Sex Education Season 2 Review: School Is Back In Session

Sex Education Season 2 lives up to its name by providing real-world, applicable sex education in a colorful and highly entertaining package.

The amount of actual, bona fide sex education that is conveyed on this fictional show could fill books, and, in reality, does—sexual health is a widely covered non-fiction genre. Sex Education makes viewing a learning process, but in the most enjoyable way.

It runs the gamut of sex topics from STIs to masturbation to the fluidity of sexuality, but it doesn’t stop there, Sex Education covers issues of mental health as well. Self-harm and sexual assault trauma play into two major storylines. And every bit of it is handled with the utmost care and sensitivity while still staying in service to the narratives, both comedically and dramatically.

Many storylines deal with characters trying to figure out their sexual identities.

On Sex Education Season 1, Adam (Connor Swindells) was really struggling with his gay feelings. His denial and fear of those feelings had him acting out in negative ways such as bullying Eric (Ncuti Gatwa).

On Season 2, he is further conflicted. Episode 5 shows Adam having a wank while looking at a movie poster with a hunky dude and a busty babe. The camera whip-pans between the man and the woman as Adam’s eyes dart back and forth. Then on Episode 6, he has a long-overdo (and super important) heart-to-heart with Eric.

Adam: What did I do wrong?
Eric: You bullied me for years, Adam. You made me feel unsafe for years. You were one of the main reasons I wasn’t kind to myself. And I’m supposed to believe that you’ve suddenly changed? You’re full of shame, man, and I can’t be in that place anymore. I’ve had to work really hard to love myself, and I won’t go back to hiding things about me again.
Adam: I’m scared. And I think I’m bisexual.

The emotion exuded by Swindells and Gatwa is palpable. You can not only see but feel how frightened Adam is at both this realization and of losing Eric. And Eric sticking up for himself and his truth is really beautiful to watch after all he went through on Sex Education Season 1.

Ola (Patricia Allison) also deals with a similar confusion. Whilst in a relationship with Otis (Asa Butterfield), she experiences sex dreams about her new friend, Lily (Tanya Reynolds). Unlike Adam, though, she is open to exploring it and takes an online quiz to help her figure out what that might mean.

Ola: I’m a pansexual, apparently.
Adam: What like, fucking pots and pans? I knew a guy who used to like to stick his dick in the suction cup of a vacuum cleaner. It’s normal.
Ola: [reading] “Pansexual means that you’re attracted to the person, not the sex or gender. It’s about the connection you have with the human being, not with their genitalia.” Huh. Kind of makes sense, actually.

This definition is imparted simply and Adam’s comment provides some levity, making the scene light and casual while still being informative. It reminds me of Schitt’s Creek and how David likens being pansexual to wine: “I like the wine and not the label.” David was the first pansexual I was ever aware of seeing on screen, and the character of Ola is a great addition to media’s representation of pansexuality.

Asexuality is another underrepresented orientation that sits on the wide spectrum of sexual identities, and Sex Education does a great job of explaining it. An outcome of this particular subplot is one of the most important messages of the whole series, and the scene with Jean (Gillian Anderson) and Florence (Mirren Mack) is incredibly moving.

Florence: I don’t want to have sex at all. Ever, with anyone. I think I might be broken.
Jean: Why don’t you start by telling me how you feel when you think about having sex.
Florence: I don’t feel anything. I have no connection to it. It’s sort of like I’m surrounded by a huge feast with everything I could want to eat, but I’m not hungry.
Jean: Do you know what asexuality is? It’s when someone has no sexual attraction to any sex or gender. Sex just doesn’t do it for some people.
Florence: But I still want to fall in love.
Jean: Well, some asexual people still want romantic relationships, but they don’t want the sex bit. And others don’t want either. You know, sexuality is fluid. Sex doesn’t make us whole. And so, how could you ever be broken?

This is so powerful and important.

After her session with Jean, Florence runs into Otis in the hall and tells him, ‘Your advice was a bit crap, but your mum is my hero, so I need a refund.” She has tears in her eyes (as do I), and you can see how empowered she feels. Anderson and Mack’s outstanding performances in this scene give poignancy to this vital message.

