Sex Education: Season 1, Episode 5

“It’s my vagina!”

Another interesting and multi-layered episode here, about friendships and reputations.

It’s a mid-season eventful episode as Otis is forced by the plot to choose between Eric’s birthday tradition and a sex therapy linked to Maeve who, a month later, he still fancies. But is he choosing her needs for the right reasons? Complicating the choice is the fact the therapy job consists of working out who send round a naked pic of school bitch Ruby (young Cindy off of EastEnders) and that this echoes for Maeve, whose own reputation was stained years ago by similar childishness. She l owe this sort of thing sticks, and it’s personal. And yes, for the parent of a daughter, this is terrifying.

A nice twist I’d that the culprit is Ruby’s friend Olivia, and that she sort of redeems herself at the end in a heartwarming scene of genital “I’m Spartacus”. But less heartwarming is the position of Eric- robbed and beaten up by homophobes as a result of Otis’ negligence. Interestingly, though, his old-fashioned dad is portrayed as uncomfortable with his son’s sexuality but nevertheless caring and not an outright bigot. That’s nicely nuanced. Also nuanced is Aimee’s continued exploitation by her friends, although she seems to have a handsome, clean cut love interest.

Maeve has a bit of a disaster meeting Jackson’s two very middle class mothers, but all is not as it seems: when she later invited him back to her caravan, though, he’s nice- and reveals that he takes medication for anxiety, and is not as perfect as he seems. It’s an interesting writing choice here: Jackson is nice, vulnerable and likeable, but he’s the love rival to the protagonist. It’ll be interesting to see where this plot line goes.

There is, perhaps, a bit of uncalled-for mocking of nerds (the wargamer kid is called Tom Baker, incidentally!), and the character arcs are perhaps a little obviously subject to the plot, but this is very good stuff.