Season 4, Episode 9
June 16, 2017
Season four was never just Sana’s season.
From the moment Julie Andem announced that season four would be the end of Skam, the expectation was clear: if this was going to be the end of this story, then there was to be resolution for the entire cast, especially the point-of-view characters from previous seasons. In advance of the season, I identified the challenges this presented, and watched as season four played out in acknowledgment of those difficulties. For better or worse, season four was designed to address these complications, engineered in order to use the point-of-view structure to deliver on what Andem believed was necessary to bring this story to a close.
What season four became was a season that featured a lot of what makes Skam distinctive, with many great scenes of observational drama and introspection. However, it was also a season that struggled to stay in these moments, often forced to abandon the isolationist storytelling of previous seasons in favor of “plot” for the first time in its run. Sana’s character had a clear model for a Skam season: only she understood the struggles of balancing her faith and her friends, and the struggles of negotiating her religion while wanting to be a part of Norwegian culture. But while these themes became the anchor of season four, and the source of its best moments, they were not simply captured within the day-to-day experiences of life in Oslo—they were instead filtered through those numerous melodramas, pulling the show away from what it does best often enough to justify covering more narrative ground in anticipation for the series’ conclusion.
Cultural Learnings 