In just two weeks, MTV's teens series "Skins" has become one of TV's most compelling dramas.
Unfortunately for the producers and MTV executives, that's only the case off-screen, where "Skins" is playing like a car wreck impossible to look away from.
Fearful of being connected to something that might wind up being judged "child porn" under various statutes, advertisers are bailing on the Brit-spinoff series, to the point where analysts say MTV could lose $2 million per episode if it decides to stick with the show. Meanwhile, more than half of all viewers have tuned out from Week 1 to Week 2, as the audience fell from 3.3 million to 1.6 million.
And just think: Baltimore, where the series was once possibly going to have been set and filmed, could have been at the center of all this misery. In addition to being known to millions of viewers of prime-time dramas as a city steeped in homicide and drugs, we could have also been showcased as a center of teen sex and porn.
The "city steeped in homicide and drugs," of course, is a reference to the image of Baltimore created by David Simon in HBO's "The Wire." Even though "The Wire" ended its run in 2008, it was back as a topic of debate again this month when Police Commissioner Frederick H. Bealefeld III described the series as a "smear that will take decades to overcome." He added that Simon's depiction of Baltimore was "the most unfair use of literary license that we've borne witness to."
Simon countered in a response published in The Baltimore Sun by saying, "'The Wire' owes no apologies. ... We made things up, true. We have never claimed otherwise. But respectfully, with regard to our critique, we have slandered no one."
Be careful what you wish for when it comes to local TV production and a city's image. That's one of the morals — the Baltimore one — from the story of "Skins." There are others involving marketplace forces, government regulation, sexualization of adolescence and the question of whether there really are any limits in media and morals these days.
In 2009, Liz Gateley, senior vice president of series development for MTV, told The Sun that the producers planned to set and film the series in Baltimore: "I think they chose Baltimore because it has diverse ethnic groups and socioeconomic levels and urban and suburban areas," she said
Besides the desperately needed production dollars that any filming would have added to the local economy, just being the fictional home for a show that generates passion among young viewers — which the original British version did — seemed as like a good thing for the city.
But then in September came this e-mail from co-creator Bryan Elsley: "Although we initially considered shooting 'Skins' in Baltimore, we have always preferred that the series should have a non-specific setting, so we are going for a general eastern seaboard environment. This allows us more freedom to tell stories about whatever we think relevant and funny to young people."
That's all MTV and Elsley were willing to offer by way of explanation after several weeks of e-mails and phone calls trying to find out why they had snubbed Baltimore for a Toronto production base and non-specific urban setting.
Any sense of loss, however, quickly evaporated when the Canadian-made MTV version of "Skins" debuted this month.
Based on just the trailers, Tim Winter, president of the Parents Television Council, issued a statement saying, "'Skins' may well be the most dangerous television show for children that we have ever seen."
PTC is a nonpartisan educational organization that lobbies for "responsible entertainment." It claims 1.3 million members, and its opinion of the series has only gotten worse since the first episodes.
"MTV appears to be deliberately targeting teens with a marketing campaign that makes light of lying to parents and participating in all manner of harmful, irresponsible, illegal and adult-themed behavior," Winter says.
The series "makes sexual objects of almost every single one of its characters and asks not only for viewers to approve, but to actively participate by posting their own secret stories" online, he adds.
Elsley responded last week with a statement calling "Skins" a "very simple" and "rather old-fashioned series" that captures the "reality of teen life."
Stressing that the series seeks to see teen culture from the inside out, Elsley said of his characters (and teenagers in general), "Their morals may not be the same as their parents and teachers, but they are nevertheless highly developed and active in their world."
He also offered a version of the "these are not bad kids, they just make bad choices" argument, and basically concluded by saying adults who complain about the series just don't get it.
Based on what has aired so far, "Skins" does sexualize adolescence to a degree seen in no other American TV series. Worse, in the case of the female teen characters, it presents some of them in the manner of soft porn — particularly when it comes to lesbian identity. And these are characters that definitely are made to look in dress, manner and movement more like girls than young women.
If the ratings were huge and advertisers were clamoring to buy in instead of running for their lives, such cultural complaints might not matter. But given the economic issues and the threat of government anti-porn-law penalties, it looks like this time they might.
Either way, it's not Baltimore's problem.
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