Friday 10 July 2020

Sex Education: Season 1, Episode 2

“Is it weird that I always think about the Queen when I cum?”

Perhaps this episode, a little more obviously than the first, blatantly exists to fulfil a plot function- to create the demand for Otis as an informal sex therapist for the school as he helps a couple with their problems at a party he attends in the very hope of doing so. This plot function is fulfilled rather neatly. But that doesn’t mean it isn’t another fifty-odd minutes of good characterisation and laugh-out-loud lines.

I like the way that the gloriously eccentric Jean and Otis are realistically made to clash without either of them seeming unreasonable or unlikeable: they’re both shown as nice, if flawed, characters. The contrast with Adam and his authoritarian dick of a dad is clear. Aimee, too, is interesting: a superficially popular girl who is paddling rather frantically, and being exploited somewhat by her friends, in order to remain so.

More urgently, the mysterious and fascinating Maeve appears to be pregnant by Jackson- whom she hadn’t told but is continuing to shag. And she appears, despite her cut glass vowels, to live in desperate trailer park poverty. No wonder she’s keen to make money. And poor Eric may be the comic relief character, but the humiliation he is constantly made to suffer by bullies is dark indeed.

This is excellent. But hopefully by now the set-up is over and we can actually see the format in action.

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