Binge Or Cringe: ‘Sex Education’ Is So Much More Than Just Sex
Netflix’s hit coming-of-age dramedy Sex Education has come to a close after its fourth season. Creator Laurie Nunn’s first major project, the show centers on Otis Milburn (Asa Butterfield), an awkward, sex-shy, teenage sex therapist at Moordale Secondary School. The series often features a “sex problem of the week” and follows as Otis and his friends explore their own sex lives; Sex Education sheds light on friendship, self-love, and discovering how to deal with life’s complications as a teen, or even as a grown adult. The show is as raunchy as expected, but never sensationalist. Beyond its titillating premise, the series roots itself in exceptionally full character development. Sex Education’s characters are the show’s heart, inviting the audience to have open conversations about sex, fall in love, and learn about themselves just as the characters do.
Meet Moordale
Stellar acting and characters who feel both clearly defined and boundless in their complex lives carry Sex Education. Fellow Moordale student Maeve (Emma Mackey) helps Otis found and manage a sex clinic on campus; forced to raise herself because of her drug addict mother, Maeve also grapples with pursuing a writing career, dating, fights with her best friend, and more. She is edgy, headstrong, and brilliant, a wonderfully strong female character who foils Otis’ overthinking, soft nature. Otis is also contrasted by his best friend Eric (Ncuti Gatwa), a flamboyant, gay, Black man learning to love himself despite what many in his Nigerian and Christian communities may think. The lead cast is rounded out by Otis’ mother Jean (Gillian Anderson), a professional sex therapist struggling to let Otis grow up and out of the nest. Jean acts as a positive, though certainly imperfect, role model for Otis and, by extension, the audience.
The supporting cast is filled with loveable scene-stealers, including Maeve’s bubbly, filter-less best friend Aimee (Aimee Lou Wood), self-hating school bully Adam (Connor Swindells), cruel but secretly sensitive popular girl Ruby (Mimi Keene), highly pressured superstar swimmer and head boy Jackson (Kedar Williams-Stirling), and alien erotica writer Lily (Tanya Reynolds). Almost every single character feels like a fully formed person — from Jean’s one night stand with mommy issues to Maeve’s white trash, cat-loving landlord. Since many are introduced via their sex problem, they are instantly memorable with internal and interpersonal conflict baked right in. However, the power of Sex Education lies in how, rather than exploiting characters’ awkward sex problems for a laugh, it instead shares glimpses of entire lives and complexities that manifest in intimate relationships. If anything, humor arises from the relatability of characters’ sex problems. From the dweeby teacher who struggles to talk dirty to his girlfriend to season three’s antagonistic head teacher, who rules the school with an iron fist but cannot have the baby she wants so badly, the audience is led to sympathize with everyone.
The characters especially shine in their friendships. In season four, Otis and Eric search for who they are outside of their long friendship and find themselves potentially growing apart. This arc is a fascinating exploration of connecting with a person in spite of, and even because of, personal differences, as well as Otis’ and Eric’s continuous formation of individual identity as young men. Maeve and Aimee also turn their personality contrasts into buttresses for each other’s weaker points; their relationship is refreshingly complex, blossoming after the first season.
Sex Education leaves no stone of its characters’ lives unturned, examining family relationships and how they make the teen protagonists who they are. Eric’s parents and sisters are not major characters, but time is spent with the whole family; this highlights Eric’s deep commitment to family and community, particularly focusing on his internal conflict regarding his community’s disapproval of his queer identity. Maeve’s struggle to escape the life of addiction created by her mom and brother informs her character; however, support from her friends and significant others creates nuance and complexity within her character. Season four especially turns toward family dynamics as the teens mature and gain broader perspectives. While Otis and his mother must find compromise as their relationship grows and changes, Adam’s arc focuses on reconnecting with his harsh father. The show advertises sex, but it might have benefited from exploring even more platonic and familial relationships. These spaces are seminal to the characters’ personal development and navigation of interpersonal and internal connections outside the drama of dating, crushes, will-they-won’t-they’s, and sex.
