*One relationship spoiler.*
Sex Education field trip! The kids are on a bus in France, and lots of togetherness in close quarters equals lots of personal drama. This episode has definite flaws, but there’s quite a bit to like about it as well. It’s a big, messy group episode where a whole bunch of stuff happens.
Most of the class has gone on a school trip to France, where tensions boil over as personal issues come to a head. Adam and Rahim are forced to partner up, an arrangement neither boy likes. Otis is put in a group with Ruby and her friends, none of whom are speaking to him. Maeve gets a surprising piece of information that puts her at odds with Aimee. And when Viv runs into difficulties while sexting with her long-distance boyfriend, it inadvertently causes problems for Olla and Lily. Meanwhile, back home, Jean has to put up with ignorant and sexist nonsense all over the place when she goes to get an ultrasound.
As you can see, many different plots, but most of them are all taking place within the contained ecosystem of the school trip, which gives them a loose kind of structure. As the kids wander about the Somme or cram onto the bus, the camera slips from this argument to that dilemma, and what happens with one cluster of kids spills over into the conflicts of another.
The conflicts themselves are kind of a mixed bag. Of course the school trip just so happens to put Otis and Maeve in unexpected close quarters, and it’s even more heightened since Maeve has now gotten together with Isaac. Given that Adam consistently made plays for Rahim’s boyfriend last year (and “won” the battle for Eric’s affections,) it’s certainly understandable that the two boys aren’t besties. That said, there are elements of their storyline I like, though a big chunk of it goes way too far into crude humor for my tastes. My favorite of the France storylines is probably Viv’s sexting dilemma. I laughed out loud when she apologizes to an older woman at a public restroom for swearing loudly, explaining, “I’m sorry, my boyfriend just referred to my vagina as a ladyflower.” She holds out her phone to show the lady, who flatly replies, “Dump him immediately.”
I was interested in Jean’s clinic visit, although her plot doesn’t end up going in the direction I was hoping for. She runs into Hope in the waiting room, which seems to gear up an epic showdown of conflicting sex ed ideologies, but they share only one scene together and then it’s back to personal drama with Jakob that doesn’t really interest me as much. Fingers crossed that the showdown is still forthcoming.
What’s unfortunate about this episode is that Ncuti Gatwa is hardly in it at all. Eric doesn’t go to France because he’s on a trip of his own, going with his family to visit relatives in Nigeria. He only appears in two scenes: one at his house, getting ready to leave for the airport, and one on the ground in Nigeria that somehow, astoundingly, manages to be more about Adam than him.
Also noteworthy: this trip was first brought up earlier in the season, and since then, it’s been mentioned multiple times that being gay is illegal in Nigeria. At the start of the episode, Eric’s mother urges him to change into more muted colors before they head out, saying, “You don’t want to draw attention to yourself in Nigeria. It’s dangerous for you.” And I’m certainly not disputing the state of LGBTQ rights in that country, but I feel the need to point out that Eric has already been physically attacked for wearing Hedwig cosplay in the U.K., and just last week he had to sit through a sex ed class that emphasized “gay sex=dangerous STIs,” also in the U.K. His own country might not put him in prison for being gay, but it’s not like living in the west isn’t also a hostile environment for him.
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