"JJ" is the seventh episode of the
third series of the British
teen drama
In film and television, drama is a category or genre of narrative fiction (or semi-fiction) intended to be more serious than humorous in tone. Drama of this kind is usually qualified with additional terms that specify its particular super-g ...
''
Skins'', which first aired on 5 March 2009 on
E4 in both
Ireland
Ireland ( ; ga, Éire ; Ulster Scots dialect, Ulster-Scots: ) is an island in the Atlantic Ocean, North Atlantic Ocean, in Northwestern Europe, north-western Europe. It is separated from Great Britain to its east by the North Channel (Grea ...
and the
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom (UK) or Britain, is a country in Europe, off the north-western coast of the continental mainland. It comprises England, Scotland, Wales and North ...
. The episode was written by the series' co-creator,
Bryan Elsley
Bryan Elsley (born 17 May 1961 in Dalkeith, Midlothian) is a Scottish television writer, best known for the co-creation of E4 teen drama '' Skins'' with his son, Jamie Brittain. Other television dramas include ''Rose and Maloney'', '' The You ...
, and was directed by Charles Martin. The episode focuses on the character of JJ Jones (Ollie Barbieri), who has
Asperger syndrome
Asperger syndrome (AS), also known as Asperger's, is a former neurodevelopmental disorder characterized by significant difficulties in social interaction and nonverbal communication, along with restricted and repetitive patterns of beha ...
, and his confusion about his life and his desire to be normal. He strikes up a friendship with Emily Fitch (
Kathryn Prescott
Kathryn Prescott (born 4 June 1991) is an English actress, best known for her roles as Emily Fitch on the E4 teen drama series '' Skins'' (2009–2010) and the titular character in the MTV teen drama ''Finding Carter'' (2014–2015).
Career
...
) and attempts to solve the dispute between his friends James Cook (
Jack O'Connell Jack O'Connell may refer to:
* Jack O'Connell (actor) (born 1990), English actor
* Jack O'Connell (Australian politician) (1903–1972), member of the Victorian Legislative Council
* Jack O'Connell (diplomat) (1921–2010), American diplomat and C ...
) and Freddie McClair (
Luke Pasqualino
Luca Giuseppe "Luke" Pasqualino (born 19 February 1990) is a British actor of Italian descent. He is best known for his portrayal of Freddie McClair in the television series '' Skins'', d'Artagnan in the television series '' The Musketeers'' a ...
) over their shared love interest,
Effy Stonem
Elizabeth "Effy" Stonem is a fictional character in the television series '' Skins'', played by Kaya Scodelario. She appears in all of the first four series, as well as the seventh series, and appears in the most episodes (27). Kaya Scodelario wa ...
(
Kaya Scodelario
Kaya Rose Scodelario-Davis ( née Humphrey; born 13 March 1992) is an English actress best known for her roles as Effy Stonem on the E4 teen drama '' Skins'' (2007–2010, 2013), and Teresa in the ''Maze Runner'' film series (2014–2018). Ot ...
).
"JJ" was filmed in November 2008. Barbieri undertook various measures to get into his character's mindset, including research, creating part of the set himself, and later destroying it. The episode featured numerous
cameo appearance
A cameo role, also called a cameo appearance and often shortened to just cameo (), is a brief appearance of a well-known person in a work of the performing arts. These roles are generally small, many of them non-speaking ones, and are commonly ei ...
s by the series' crew members. "JJ" drew just under one million viewers on its first broadcast and was E4's highest-rated programme of the week. It was received generally well by critics, though the writers' decision for Emily to have sex with JJ drew criticism from the lesbian community.
Plot
JJ visits his psychiatrist, Dr Felly (Paul Ridley), seeking help for his recent bouts of rage and his confusion about his life and friends. Dr Felly has poor advice for JJ and prescribes him more drugs to calm him down. As he is leaving, he meets Emily, who came to the clinic to receive counselling in being more honest, but was simply prescribed the same drugs as JJ. She
comes out
Coming out of the closet, often shortened to coming out, is a metaphor used to describe LGBT people's self-disclosure of their sexual orientation, romantic orientation, or gender identity.
Framed and debated as a privacy issue, coming out of ...
to him and he shares with her his longing to be "normal" for a day so that he could lose his virginity and reunite Freddie and Cook. She advises him to just ask for the things he wants, so they visit Freddie to tell him to make up with Cook. At Freddie's house, though, they walk in on Freddie having sex with Emily's twin sister, Katie (
Megan Prescott
Megan Prescott (born 4 June 1991) is an English actress and bodybuilder who is best known for her role as Katie Fitch in the double BAFTA-winning teen drama '' Skins''.
Background
Prescott was born in Palmers Green, London, and is six minute ...
