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Skins: Volume 4 (DVD) Critical darling Skins is back with another season of Effy and Co.’s misadventures! Volume Four begins with the suicide of a girl named Sophia (Amberley Gridley) while she is high on MDMA at Thomas‘s club night. A inspector (Pauline Quirke) questions the entire gang, and Thomas is expelled by the new headmaster (Chris Addison) for his unseemly connection to the incident. Thomas gives into temptation and s with another girl, causing Pandora to break up with him. Meanwhile, Effy falls into a psychotic depression, JJ falls in love with a single mother, and Naomi and Emily have some baggage to sort through. With everyone so busy, is there ever time for school? ]]> .com ---- British teen drama Skins became notorious for its hedonism--sex, drugs, and a killer soundtrack--but it's the outstanding writing and acting that have made the show such a success. Skins: Volume 4 continues with the cast from the previous season, each episode built around a different character: Effy (Kaya Scodelario), formerly the center of the group's social world, now grapples with mental instability; Cook (Jack O'Connell), volatile and rebellious, finds his amoral outlook tested by a young girl's drug-related suicide; Emily (Kathryn Prescott) discovers her girlfriend Naomi (Lily Loveless) has been unfaithful, while Emily's twin sister Katie (Megan Prescott) discovers she's infertile; Thomas (Merveille Lukeba) struggles to balance his family's rigid codes of behavior with the wild life of his friends; and more. As a whole, volume four has its weaknesses. The incident that launches the season peters out after the third episode, making the remaining episodes feel unfocused (and the direction the last two take is woefully melodramatic, verging on gothic). But most of the individual episodes are superb, and even the weaker ones have moments of the comedy, tension, or just sheer psychological acuity that make this series so utterly gripping. At its best, Skins brings the confusion and yearning of late adolescence to such vivid life it puts other teen dramas to shame. --Bret Fetzer