Skam

I am fed up with how teens are portrayed in media. There are only two ways really. There are Disney Channel Teens. These are the girls that get a credit card for emergencies only and then, of course, buying a new pair of shoes is an emergency. And there are CW Teens. They are the girls who are played by people, at best, in their mid-twenties and have a drug addiction and accidentally murdered someone.

I just want some real fraking teens that have dumb friend drama because their personalities don’t really go well together. I want girls thinking they are as mature as the CW fiction but when things come down to it they are really only a step or two above the Disney Channel fiction. That is real. As a former teenager, I would say that I thought I knew more than I did and I didn’t have the life experience to back up much of it.

Well, I found the show I have been looking for, and it is worth having to get it translated. Skam is my lovely little Norwegian Teen Drama! I have been obsessed with this show since late October 2016. So yes if was Norwegian I would call this a “Late to the Party”, but I’m American and I am so ahead of the curve.

Other than realistically portraying teens—which the creator, Julie Andem, is wonderful at—the show also has a completely unique and revolutionary format. Each episode of Skam is released throughout the week in a mixture of short clips, text message conversations, and Instagram posts. This season there is even a group of side characters with a YouTube Channel. Every Friday the final clip of the episode is released and then they are all put together and released as the full episode. If you watch Skam as it is coming out it is hard to not get obsessed with it. I often find myself checking the site throughout the day to see if there are any updates.

Similar to the British show Skins, Skam has an ensemble cast with a rotating point of view. Season 1 is Eva, Season 2 is Noora, Season 3 is Isak, and Season 4 is Sana. Because of this, and the fact that they are both shows about teens, they are often compared, but I will talk about that another day (I have too much to say). 

Basically every season you get to see the world from a new perspective and have your heart melt with how much you care for this young person and their struggles. It's extremely relatable, well-written, and filled with amazingly strong female friendships. I know that teen dramas aren't everyone's cup of tea, but this show is worth checking out just because it is so revolutionary. And if you are too lazy to hunt down google drives with reuploaded subtitled versions, you only have to wait about another year to watch the bastardized American version that will come out. 

My final thought: all of these characters are like my babies and I just want everyone to be as excited about them as I am. Also, Sana Bakkoush is a fraking badass character and is the queen of the show (she is on the far right side of the picture).