), and JJ accidentally outs Emily as a
lesbian
A lesbian is a Homosexuality, homosexual woman.Zimmerman, p. 453. The word is also used for women in relation to their sexual identity or sexual behavior, regardless of sexual orientation, or as an adjective to characterize or associate n ...
, leaving Katie looking visibly shaken. JJ asks Freddie to make up with Cook, but Freddie refuses and tells JJ to choose between him and Cook.
Returning home, JJ sees his mother, Cecilia (
Juliet Cowan
Juliet Cowan (born 21 May 1974 in Belfast, Northern Ireland) is a British television, film and stage actress. Cowan has had various TV guest star roles in long-running shows such as ''EastEnders'', ''Silent Witness'' and '' Casualty''. Cowan has ...
), overwhelmed by all of his issues and blames himself. He calls Cook to tell him how he feels, but Cook is preoccupied with having sex with a girl who JJ assumes is Effy. When he visits Effy, however, she reveals that she has not seen Cook in days. He asks her to leave Freddie and Cook alone; she refuses but offers to be his friend. JJ then visits Cook and discovers that he is having sex with their friend Pandora Moon (Lisa Backwell). Pretending not to have seen this, he then confronts Cook about ruining their friendship with Freddie and shouts at Cook for not caring about how he feels. Cook gives JJ a hug and promises that he'll always care about him. He brings JJ with him to buy drugs. They are almost arrested and, after running from the police, JJ pressures Cook into taking his prescription drugs instead before they meet their friends at a club. In the queue, Effy tells Naomi Campbell (
Lily Loveless
Lily May Loveless (born 16 April 1990) is an English actress, best known for her role as Naomi in the BAFTA award-winning drama '' Skins''.
Career
Loveless made her acting debut in the third series of Skins, playing the sexually confused, ou ...
) that she knows about Naomi and Emily's relationship. Naomi reveals that she is unsure of her
sexuality and realises that Effy is in love with Freddie, not Cook. JJ and Cook arrive and Thomas Tomone (
Merveille Lukeba
Merveille Lukeba (born 30 March 1990) is a Congo-born British actor, best known for his role as Thomas Tomone in double BAFTA-winning E4 teen drama '' Skins''.
Early life
Born in Kinshasa, Zaire, he was raised in Woolwich, southeast London.
H ...
) lets them into the club where British electronica duo
You Love Her Coz She's Dead
You Love Her (formerly known as You Love Her Coz She's Dead and stylized as YOU LOVE HER) is an English electronic music project formed in Bath in 2007.
History
The project signed to French record label Kitsuné as a duo in 2008. Their debut s ...
are playing, announcing that Emily is already inside. Cook gets into a fight on the dancefloor and Freddie moves in to help when he discovers that JJ gave Cook his prescription drugs.
Cook, under the influence of JJ's drugs, is compelled to tell the truth and confesses that Effy loves Freddie. Cook says that he loves Effy, but knows his feelings are not reciprocated and that is why he is having an affair with Pandora. Thomas, Pandora's boyfriend, overhears this and is furious. JJ leaves the club and finds a tearful Emily, who does not want to go home to face Katie. JJ invites her to spend the night with him and, after they agree to be friends, she gets him to have sex with her, as a "once-only charity event". JJ's mother meets Emily the next morning and watches them discuss the night before. She is overjoyed that he has made a real friend and believes that JJ will be alright after all.
Production
"JJ" was filmed in November 2008
in the same production block as the series' eighth episode, "Effy". Ollie Barbieri did some research to help him in playing JJ, who has
Asperger syndrome
Asperger syndrome (AS), also known as Asperger's, is a former neurodevelopmental disorder characterized by significant difficulties in social interaction and nonverbal communication, along with restricted and repetitive patterns of beha ...
. He said that, in initial episodes, he played JJ as "quite mad and I jumped around a lot", though by this episode his portrayal was "watered down a bit". Charles Martin shot an unscripted scene that involved Barbieri destroying the set of JJ's bedroom; Martin believed this would help Barbieri to get into JJ's mindset.
Barbieri was also able to learn more about his character by creating the collage in JJ's room himself, in which JJ has tried to organise his thoughts about his friends and his life.
[ Martin said that he and Barbieri had a "very involved director-actor relationship" and that he enjoyed "JJ" the most out of all the episodes he directed in the series. According to ]runner
Running is a method of terrestrial locomotion allowing humans and other animals to move rapidly on foot. Running is a type of gait characterized by an aerial phase in which all feet are above the ground (though there are exceptions). This is ...
Laurence Wigfield, JJ's clinic was described in the script as "a desolate shabby place, the kind of place you went to die", with the bracketed suggestion of Fishponds Studio, where the ''Skins'' offices are. Though Wigfield initially "couldn't believe" this, the studio was used for filming the scene, which Wigfield admitted "worked quite well".[ The scene in which JJ and Emily bond after meeting at the clinic was filmed in ]Bristol
Bristol () is a city, ceremonial county and unitary authority in England. Situated on the River Avon, it is bordered by the ceremonial counties of Gloucestershire to the north and Somerset to the south. Bristol is the most populous city in ...
