Subtext: Even though Eskild never says it, he clearly doesn’t believe Noora’s lie that she is sick, but he recognizes her need to process whatever happened at her own pace. But if she’s not done in two days, he’ll intervene.



Blink and you miss it: Noora has started drafting her article, but it’s mostly loose ideas. So far she’s written:



“What does May 17th mean for Norwegian youth?

What is society for why are we living in a society????

Norwegian youth uses over four hours on social media every day, according to a survey. Some people think that maybe it’s a waste of time. But I understand why we do it. Society is uncomplicated on social media. You can just log off and block

Why does unfairness happen to innocent people? Why are some people rich and others poor.



Main part:

The constitution

The refugees.

Young people spend 4 hours on social media every day…”



Blink and you miss it: The breakfast Eskild and Linn brought almost two days ago is still sitting in Noora’s room, untouched.



Culture: Eva, Chris, and Sana are all wearing bunad, a Norwegian folk costume based on traditional rural clothes going back as far as the 1700′s. A bunad is a pretty expensive piece of clothing, thousands of dollars for a single costume, which is quite different from what Vilde and Noora are wearing; cheap mass-produced dresses. There are plenty of socio-economic class markers in the show, we’ve seen how most of the characters live, what they wear, what their parents do, but this scene really confirms that Eva, Chris, and Sana are comfortably upper-middle class, while Vilde isn’t, because if she was, she would wear a bunad given how anxious she is to look good and fit in. But the truth is that she simply can’t afford one.



In Noora’s case, it’s probably just that her parents don’t care about her and never considered buying one for her, even though they could. Also, aesthetically, Noora’s simple short dress makes her stand out as exposed and vulnerable and almost naked, in a scene where she finally exposes her vulnerability, her naked picture, and her shame.



For Sana, wearing a bunad also shows that she’s really trying to be Norwegian, which is a theme the show will tackle in her season.



Lost in translation: The whole speech that William wrote uses a consistently mature and serious tone, but towards the end he has inserted the teenspeak phrase “for helt serr”, which shifts he tone completely. But in this case it works, because it’s supposed to remind the reader that it was written by an actual teenager, even though it sounds like an adult wrote it.



Subtext: SKAM, like all other tv-series aimed at teenagers, contain messaging that’s there to try to help them or inform them of what they can and should do. Most series completely fail at this, because it’s usually delivered by some adult who doesn’t know shit, and therefore it’s ignored. But by putting these words in Vilde’s mouth, by having the ditziest, blondest member of the girl squad tell Noora, and us, that “everyone knows” you should go to the doctor’s first thing if you think you’ve been sexually assaulted, the show brilliantly makes it a lot more likely that actual teenagers will listen to the messaging and learn from it.



And in retrospect we know that it worked, the number of reports of sexual assaults rose significantly after this episode aired.



Blink and you miss it: Vilde repeats back the end of the speech, but makes it about the justice system, not society and refugees.



Subtext: The reason this scene doesn’t take place at the school doctor’s is because Dr Skrulle is 100% comic relief, which wouldn’t fit with this scene that is actually serious and needs to be taken seriously.



That said, the show couldn’t resist not having a little bit of comic relief in the form of Chris’ pig balloon…



Subtext: The music during the end scene is Noe Bedre by Feit’n Fra Kolbotn, and the lyrics go:

“I only trust myself. I have learned that no-one is there when you really need help. Because in the end you deal with it alone. Thinking on all the things that never got any better. But it’s not my fault it turned out that way…”