Because the characters were so well developed on Sex Education Season 1, Season 2 can focus on plot, and boy, do they fit a large amount of content into these eight episodes. Each story is given sufficient time and attention for things to organically play out.

Some stand-alone arcs are intricately woven into the overall story—most notably, Aimee’s sexual assault.

Aimee (Aimee Lou Woods) is given a more complex storyline this season. Woods is phenomenal in this role, giving depth to what might be a shallow character in lesser capable hands or on a less effective series. Woods can play the comic relief sidekick and the heroine of a heavy #metoo-centered theme in equal measure.

My heart breaks for Aimee as she goes through the stages of trauma after being sexually assaulted on the bus, and the show does well in portraying this difficult process. Her friendship with Maeve (Emma Mackey), an understanding boyfriend, and her own inner strength help her along the way.

Her story ends up bringing together schoolmates who, otherwise, have nothing else in common. She turns something really ugly that happened to her into a beautiful example of women empowerment, and they all gain a positive support system of friends who have each other’s backs.

The detention scene on Episode 7 is somewhat of an homage to The Breakfast Club—Sex Education takes inspiration from John Hughes films, after all. These students with differing personalities are forced to work together on a report about solidarity.

Miss Sands: Okay, you want a challenge? You can spend the rest of detention preparing a presentation on what binds you together as women. One or all of you wanted to tear a fellow female down, now you can spend some time thinking about what you have in common instead.

Miss Sands (Rakhee Thakrar) then tells Mr. Hendricks (Jim Howick) that it’s an “impossible assignment.” They prove her wrong by bonding after Aimee shares her story. And then they all help her to get back on the bus.

This shows how important it is share our stories so others know they are not alone and what can happen when women support one another.

In its first season, Sex Education had Gillian Anderson’s Jean as a tertiary character. On Season 2, they give her much more to do, and the show and the audience benefit enormously from this decision. One can never have too much Gillian Anderson, in my opinion, and having Jean interact with the students is a great way to add even more of that practical sexual health info.

But that is not all that she brings to the table—her storyline is filled with drama, comedy, and a sticky love/family life. Jakob (Mikael Persbrandt) challenges her independence, Otis challenges her parental skills, and Mr. Groff (Alistair Petrie) challenges her professionally.

With Gillian Anderson, you know you are going to get raw, beautiful emotion—she is an amazing dramatic actor, but you also get great comedy. We saw a bit of it on Season 1 and we get a lot more on this season. She nails subtle humor with nuanced expressions and timing, and she also delivers with the physical comedy, like we see in the scene with the pans. “This is a colander.”

Her storyline contains the biggest twist and cliffhanger of the season. On Episode 8, she finds out that she is pregnant. This is shocking and unexpected …and it works.

Fans of The X-Files might be conflicted with this development. Gillian Anderson’s character, Dana Scully, got pregnant at the end of its final season, and it did not work. And there are many, many reasons why that was a failing in the writing.

Comparing why this twist works for Sex Education and not for The X-Files is its own thesis and one I can’t dig too deep into right now because this review is already too long as it is. Women of Jean and Scully’s age do get pregnant—it is rare but “not out of the realm of extreme possibility.”

On The X-Files, this same plot point had been used before and was handled quite poorly, in service only to the mythology that had gone off course, not the character. Jean being pregnant does serve the story and the character. It adds drama by complicating her break-up with Jakob and her relationship with Otis.

Pregnancy is sometimes a consequence of sex, and this show is about sex and all that goes with it. Having an older character go through this is an interesting and daring approach, and I applaud Sex Education’s boldness in going there.

I feel like I’ve already said a lot in this review, but I still have only scratched the surface—that attests to how much ground this show covers. Sex Education has Otis at its heart, and it’s his relationships that make up the bulk of the story.

Otis goes through all the rigor that is teenage adolescence. On Sex Education Season 1, he stayed mostly on the sidelines of the action while still being at the center, and on this season he is smack dab in the middle of the action. He gets knocked out in a school fight, throws a wild house party, and loses his virginity—and all this, too, just scratches the surface of his Season 2 journey.

There is a major duality in him this season—the angel and devil at his shoulder are both working overtime. At his core, he is good, this much we know, but he is human and we also know that means he has imperfections and flaws. He takes some big missteps and suffers the consequences of a few of them as well.

