William and the Politically Correct Cliche of the Toxic Boyfriend

Perhaps one of the most confusing characters on Skam was William Magnussen, in the sense that people can't seem to figure out if it's okay to love him or not. This is made more confusing by the fact that almost everybody loves Noora (And yes, I give partial credit to Josefine Frida Peterson for what I believe to be one of the best performances of a teenaged girl, ever).

I've read people on the internet who say that Noora and William's relationship was toxic, and in some regards, I agree, mostly because of how they got together in the first place. Honestly, I didn't like that Vilde was any part of that exchange, and yes, I agree it was stupid of William to involve her like that.

But I don't think it's as black and white as that.

From the very beginning, we see that Noora is attracted to William but is afraid to admit it, not just because of Vilde but also because she feels she is betraying the image of the smart independent woman. In her head, a girl 'like her' never goes for a boy like William. But that's just prejudice on her part. Although I don't think young men who are in a very promiscuous lifestyle so easily change for a girl, but there's no reason 'good' girls should refrain from anything. But this was covered in the wonderful conversation Noora has with Sana, who surprisingly encourages Noora to keep an open mind.

Think about it. We are against women being judged for their romantic entanglements and the number of men they have been with, and don't like it when a woman's past is held against her. So are we being a bit unfair if we say that all young men who have their pick of girls are necessarily adverse to settling with one? And Skam balanced William's feelings for Noora with the character of Chris, who was really a player and didn't change for anybody and was in fact fooling girls. So it's not like Skam didn't cover that particular kind of person.

However, the biggest criticism someone like William probably gets is that he is too stubborn, and that hurts us because we see the story from Noora's point of view, and she is very hurt when he leaves her after Nico's betrayal. But this takes me to Sana's season, where yes, Sana feels bullied, but that feeling turns her into the biggest cyberbully of all, suddenly responsible for the kind of hate that has hurt her since she was little. I think William's character goes through something similar. His backstory could be almost comically tragic sometimes, and there were points where I thought, "There's no way so many horrible things happened to one guy." But within the universe of the show, they happened, and when he was with Noora, he acted the way he thought was right. That doesn't make him a toxic boyfriend. 

But most of all, I think we need to stop imposing so much political correctness on shows intended for teenagers because, let's be honest, teenagers can be stupid, and that stupidity (and the ways to grow from them) needs to be portrayed. We all have some amount of 'toxic' in ourselves, but we slowly leave it behind for the sake of the people we love. It's not an overnight process. Even William, in a surprising meta turn of events, says, "So you want me to be honest only when it's politically correct?" Because he is aware that he's not at that place where right and wrong are a given. He sees that good and bad are journeys, and if our true intentions are pure, our kneejerk reactions and temporary behaviors can be understood.

Another interesting thing that Skam did incredibly well is showing that people who are in new relationships don't really know each other very well. They might like and care for each other, but oftentimes such feelings are not entirely based on a thorough knowledge of one's partner. It takes time to reach that state of knowledge, and before that happens, it's difficult to tell what to believe and what not to, which we see in Noora's doubts in William that Nico takes advantage of.

I think what happened in the show between William and Noora was exactly what should have happened. They like each other, Noora fights with the feeling of becoming a cliche, she sees more in him than is seen at first glance, they go through something terrible and both parties have negative and hurtful reactions to the incident, but in the end, they choose to help and love each other because in comparison to everything else, that is what is important. I even love that Noora leaves him in season 3, because their journey has been so rough that it needs a break. But most of all, I like that he comes back, as cheesy as that sounds, because Noora later says that he opens up to her completely, and I think as the audience, we see that this opening up was what was missing before. Noora lacked trust and William was too guarded, and this needed to be resolved.

Human beings are not so simple that they can be easily labeled into 'toxic' and 'healthy'. There's way too many of us, and we need to figure stuff out sometimes. We're not going to get our doses of 'healthy' without a bit of work and as much as it's exciting to find a handsome guy like William, he's not going to come packaged in perfection. 

As far as real life is concerned, maybe we should think twice before we advise a friend to break up with soemone we don't 100% agree with. It's not that simple and in our efforts to do what's right, we might end up creating more problems for the people involved.