's Brandon Hill
Brandon Hill () is the highest mountain in County Kilkenny, Ireland, with an elevation of and prominence at . The South Leinster Way, a long-distance trail, meandering through the Barrow Valley and traverses Brandon Hill. The village of ...
Park, near Cabot Tower.[
''Skins'' assistant director, Seth Adams, had a ]cameo appearance
A cameo role, also called a cameo appearance and often shortened to just cameo (), is a brief appearance of a well-known person in a work of the performing arts. These roles are generally small, many of them non-speaking ones, and are commonly ei ...
as a nurse at JJ's clinic, while floor runner Tom Meakin featured in a minor role as a policeman.[ The men who fight with Cook at the club were played by members of the ''Skins'' crew, Chris "Fagin" Lynd, Toby "Ziegler" Welch and "The Slasher".][ The show's location manager appeared in a non-speaking role as a mental patient being pushed in a wheelchair at the psychological clinic.][ The episode's soundtrack comprises mostly piano works composed by Claude Debussy and recorded by David McGuinness. This was the result of a suggestion made by Bryan Elsley for Debussy's music to accompany an entire episode.
]
Reception
"JJ" brought in 997,000 viewers and was E4's highest-rated programme of the week with an audience share of 4.8 percent. Another 325,000 viewers watched the episode an hour after its initial broadcast on E4's timeshift channel
A timeshift channel (sometimes referred to as a +1 channel) is a television channel carrying time-delayed reruns of its "parent" channel's programming. This channel runs alongside their parent: the term "timeshift" does not refer to a network br ...
, E4+1.[
"JJ" was received generally positive reviews from mainstream critics. One critic for PopSugar.com "love JJ's friendship with Emily and his mother's smile at the end of the episode, which they felt was "a touching moment to end with". They credited Cook's likableness, in spite of the character's flaws, to O'Connell's "great" acting. Ellie Newton-Syms of ''InJournalism Magazine'' wrote that "digging into slightly deeper issues is what ''Skins'' is good at" and "there is clearly lots left to be revealed", as signified by Cook's drug-induced revelation that he has "nothing". ]Digital Spy
Digital Spy (DS) is a British-based entertainment, television and film website and brand and is the largest digital property at Hearst UK. Since its launch in 1999, Digital Spy has focused on entertainment news related to television programmes, ...
's Dan French reviewed the episode positively, finding JJ to be a "lovable" character. He considered Cook's confession that Effy truly loves Freddie and the revelation of Cook's affair with Pandora to be "shocking". Fergus Shiel of ''The Sydney Morning Herald
''The Sydney Morning Herald'' (''SMH'') is a daily compact newspaper published in Sydney, New South Wales, Australia, and owned by Nine. Founded in 1831 as the ''Sydney Herald'', the ''Herald'' is the oldest continuously published newspaper ...
'' called "JJ" a "top episode", praising its portrayal of "teenage uncertainty that pack an emotional punch".
The episode drew criticism from the lesbian community, however. Kate Murray of lesbian-based website AfterEllen.com
AfterEllen (also known as AfterEllen.com) is an American culture website founded in 2002, with a focus on entertainment, interviews, reviews, and news of interest to the lesbian and bisexual women's community. The site covers pop culture and lifes ...
regarded Emily's willingness to have sex with JJ as the use of a "classic and highly offensive stereotype" and felt that this "undermine what it means to be a lesbian". She thought that the episode fell short of the previous episode, "Naomi
Naomi or Naomie may refer to:
People and biblical figures
* Naomi (given name), a female given name and a list of people with the name
* Naomi (biblical figure), Ruth's mother-in-law in the Old Testament Book of Ruth
* Naomi (Romanian singer) (bor ...
", which focused on Emily and Naomi's relationship, suggesting that this could be because "Naomi" was written by a 19-year-old female, Atiha Sen Gupta, while "JJ" was written by Elsley, a 47-year-old male. The entertainment editor for eurOut.org, a website for European lesbians, was critical of the episode, writing, "Welcome to the wonderful world of television, where being a lesbian and sleeping with men always goes hand in hand." She did believe, however, that Emily's coming out to JJ was "very funny" and Effy's nonchalance about Naomi's sexuality was "cool".
See also
* List of fictional characters on the autistic spectrum
This is a list of fictional characters that have been explicitly described within the work in which they appear, or otherwise by the author, as being on the autism spectrum. It is not intended to include speculation. Autistic people involved in t ...
References
External links
*
{{Good article
2009 British television episodes
Skins (British TV series) episodes
Television episodes about autism