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The pilot episode revolved around a smug teenager named Tony who has a plan to get his virgin friend, Stanley, laid: Crash a prep school party and lure in a heavily medicated girl named Cadie with a large amount of pot Stanley bought on credit from a crazy drug dealer. The plan would have worked if Stanley wasn’t hopelessly in love with Tony’s attractive girlfriend, Michelle, and if their other friends (Chris, Daisy, Abbud and Tea) hadn’t started a brawl with the rich kids at the bash. Cadie ends up overdosing on pills so they steal an Escalade and speed to the hospital, where Cadie wakes up. The gang then drives to a lake where they try to light up, but the car, with them in it, rolls into the water.

You know, typical high school stuff.

“Skins” is a new drama series on MTV with an ensemble cast portraying “typical” high schoolers. Each episode focuses on one of the characters and his or her problems. So far, in five episodes, the show has depicted matters of depression, drug use, body image, teen/adult relations, homelessness and homophobia — pretty much like every other TV series about high school that isn’t “Glee.”

But unlike “Glee,” which is a ratings powerhouse with advertisers flocking to it, “Skins” has been dropping in ratings (3.26 million from its pilot down to under a million in its fifth episode) and advertisers. Companies such as Taco Bell, Subway and Wrigley Gum have pulled commercial spots from the show after the Parents Television Council labeled the sexual series as “child-porn” and called it “the most dangerous television show for children that we have ever seen.” The claims refer to the “Skins” actors’ ages, (15-19, also unlike “Glee”) and the semi-nudity often shown.

In actuality, the show is just a bad translation of the original UK series, which was far raunchier but yet less controversial. The pilot was a scene-for-scene, almost line-for-line, replica of the British pilot, even though many of the slang terms and word usage didn’t work for Americans. Four of the five episodes have had similar plots based around the alternate UK characters. For example, Cadie and Stanley were named Cassie and Sidney in the British series. Really original.

Names and bad dialogue aside, the most disappointing aspect of the show has been the acting. The producers casted an attractive group of unknowns, all with mysterious eyes and cute faces, but the acting is just unbearable sometimes. Forced lines and blank stares occur in every other scene. The group could pose for an Urban Outfitters viewbook but can’t carry an hour-long drama. It’s unfortunate because the actors in the UK series were all unknowns, but somehow it worked. Maybe because they had accents. But MTV does do a good job of covering up the flubs with an endless soundtrack of hipster music. Hopefully the American cast will work out their chemistry, because it’s not quite there yet.

Still it’s nice to see an MTV show that isn’t exploiting teenage pregnancy or creating a fake “real” world such as in “My Life as Liz.”

One bright spot in the series was the second episode, “Tea” (pronounced tay-uh). The only original character in the MTV version, Tea is a confident lesbian cheerleader who likes hooking up without commitment. But that’s not the highlight; it’s that the actress who plays Tea, Sofia Black-D’Elia, is actually convincing in the role. While the other actors constantly step over important lines and waste dramatic moments, Black-D’Elia manages to deliver a performance with actual sentiment as Tea.

In the end, “Skins” is about capturing the roller coaster of emotions that is adolescence. It depicts the time when people are at their height of bodily chemicals — both hormonal and otherwise ingested. Instead of just being a drama with teenagers in it, it focuses on the dramatic rush of being a teenager. The point of the show is to characterize real adolescent problems without being a clichéd reality show. Through the show’s format, it explores what it’s like to feel invincible, to feel vulnerable, to be misunderstood, to be influenced by your friends, to be crazy about someone — in summary — to be young.