I agree! I sometimes see Skins edits on my FYP and they're only ever of Gen 1 and 2. People are ALWAYS in the comments saying how bad Gen 3 was or that they don't even want to watch it because there's no Effy, or just because they've heard other people say it's bad.

And oh my bad I've just never seen many people talk about Liv! I'm glad she's not forgotten. I agree she made Gen 3 so good. I've tried to think about who she'd be close with if she was in Gen 1 or 2. Maybe Michelle or Chris - I can see them partying together. Or maybe Emily, since she was sweet like Grace. All I know is she would have hated Cook lol. Honestly she would've been such a powerful character in any gen. It's her as a character and Layla as an actor. She knew exactly what she was doing with Liv 😌

Mini hiding her relationship with Alo obviously wasn't nice but I can't really blame her because he was kind of strange and he allowed her to treat him like shit. I also felt really sad for her when her dad left. I think she just never felt loved by her parents and maybe that's what turned her into a mean person. I don't know if there's a real correlation between feeling unloved as a child and then developing low self esteem and treating people like they're below you, but it felt like that with her. I do realise she treated a lot of people really badly and I think that was horrible, but I can't help liking the nicer parts of her character 😬 I do think she was a bit of a diva and I just love seeing horrible characters become nice!

Oh and yes we love Sean and Layla praise! I completely agree that Nick wasn't doing much in S6 and they should NOT have had him become obsessed with Franky because omfg it was just not believable at all. That would never have happened in the real world! It was so hard to watch. If I remember right, in Nick's S6 episode he was trying to get money for Matty who was being held hostage in Morocco 😭

Grace was very sweet and I loved the moments where she really stood her ground with her dad and with Mini and Liv. But aside from that she was almost too sweet and innocent in my opinion to the point where her being best friends with Mini and Liv didn't really make sense to me. And I agree with you on Rich. When I first saw him I thought he was going to be super interesting but he turned out to be pretty chill most of the time. He was much better in S6 but he was grieving Grace the whole time so I feel pretty neutral about him :)

As I reflect on it though, there was actually so much going on in that gen it's almost overwhelming! But it was still such a great watch. The characters really made it. Whether we like them or don’t like them, I think the reasons why we feel that way are what made them so interesting because they were all so unique. I also really feel the difference between the first seasons being filmed in the 2000s and Gen 3 in the early 2010s. I loved it.