Asexual Sighting: Sarah Owens a.k.a. O (Sex Education)

*O-related spoilers.*

In season 2 of Sex Education, the show introduces an asexual character named Florence. She’s only in a few episodes, and the one story where she’s featured is about her learning about asexuality and coming to realize that she’s ace. I don’t say any of that to sell Florence short—I think the show does a pretty lovely job with her spotlight episode. But she is a minor character in the grand scheme of things.

In season 4, though, we meet another asexual character, O. She gets a lot more focus, a lot more characterization, and multiple stories that aren’t just about her sexuality. It’s great to see the show introduce a second ace character and feature them more heavily, and really, it’s kind of neat that O has nothing to do with Florence. I think this might be the first show I’ve seen with more than one unrelated ace character—for instance, on BoJack Horseman, they bring in first Yolanda and later Maude as potential girlfriends for Todd. I like that O isn’t created specifically as an asexual friend/confidante for Florence, and that they don’t come as a matched set. (Of course, Florence is no longer on the show by season 4.)

Anyway, long-winded introductions aside, let’s talk about O! When we first meet her, it’s as a rival for Otis. After Moordale loses its funding and closes down, Otis, along with a number of his classmates, head to Cavendish for their final year of sixth form. Otis is eager to start a new sex therapy clinic there, but he’s taken aback when he learns that Cavendish already has a student counselor to help classmates with their relationship and sex problems. O has an inviting office, an organized appointment schedule managed electronically, and snacks on hand for her clients. She has an online presence where she gives tutorials for teens about different sex-related topics.

In short, Otis sees her as an immediate threat. He at first assumes she’s just drawing students in with her amenities, but it quickly becomes clear that she knows her stuff just as well as he does. As Otis and O realize the school isn’t big enough for two student counselors, they embark on a contentious election campaign to decide which one of them can stay on. It’s at their pre-election debate that Otis, with Ruby’s help, reveals some dirt they dug up on O, the revelation that she’s ghosted multiple students in previous relationships.

That’s how it comes out that O is asexual. She explains, “I really enjoyed the friendships of the people I ghosted, I really did. But when it started to move into something more intimate, I just—I felt really overwhelmed and uncomfortable.” O is a slick character, one who curates her image and reputation very carefully, and she spends much of the season easily beating the awkward, socially clumsy Otis in the court of public opinion. This might be the biggest example of the season—O comes out of the debate as the brave young woman who stood up and told the student body who she really is, while Otis is the jerk who outed her (unintentionally, as he knew about the ghosting but not her sexuality.)

I like that O is conniving and kind of two-faced, that she puts on a very polished face to the world and uses that to get one over on other people. It doesn’t make her a “likable” character, but it makes her a compelling one, and I like how we see that her experience with her aceness is informed by those aspects of her. O finally tells Otis the full story when the two of them get stuck in a lift together. She admits, “I’d already started feeling like something wasn’t normal. The other girls were talking about boys and kisses and crushes and…. There was so much pressure to behave a particular way.” In fact, it’s her asexuality, coupled with her desperate desire to fit in, that led her down the path of becoming a sex therapist in the first place. She became driven to learn as much as she could about sex/relationships, in an attempt to “pretend to be like everyone else,” and once she realized how useful her knowledge could be to other teens, she started her online channel and in-person clinic.

However, while sex therapy gains O respect online and at school, and students eagerly sign up for sessions with her so they can get help, her success winds up trapping her in a position where she feels like she can’t come out. “I mean, who wants to have sex advice from someone who doesn’t have sex?” she remarks. O is very proficient at creating the image she wants people to have of her, even if it means stepping on others to do so, but the end result is a lonely one.

Again, she’s a really interesting character. She has her sympathetic side, but that doesn’t negate the harmful things she does to other characters, and I like watching someone who’s so focused on ger own goals wind up shortchanging herself in another crucial way. Further points to the show for including some smaller details about the asexual community. O uses the actual word “ace,” which doesn’t get a lot of play on TV, and I love the fact that she wears a black ring, a popular symbol in the ace community. It’s the little things that make a difference!

Oh, and I mentioned this in my Other Doctor Lives reviews, but O is played by Thaddea Graham, who I loved as Bel during the Flux storyline of Doctor Who. Score!

Other Doctor Lives: Sex Education: Season 4, Episode 8 (2023)

*Episode premise spoilers.*

Here we are now, the series finale of Sex Education. And by the way, I was wrong. We haven’t seen Ncuti Gatwa as the Fifteenth Doctor yet. Silly me; when the BBC said, “60^th anniversary specials coming in November!”, I assumed that mean they’d all be, you know, airing in November. Not starting at the very end of November but mostly airing in December. However, I only just realized that we’re getting a Christmas special on top of the 60^th anniversary specials! So before the month is out, we’ll not only see the Doctor regenerate into Ncuti Gatwa, we’ll see his first full adventure too! I’m so excited (even though Fourteen immediately won my heart over!)

But I digress. Sex Education series finale! Here we go.

We go into this episode with a lot that needs wrapping up. We have the results of student councilor election, Otis and Eric’s fight from a couple episodes ago, Adam’s fraught relationship with his dad, Maeve beginning a new future for herself, Aimee and Isaac navigating their feelings for each other, Jean having a reckoning with her sister, Eric preparing to baptized, and Jackson thinking he’s found his biological father. All of these smaller personal plots revolve around two larger events that bring in most of the main cast. It’s the day of Cavendish’s annual fundraiser, so everyone is preparing to get decked out for that. But before the festivities can start, everyone pulls together to help when Cal goes missing.

