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.