What I find most fascinating about his arc is how he tries to understand what is behind his bad behavior. That must be the genes he gets from his mother. Jean is a good therapist who wants to help people, and at his best, Otis is a good therapist (for a teenager) and wants to help his fellow students.

His father is also a therapist. How good of one, we don’t exactly know, but by what we see of him at his book signing, he is probably not that great. A bookstore employee tells Otis, “This guy is so full of shit,” and Remi later advises Otis not to read his book, Is Masculinity In Crisis?

Remi (James Purefoy) is self-serving and moralistically irresponsible. He does not own up to actions and many of Otis’ problems have him not owning up to his either. On Episode 8, they have a father-son convo where Remi, in atypical fashion, shines a light on this after desperate insistence from Otis.

Otis: I feel angry all the time, and I’m trying to figure out what kind of man I want to be, which is really hard when my dad has been absent for most of my life. Did you not like me as much as you thought you would?
Remi: Of course I like you. I just-
Otis: Then how could you leave me?
Remi: Because I’m an arsehole. I’m sure there are multiple ways of diagnosing my personality, but the chief ingredient is arsehole.
Otis: How do I not become an arsehole?
Remi: Just try and stay honest. ‘Cause once you start lying, it’s very hard to stop. You know, when you’re young you think that everybody out there really gets you. But, actually, only a handful of them do. All the people who like you, despite your faults. And if you discard them, they will never come back. So, when you meet those people, you should hold onto them really, really tightly. And don’t let them go.

Maybe he does have the knowledge to be a good therapist, after all, but just can’t put it into personal practice. Maybe Otis can learn from both of their mistakes.

They set up this scenario perfectly at the end of Sex Education Season 1 Episode 8 when Jean and Otis have a mother-son heart-to-heart.

Jean: And you’re not repressed, or dysfunctional, or unusually stunted, or any of the things that I said in the book. And I’m sorry.
Otis: Yeah, well, I am all those things, Mum. And some of it is your fault. A lot of it is dad’s fault, but mostly it’s just me. I’m not normal. 
Jean: Of course you’re normal. You’re 16. You’re not supposed to know the answers to anything. You’re going to be just fine.

The tag line for Season 2 is “Love is messy. Messy is normal,” and they fully encompass that message in this season by coming full circle from the messages on Season 1.

With all the loose ends left open at the close of Season 2 and the great news of a Season 3 renewal, we are all going to be just fine.

Stray Observations:

• The Season 2 soundtrack continues to slap.
• Maeve’s middle finger action is a thing of beauty.
• Jean’s assembly speech is so cringe-y. My poor Jean! “Why is everyone laughing at this nice lady?”
• I love all the new additions to the cast, especially Sami Outalbali, Chinenye Ezeudu, and George Robinson. However, I’m really mad at Robinson’s character, Isaac, for deleting Otis’ voice message. 
• “Human boys are so fragile.”
• “He was moving his fingers like he was dialing a 1920’s telephone, but really fast with no rhythm.”
• I am dying at Mr. Hendricks’ first attempt at dirty talking. “I’m going to get you so wet you’re going to feel like your water just broke. I’m gonna treat you so badly you’ll be late for work tomorrow and I’m gonna get you fired, completely ruin your life.”
• Adam’s “I like elbows” answer to whether he is a boobs or arse guy is peak bisexual behavior.
• I need more Ruthie. 
• “Jean actually gives me life.” Same, Eric, same.
• I want a hug from Jean. I want to go out for drinks with Jean. I want to talk about yonis with Jean. I want to go dancing with Jean. I have a mad crush on Jean.
• “I covet your pant suits.” Same, Ruby, same.
• “Look, I’m not having your pale, unusually long children.”
• Chip Taylor’s cover of “On The Radio” by Regina Spektor ends the season and I think it is the perfect choice, not to mention one of my all time favorite songs.

What did you think of the second season of Sex Education? Share your thoughts in the comments below!

Critic Rating:

User Rating:

 

Sex Education Seasons 1 and 2 are currently streaming on Netflix.

 Follow us on Twitter and on Instagram!

Want more from Tell-Tale TV? Subscribe to our newsletter here!

20 TV Characters Who Made Us Laugh in 2019