*A couple relationship spoilers.*
Halfway through the latest season! Even though I put this show on pause while I was going through House of the Dragon, it feels like it’s been flying by. I suppose it’s because the seasons are pretty short. And given that the Other Doctor Lives project I watched prior to Sex Education was DuckTales, where one season of that show has about the same number of episodes as three of this one, it feels like I can knock out a season in no time flat.
This is definitely shaping up to be the story of the kids vs. Hope. Her latest volley targets the school’s ongoing notoriety over Jean’s book, and her response is to clamp down on the sex ed curriculum and the teachers’ ability to inform their students. It has real Dolores Umbridge energy—normally, I’d look to avoid that sort of reference these days, but the structure of the sex ed curriculum is also TERFy, so it’s fitting. In other news, Otis is having a hard time with Ruby (after not reciprocating when she said “I love you” to him last week,) and other midgame love interests appear to be making another go of it.
The Hope storyline continues to be the most interesting to me. Her new “appropriate” sex ed curriculum is exactly the kind of horrible you’d imagine. She alienates nonbinary students by forcing everyone into “boys” and “girls” classes—or as Cal puts it, “So we’re supposed to go to the vagina line or the penis line, is that what you’re saying?” Once in those separate classes, the mandated lessons are predictably gendered, fearmongering about pregnancy on the AFAB side and fearmongering about STDs on the other (when it comes to anything other than marital heterosexual intercourse, naturally.) At one point, Hope literally says, “School is not a place for personal questions.”
All of this is engaging to watch: seeing who stands up against the new curriculum and how, who’s frightened by it, and who’s othered by it. For all that Hope endeavors to give off a “we’re all pals here” vibe, she is all about control and order, and she’s more than willing to harm kids’ education, and possible sexual health, in order to achieve it. Was she designed in a lab to make former Headmaster Groff seem better by comparison, who in this episode is off in sad bachelor land and is revealed to have never even heard of fajitas? That’d be a tall order, but she seems determined to try her hardest.
Isaac seems to be back in the running for Maeve’s affections, which is surprising but ultimately feels a little pointless. I do like that we see a frank discussion between them about pleasure and physical intimacy for folks with quadriplegia, with Isaac showing Maeve where he can feel and explaining what he can/can’t do.
Eric is weirdly back in Love Triangleville too, which is even more surprising. His relationship with Rahim in season 2 was almost entirely marked by Rahim not being Adam, so I’m not sure why he’s now showing up and being all, “Adam doesn’t write you poetry?” Even more so than with Maeve/Isaac, I can’t believe they’d seriously get something going between Eric and Rahim again, so he just feels like a plot device to manufacture conflict between Eric and Adam.
This means that Eric’s main plot isn’t really my cup of tea, but Ncuti Gatwa still comes in clutch in his other scenes. I continue to love his penchant for dramatic reactions—here, when Otis explains the mess he’s gotten into with Ruby, Eric physically tosses his bike aside as he shouts, “Oh my god!” And seeing Ruby’s cold shoulder later, he says, “Ooh, la, la. Are you sure she said she loves you? Because it seems more like she hates you.” Nothing special about the line itself, but the way Gatwa says it is magic, as is his defiant/perplexed delivery of, “He can’t say ‘penis’ in sex ed, sir?”
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