"Skins" Season Two: Gay Maxxie gets a love interest

We blogged last year about the first season of the British teen drama Skins. Set in Bristol, it focuses on the lives of eight friends between the ages of 16 and 18 – including an out gay character, Maxxie (played by Mitch Hewer). Although it was refreshing to see an out gay teen who was confident and popular, the ensemble nature of the drama meant that Maxxie didn’t get much development last season. And the plotlines he did have also seemed to revolve around other people’s reactions to him – his Muslim best friend Anwar’s struggle to accept his sexuality, for example, or his heteroflexible friend Tony’s experimental attempts to seduce him.

The first episode of the second season of Skins premiered in the U.K. on Monday night. And although the characterization overall on the show is pretty shallow, there are signs that Maxxie may get a beefed-up plotline this time around. In the season premiere, we saw him being homophobically hassled by a group of boys who live near him – one of whom fairly clearly has the hots for him. This was confirmed later on when, having been chased by the homophobes and got away, Maxxie finds himself tackled to the ground and kissed by the boy, Dale. Initially indignant, Maxxie said “Dale, you can’t just treat me like shit and then just…” before evidently deciding “what the hell” and kissing him anyway.

While storylines involving homophobic abuse and closeted homophobes might seem like earnest clichés for a gay teen character, Skins prides itself (sometimes a little too much) on being politically incorrect and “edgy”. Consequently, Maxxie seemed totally unfazed by the persecution, even when a whole group of boys were chasing him. Having easily escaped from them, he muttered below his breath “tossers”.

Similarly, when he kissed Dale, it came across as being less because of low self-esteem or a willingness to tolerate a closeted boyfriend, than as simple pragmatic sexual opportunism – of a kind in which the other characters in the show regularly indulge.

More on Maxxie and a clip after the jump...

Another plotline involving Maxxie similarly sidestepped cliché – his relationship with his father Walter, played by British comedian Bill Bailey. Walter wants Maxxie to follow in his footsteps and be a builder, while the talented Maxxie is determined to be a dancer. This might seem like the oldest gay son/straight father story in the book – except that Walter himself enjoys dancing, and has no problem with Maxxie doing it in his spare time. He simply worries about Maxxie making a living – and he also doesn’t want him to go away yet to London to audition for musicals, because he loves him so much and will miss him. In the end, Maxxie and Walter reach a compromise: Maxxie will finish his year at school before starting to pursue his career as a dancer.

The last Maxxie storyline in this episode concerned his friendship with main character Tony – and was possibly the most groundbreaking of all. At the end of the last season, Tony was hit by a bus – and at the beginning of this season, he was shown to be mentally and physically changed, having lost his former wit and arrogance, and having difficulty with tasks such as writing and feeding himself.

In this first episode, Tony clings to Maxxie for support, even holding his hand on a bus. It was one of the most affectionate, physically comfortable relationships I have ever seen portrayed between a straight (or heteroflexible) male and a gay one, and was genuinely touching. While Tony jokes to Maxxie as Maxxie helps him (“Does this mean I have to gay you now?”), it was basically a portrait of two male friends who, irrespective of sexuality, have no problem acknowledging that they love each other. (It's also a nice nod to gay fans that the song used under this scene is "Knife" by the US indie band Grizzly Bear, whose lead singer, Ed Droste, is openly gay.)

You can see a clip of the first seven minutes of the episode below.