Sex Education: Season 2, Episode 7

 "You don't have a vagina, Sir..."

Yes, it's been a while. That's because it's nearing the end and Mrs Llamastrangler can't bear it to be over, Hence the, er, three months' delay since the previous episode. I look forward to probably blogging the finale in March, when we're all celebrating the first anniversary of this lovely plague.

This is, of course, a superbly crafted bit of telly, a penultimate episode which both points forwards to the finale and is the hangover after the party in the episode before, where there was much drama, and Otis was a total dick. Some characters receive a kind of closure to their arc at this point. Jackson has an hoest and open chat about swimming and much more with his mum, who is insecure about not being his biological mother, in a lovely scene. Aimee gets a kind of closure as all the girls in detention (Incidentally, said detention is collective punishment- making a load of suspects stay in detention until the miscreant confesses. This may be more trivial than, say, Israel's blockade of Gaza, but the moral principle is the same) help her with her trauma following the sexual assault through female friendship and solidarity. This also brings a lot of the main female characters together, and Lily finally decides to accept Ola as her girlfriend, which is cute. Thse are all elegantly completed arcs.

But the other characters have much to resolve in the finale. Groff's cowardly revelation of Jean's notes causes all kinds of suffering, and he cynically arranges to fire Jean. The massively hungover Otis, it seems, had sex with the untouchable, icy Ruby at the party, and there is much ensuing hilarity over the morning after pill and the absurd bureaucracy around obtaining it. Yet Otis begins to make amends from being a dick by being considerate, and hey connect. Ruby, it seems, has her own problems, with her dad's MS.

Then there's Eric and Rahim, with Rahim casually and matter-of-factly mentioning his atheism in church, not something I'd be comfortable doing. We also learn that his parents had to flee an unnamed country because of their atheism- and the two of them declare their love. Yet Eric's mum is right; there's no spark, and Rahim is not the One. I think we, the viewers, know who is.

But the ending is a cliffhanger that's been building since the very beginning as Jean confronts Otis about his sex clinics. This is top stuff, and I can't wait until the finale.

But I'll have to...