Single White Female: Sketch Paints a Convincing Portrait of a Serial Killer in the Making on "Skins"

Once again, Skins has managed to completely surprise me.

Revealing just who has been stalking Maxxie in this week's episode ("Sketch"), Skins took what could have been a humdrum plot about a girl having a crush on gay Maxxie and transformed it into a full-on psychotic episode in which said girl, Lucy (a.k.a. Sketch) not only binds her breasts to be more like a boy (and decorates her bedroom with spy shots of Maxxie) but constructs an elaborate fantasy world for her handicapped, reclusive mother in which she and Maxxie are dating.

If that weren't enough, Sketch embarks on a series of plots to engineer her way into the school play (Osama!: The Musical, no less) so that she can star opposite Maxxie and kiss him on stage. Her idea is that Maxxie will realize that he does love her as soon as their lips meet. Um, not quite.

In order to get her way, Sketch tries to convince lecherous drama teacher Bruce to cast her as the female lead and boot Michelle from the role. When he doesn't blink (besides, he's too busy inappropriately groping Michelle to kick her from the play), Sketch concocts a plot to have Bruce removed from the school, complete with a lie about him fondling her at his costume party. (I did love how Sketch dressed up as Hannibal Lecter, complete with the mask and all.) And when Michelle reaches out to poor, misunderstood Sketch (she caught 'Chelle and Tony in a rather compromising position at the party and Michelle feels bad about Sketch being attacked by Bruce), Sketch repays Michelle's kindness by giving her some emetics minutes before Michelle is meant to go on stage. (She claims they are anti-anxiety pills she swiped from her mother.) Exit Michelle stage left...

In an outrageous twist, Sketch breaks into Maxxie's family home and, um, has her way with herself on Maxxie's bed before spending the night underneath his bed, reciting his morning routine with perfect ease. But when he discovers her hair clip on the floor, he knows that something's not quite right.

I couldn't believe that Sketch tied her mother to the bed so she couldn't call the school and undo the damage that her daughter had done. In fact, I thought Sketch would go over the edge and kill her mother altogether after Maxxie tells her that he felt nothing after their on-stage kiss, leading Sketch to slap him in front of the audience and then have a meltdown back at her council flat.

While she didn't kill her mother, Sketch isn't quite done with her rampage yet. She goes to see Anwar (whom Maxxie tried to fix up with Sketch in the first place) and spins some lie about how Maxxie is lying about her infatuation with him... and then has sex with Anwar (who recites the complete filmography of Hugh Grant in order to sustain things for a while) to get back at Maxxie.

I'm not quite sure that the Sketch storyline is over but I thought it was an interesting approach for the writers to introduce a new character whom we've never seen before and put the focus on them for an entire episode. I do wish that we could have seen more of her outsider perspective on the entire group (we only really see her interact with Maxxie and Michelle and a little bit with Anwar) as she launches her Single White Female-approach to winning Maxxie over.

But all in all, another gripping installment of this teen-centric series that consistently manages to surprise and touch me in unexpected ways.

Next week on Skins ("Sid"), Sid suspects that Cassie is cheating on him in Scotland and desperately needs someone to talk to but his relationship with Tony has been strained since the accident.