Even supersized at an hour-and-a-half long, this is a packed finale. I’m not going to try and get into everything. But I like that, while things generally end happily, a lot of these endings aren’t big and triumphant. Some of them are—Maeve probably has the most wish fulfillment-style resolution—but a lot of them just show the characters taking small steps forward, or finding peace about something that’s sad, or gaining perspective on their own problems by reaching out to someone else. I can get a little bored when finales get too over the top, but I think this one mostly feels right for the show.

Another thing that jumps out at me is how nicely this show dramatizes asking for consent. It’s so easy to add moments like, “Is this okay?” or, “Can I kiss you?” (It also shows, though, that those questions aren’t magic bullets. If someone answers “yes” when they’re not actually ready, bigger problems can arise. In both of these situations, we see true enthusiastic consent is achieved only after the characters are honest about their vulnerabilities.) We even see consent practiced in non-romantic situations; I love when Adam’s dad says, “I’d quite like to hug you.”

Within the many things happening in the finale, Eric doesn’t get lost in the shuffle, which is a relief. He spends much of the action away from the rest of the cast, since the search for Cal is going on at the same time as his baptism. But while that means he gets less time to bounce off the other kids, it also means that his biggest scenes are squarely about him. He gets a fine monologue here, and Gatwa plays it for all it’s worth.

And fortunately, Eric isn’t separated from everyone else the whole time. In the second half of the episode, his story intersects with the main one in an important way, and he joins the others at the school fundraiser, where he eagerly makes up for his narrative isolation earlier. This includes some good scenes with Otis, and we also get Eric dancing to “Footloose,” which is delightful.

And that’s a wrap on Sex Education, just in time to clap eyes on the Fifteenth Doctor this weekend. A new era’s about to begin!

Other Doctor Lives: Sex Education: Season 4, Episode 7 (2023)

*Episode premise spoilers.*

For me, the penultimate episode of the series is pretty satisfying. Little strings of plots that have been unwinding all season come to a head in important ways, and the last scenes bring the story home well. I’m looking forward to seeing where we go in the finale.

A mock exam at Cavendish is derailed when the lift breaks down—again. Rather than suck it up once more, Isaac takes matters into his own hands, making a major statement about accessibility at the school. (And little does anyone know, Otis and O were both in the lift when it stalled!) Jean invites Maeve over for dinner, but things get off on the wrong foot when 1) Otis doesn’t turn up (again, no one knows he’s stuck in a lift,) and 2) Maeve arrives right when Jean is in the middle of a blow-up with her sister. Cal struggles with their gender dysphoria, Adam spirals after a serious screw-up at his internship, and Viv has a troubling encounter with Beau.

I’m glad the many access issues at Cavendish, both large and small, finally come back to bite them. It gets a bit heavy-handed at times—there are suddenly far more disabled student extras on campus than we’ve ever seen before—but on the whole, it’s well done. Isaac is finally able to force everyone to hear what he has to say, telling them that instead of worrying about his exams like everyone else, “I’m here wasting my time explaining why accessibility is a big deal, when it should be a given.” And when an administrator tries to downplay the recurring issues with the lift, Aisha speaks up to say that insufficient access for disabled students “[isn’t] a misunderstanding, it’s an afterthought.” Snaps for all these kids!

“X and Y get stuck in an elevator” together is one of the oldest tropes in the book, one the show employed at the start of the season with Aimee and Isaac. Otis and O’s scenes together are interesting—the two have been competing all season, Otis is on the verge of a panic attack, and both have understandable reasons to regard the other as their enemy. But inevitably in these types of scenarios, defenses drop as the hours stretch on, and both characters wind up being honest about things that neither probably ever imagined sharing with the other.

The Jean-Maeve stuff is interesting as well. The episode opens on a flashback to Jean and Joanna’s teen years, which addresses some heavy, formative stuff for them and deeply fuels their argument in the middle of the episode. So when Maeve arrives, Jean is completely off-balance, and Maeve isn’t doing much better herself—she’s just had to pick up her mom’s ashes. But as they muddle through together, without Otis as a buffer, they too find their way toward connection.

For a scattershot of the other plots, I’m glad that Cal has Roman as a sounding board for their struggles, but I’m definitely concerned for them. They’ve been documenting their experiences on testosterone, and in today’s recording, they express how overwhelming their gender dysphoria is and say, “I wish I could just go back to being a kid. I think that was the last time I felt like me.” Viv’s plot, to me, feels like it might have escalated a little too fast, but I suppose that’s a byproduct of having so many different ongoing mini-plots throughout the season; there’s only one episode left in the show, so it’s not like there’s much more time to work with. And while I continue to think the show should’ve done a better job to address Adam’s past history as Eric’s bully, I do like how they’ve explored his feelings about his dad this season and the effect his upbringing had on him. There’s a strong scene between him and Mr. Groff, where Adam has a speech that begins, “I messed up at work today, and the first thing that I thought is, ‘I’m gonna disappoint my dad.’”

Oh, and the episode uses Jeff Buckley’s “Last Goodbye” to excellent effect!

Not much Ncuti Gatwa today. No real movement is made on Eric and Otis’s argument in the last episode—there’s one shot of Otis avoiding Eric and another of the boys looking at each other across campus—and only one major scene that addresses his ongoing inner conflict about his relationship with his church. Other than that, we’re pretty light on Eric. Still a couple great moments, though. I love when Eric is getting ready in the morning and tells the picture of Jesus on his bedroom wall, “Stop staring at me. Silly, silly Jesus.” And he’s already stressed about the prospect of taking his mock exam, but he absolutely jumps out of his skin when the fire alarm goes off.