acceleration, which is change in velocity, which is change in distance. It's about absolute space. It puts your mass in the universe, and where your mass is directed. The "path" you don't want to get lost from. This is the part douche-speakers have trouble coming to grips with, spatial absolutism is jarring for them. But for someone like Chris, who has a dream, he understands Newtonian physics. 3) To every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. This is the hardest law to grasp, and the one thrown around the most. This is the mantra of this episode, this season, this series. Wherever your mass moves, you're going to bump into someone else's mass and it causes something to happen.

If you're Cassie, you're a planet, your mass is huge, even if you're anorexic, because you're throwing around so much weight with your suicide attempts and witchy womanliness. When you move to Scotland, that's you moving your mass and affecting a shitload of other masses. That's you knocking the dozens of other pendulums out of whack, and eventually they're gonna come swinging back. Sid's going to be affected by your actions, and mass just isn't going to stay put while you're away. When Cassie comes back, it's only natural that she's going to receive an equal and opposite reaction. That's how physics works.

If you're Chris, you're a star, you aren't playing the game exactly, and everyone in your life seems like they're pushing away from you. It's nuclear fission. Your critical mass is lowered, and all you're left with is excess energy. You throw party after party, burning off your mass. At a critical mass, a reaction occurs, based on Newton's third law. You go nova, and you start again. It's beautiful, hot, brilliant, harsh, and unbearable. You're now a solar system. You're a planet. You have your own mass and now you're playing the game with the rest of them. What you do affects other people, you push something and it's going to push back somewhere down the line. The thing that Chris had trouble understanding was that he's always been a star, in a cocoon. That people leaving him was terrible, and painful, and they affected him, but it was just a part of the process, from a different perspective. It was getting rid of everything he'd eaten up as a caterpillar, turning it all into a brilliant sort of energy. Jal taught him how to dream, to follow the second law of the game. Regardless of all that pain he felt, he learned to direct himself, to accelerate at a fresh new angle. Now he's a planet, he has a world of his own. A beautiful mass. Chris and Jal and a baby he doesn't know about yet. That's how you play the game.

So take a look at this cool toy. It's called Newton's cradle. It's just a few balls down the line. Apply force by hitting one ball against another and the force travels through all adjacent balls for an equal and opposite reaction on the other side. In outer space, even on the moon-sphere where Cass is from, this reaction can go on for pretty much forever. If you're an outside ball, affecting other people or in a position to get affected, you're going to get hit and it's going to hurt, and you can't help but hit back in some way. So all this talk I've said before about personal responsibility, you wanna know how that fits into Newtonian physics? Well, responsibility is just about perspective. It's about sharing your point of view, and knowing you're just a ball on the outside. But even balls have dreams. They dream of houses, and homes, and families, and babies. However they get that done, whether it's selling real estate, or erotic art, or playing music. You attain your dream. Every little step to attaining that dream moves you towards the middle of Newton's cradle. Every step towards the middle, the shock and pain of getting hit is reduced. Every little bit helps. Just like Tony's figuring out. So responsibility? It's just about getting to the middle, no matter what game you're playing, it's really the only way to get there. Strike a balance. Find the middle, find your dream, your bliss. Sometimes you gotta say yes, and sometimes you don't say fuck it. There's no cheating at that game.

So all that hard work, having a good life and being happy with it, being responsible and letting loose, building things up and taking them down, keeping all that in balance, learning to be a middle ball. There's a term for all that, it's called growing up. When you're a kid, you're always an outside ball. When you mature, that's just you moving down the line to the inside. And you know figuring out how all that stuff balances out is just the first step. What comes next, now that's the challenge: making it work from this day forward for the rest of your life. Because the fact of the matter is, every single person on this planet has to grow up and then stick with that balance for the rest of their lives. It's hard, but you do it. And it doesn't stop. It gets passed on, and every single generation has to figure out the exact same balance all anew, every single time.

Chris takes Jal to Angie's old house. She gave it to him. That was her last gift. Bye Angie, I won't miss you, but I thank you. Chris is explaining to Jal how he lost everything, with all that he has. Crayons and paper. She came because part of her still wants to play the game. "Yes." He explains that everything he's ever had disappears from him. He's been left with nothing. Jal counters that he isn't the only person in the world to have been hurt. Not the only ball to be smacked in the cradle. "So what gives you the right to act like you are?" She can't forgive him, because he didn't play the game. But he explains that that was part of growing up. The womb time, the time spent in the cocoon. It looks like hell from this angle. It looks like everything is leaving you, but it's really just things being pushed away, because you're a star and you need a place to burn. What does it look like for someone to go nova, the butterfly breaking out of the cocoon? Like Chris telling Jal he loves her. Telling her that she was worth trying for, that she was the point of the whole game. Telling her that she was the reward the game gets you. Telling her he'd do everything and anything for her. Telling her he gets the rules of the game now, and that he's willing to play. Chris walks out the door to get the job, for himself, for the reward of the game.

I love this show so much because every episode is like a perfect reflection of the entire season, and every scene is like a perfect reflection of the entire episode. And you get this fractal/kaleidoscope effect, which is so perfect an analogy I might squeal. With a kaleidoscope, you turn a tube, and the light coming through is cut up and hits your eye differently every time, your perspective changes like that in an instant, every day, every hour, every minute. The fact is the perspective changes, but the material is the same. It's the same glitter and stars and giraffe stickers and whatever nonsense that your life is, just seen from another beautiful angle. It's Josie saying no matter what, right now, you're an outside ball. And that's ok!

You strike a balance. You change your perspective. You find that place in the middle, where it stops hurting. And there aren't two people that I would rather see in a position to continue that cycle and have a baby more than Chris and Jal...except for maybe Sid and Cassie, or Tony and Michelle. And I am quite confident that Maxxie could raise all three of those babies single-handedly better than anyone. And Anwar...well he's Muslim so he comes from a whole culture that needs to...well, never mind, we'll have plenty of time to get into all of that. So what a great mid-season episode, because what comes next is the most beautiful thing.