The British Comedy about the complications of teen sex returns with some relationship advice.
SUMMARY
At the end of the last season, Otis (Asa Butterfield) finally achieved arousal for the first time in his life after kissing Ola (Patricia Allison), who becomes his girlfriend. Having sexual impulses for the first time in his life, Otis quickly becomes addicted to masturbation. Meanwhile, at the school, an outbreak of chlamydia leads the school governors to hire Otis’s sex-therapist mother, Jean (Gillian Anderson), as a consultant on sex-education curriculum. Maeve (Emma Mackey), Otis’s partner in sex therapy, deals with both her return to the school as an elite academic and also the return of her drug addict mother (Anne-Marie Duff). Hijinks and issues ensue.
END SUMMARY
While the last season of the show was mostly focused on overcoming personal issues to make the connections to start a relationship, this season goes into all of the effort that relationships take to maintain. Most of the characters start the season in a new relationship: Jean is dating Ola’s father Jakob (Mikael Persbrandt), Otis is dating Ola, Maeve is reuniting with her mother, Otis’s best friend Eric (Ncuti Gatwa) starts dating the new student (Sami Outalbali), etc. Everyone naturally has their own issues: Otis has no sexual experience, Jean is used to her independence, Maeve’s mom abandoned her in the past, Eric still has feelings for Adam (Connor Swindells), etc. This gives everyone a number of interesting issues to explore and the show does a good job of covering all of them.
One thing that the season, and the show, does well is try to handle both the obscure and the common issues that people have in relationships, particularly sexual issues. The biggest issue that every relationship faces is honest communication. It hurts sometimes to tell your partner what you really think, but failure to do it hurts you both and can be the downfall of a relationship. The season also does a good job of addressing several other issues ranging from sexism to sexual assault, resulting in a tragically humorous scene in which a group of girls realize that the only thing they have in common is “unwanted penises.” It does drive home the point that one of the things that can help friends get through their troubles is also communication and empathy.
The downside to the season is that it honestly just doesn’t feel as creative or original as the last one. It certainly explores different territory, but the dialogue never feels as fluid and the performances never quite feel as passionate. I will say that it gets better towards the end, but at the beginning I was feeling a little let down. The soundtrack did help me get through it, though, because damn does this have a great soundtrack.
Overall, not a bad continuation, even if it dips a little for me. There is one thing at the end that did flat-out tick me off, but I’ll see how they handle it next season.
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