Some of the romantic relationships even felt unnecessary. Few of the couples felt like they belonged with each other, and the constant shadow of sex looming in the background — knowing that when two characters started talking they would soon be dating — created a bit of tiresome pressure. That being said, the sheer number of couplings and casual atmosphere surrounding them steered Sex Education away from the over-romanticization found so often in media. Some couples are obviously wrong for each other, but they are engaging to watch because the characters always learn something about themselves from the relationship. The show honestly portrays growing up and first relationships; these couples aren’t soul mates, they’re simply discovering what love and intimacy mean.
Was it Binge or Cringe?
For all its heart, Sex Education is equally raunchy and hilarious. Photos of penises and drawings of vulvas permeate the show, and each episode begins with a sexual act gone wrong. Sex Education is not afraid to show sex in all its glory and crudeness, and while it does so intimately and in full view, it doesn’t sexualize its characters. Yes, the high schoolers are aged up, but they certainly aren’t portrayed as knowing what they’re doing. The “sex problems of the week” are a bit pithy as they neatly tie into character’s conflicts, more or less solved by the end of the episode; however, the door is always left open for growth and resolving a problem in the bedroom usually involves a journey of working on oneself.
The series follows a somewhat procedural structure in this way, keeping each episode moving at an engaging pace and leaving the viewer feeling positive instead of titillated by cliffhangers and drawn-out arcs. That being said, each character, including recurring characters, has a season-long arc which the show effectively jumps between. While it might drop one plotline for a while, it is never so long that the viewer forgets about it.
With such strong connections created with each character, the stigma around sex is stripped, leaving behind the clumsily beautiful truth. Sex Education never laughs at its characters yet the relatable awkwardness around sex lends itself to a plethora of great jokes. In the very first episode, Adam thinks his penis will explode from taking too much Viagra. By the last season this kind of joke remains, with Eric teasing Otis on the quality of his nudes after he accidentally shows them to the whole school. The young characters fumble through life and speak their sometimes misguided yet sometimes strangely wise minds, adding to the goofy, dry humor.
Sex Education also depicts serious traumas such as sexual assault, child abuse, homophobic assault, gender dysphoria, and emotional abuse. These subjects are treated with the deserved weight, but never dramatized or used for shock value. Instead of sensationalizing it, the characters talk about and work through the trauma openly, giving the audience a healthy, grounded perspective on these issues. Sex Education is also a trove of positive representation of trans, nonbinary, pansexual, bisexual, and asexual characters, as well as taboo, but very real experiences like performance anxiety and sex drive in older age. The show lives up to the “education” aspect of its title, using humor to diffuse tension around subjects we need to be discussing and learning about, but aren’t.
This legacy comes after four years of getting to know Moordale. Season one covers a lot of material and thoroughly introduces each character, leading into an organic expansion of the same issues and arcs in season two. After the expository work of the first season, the second season really focuses on character development in a full and satisfying way. Season three begins with a bit of a jump as the Moordale gang faces a central antagonist in Hope (Jemima Kirke), the new head teacher who enforces a lot of new rules, teaches abstinence in sex education class, and employs extreme disciplinary methods. Season three (SPOILERS) ends with the closing of Moordale, thus leaving season four to make an even greater jump into unfamiliar territory. Many favorite characters are gone, plotlines at reasonable conclusions were dropped, a lot of new characters are introduced, and characters introduced in seasons two and three receive a lot more focus. Bringing in a new setting, so many new characters, and somewhat anticlimactic plotlines for secondary characters detracts from the building climax of the final season (granted, at the beginning of the writing process, season four was not explicitly intended to be the last). However, the main characters’ arcs lead to satisfying send offs with the finale setting favorites up for continued adventures of growing, healing, and exploring.
Who will like it?
Sex Education is an open, honest, funny, heartfelt look at growing up, relationships with significant others, friends, and family, and, of course, sex. The plethora of sex problems are hilarious, leading the audience to laugh with the characters, and the show always brings it back to a lesson of loving yourself, communicating, and staying informed (something society desperately needs). Sex Education has a goofy, dry, heartfelt brand of humor and a dedication to revealing the fullness of every character. Perhaps the show doesn’t match your brand of humor, maybe coming-of-age stories aren’t your thing, or you’re looking for something to watch with the family — if that’s the case (especially in the last case), Sex Education may not be for you. However, if you’re ready to laugh, cry, step out of the anti-sex stuffiness, and fall in love with complex, genuine characters, you’ll likely run out of episodes before you’re ready. All four seasons of Sex Education can be streamed on Netflix now.
