What was the straight-up dumbest thing that ever happened on Skins?

It’s been 16 years (LOL) since Skins first aired. Ten years since you first properly learned about drugs, about sex, about house parties – about all the shit they didn’t teach you in whatever backwater home counties school you wished you weren’t at.

Imagine, a TV show which spoke to teenagers without being condescending, which covered everything from anorexia to autism without flinching, all while making Bristol seem like an attractive place to go for uni. Before Skins, none of that would have been possible.

Yet for all its benefits, Skins didn’t half include some stupid shit – and we’re not just talking about Chris’ wardrobe. Here are all the straight-up dumbest plotlines from the whole of Skins – vote for your favourite at the bottom.

Madison Twatter, PhD

Mad Twatter, or Madison Twatter PhD, is the villain of sorts for Skins’ first season. Mad (as he’s known to friends) sports a well-waxed handlebar moustache, a yellow cardigan and a comical number of shambhala necklaces.

Which suggests that the creators of Skins have never actually seen a real life drug dealer, nor did they bother Googling what one looks like.

MC Hugo on the decks

Although, in the show’s defence, this is the closest it ever gets to depicting what students in Bristol are actually like.

Chris’ wardrobe

Just a few of his choice looks:

Not that it stopped you copying him.

Cassie making anorexia seem super cool

Sure, she shed light on a disorder which hadn’t had that much airtime before – but teaching teenagers how to pretend to have eaten and how to trick scales, all as part of a teen idol manic pixie dream girl persona?

Not cool.

Chris and Angie

This storyline literally only existed for the moist-palmed virgins in the audience (me) to vicariously play out their I-shagged-my-schoolteacher-and-there-were-no-real-consequences scenario.

The fact you fancied Tony

The only thing more fucked up than Tony, a man who psychologically abuses his friends so much that one of them tries to commit suicide, is the fact that you fancied the absolute pants off him.

Seriously, the only teenage heartthrob more disturbing is disturbed sexual predator and attempted rapist Chuck Bass. Wait, you fancied him too?

Also, Tony has worst bedsheets in the world.

The bit where Tony fondles the posh girl’s breasts while she sings Bonnie Tyler’s 1983 smash hit Total Eclipse of the Heart

Yep, we’re not making this up.

This guy

Fuck this guy.

The fact that Crystal Castles, CRYSTAL CASTLES, managed to move you to tears

Who would have thought that everyone’s least-favourite mid-2000s glitch pop/chiptune duo could make you weep huge, salty tears?

Sid’s dad just died, man. Have some heart.

Cassie’s funky music exam

What?

Chris dying like Joffrey

We’re no expert on brain haemorrhages, but we’re pretty sure they don’t make your face burst out of its casing like a boy-king who’s just been poisoned by enemies of the realm.

When they stole Chris’ dead body and paraded it through Bristol city centre

Wow this was actually really disrespectful.

Osama: The Musical

All together now: “Once I was a lonely banker, all I cared for were margins and accounts – I dreamed of Dow Jones and the FTSE, I didn’t see my credit running out.”

I’d go and see it tbh.

‘Pandora Moon’

This is the birth name of an actual character in the third and fourth seasons. Still, it’s nothing on “Shanky Jenkinson,” who Cook gains a GBH conviction for beating up at house party.

Worth it.

The gâteau

Iconic.

Pandora’s mum’s MDMA brownies

You can’t bake MDMA into brownies. The distribution would be all wrong, and the heat would most likely destroy the potency of the drug itself, rendering it useless.

Yes, I am fun at parties.

Effy’s weird challenges

Effy Stonem’s love life is something like a school sports day, which explains why in her first episode as main character she gives Cook, Freddie and JJ a series of creepy tasks to complete so one of them can “get to know her better.”

Fast forward to the season finale and the same three are racing with grannies on their backs, all in a desperate bid to win her heart.

Sure hope whoever succeeds isn’t rewarded with an untimely baseball bat death!

John Foster the crazy therapist

You know the feeling: you’re a trained psychotherapist in your mid-forties, you’ve got a stable career, you’ve got years of experience helping people overcome mental health issues and you’re cultivating a nice collection of shawl-collar cardigans.

Then you get an attractive young female patient, and what do you do? Why, brutally murder her boyfriend with a baseball bat in your own home, of course!

The expectation of what ’00s house parties were like

Anyone who grew up watching Skins knows the feeling of disappointment you get when you turn up to a house party expecting it to be like this.

It never was.

The cast

Forget the fact that Cassie and Chris are in Game of Thrones, or that Cook’s gone on to be a major Hollywood actor.

No, the real story here is that Doctor Who is Sid’s dad, and Super Hans is Cook’s. And the guy from Get Out? It’s none other than POSH FUCKING KENNETH.

The entirety of the last two seasons

Who the fuck are these people???