In Netflix's 'Love 101', adults are looking out for the teens but need their students' guidance at times
Spoiler alert for Season 1 'Love 101'/'Aşk 101'
Netflix has released its third Turkish original series, a teen drama about five students who scheme to stop their favorite teacher from transferring by making her fall in love with the school's new basketball coach.
Kerem (Kubilay Aka), Eda (Alina Boz), Osman (Selahattin Paşalı), and Sinan (Mert Yazıcıoğlu) are the biggest misfits and troublemakers in their school. All come from different circles and none of them are friends, but they all get into trouble repeatedly.
All four have gone to the school board multiple times on the threat of expulsion. In the first episode of 'Love 101', these students are asked to behave but in one way or another, they do things separately that end up nearly burning down the school.
While the Principal of the school has tried multiple times to get them expelled, one of the Vice Principals, Miss Burcu (Pınar Deniz) is the only one who defends them and stops the expulsions from happening.
When she gets a transfer letter, the students find that if she gets married to someone in Istanbul, she will have to stay on in the school. And so, they rope in the help of Isik (İpek Filiz Yazıcı) who loves romantic movies and love in general, since they know nothing about romance themselves. They choose gruff, handsome Kemal (Kaan Urgancıoğlu) as their candidate.
In their first mission, they try to get Kemal and Burcu to spend time together at a heavy metal concert. While the two teachers are clearly interested in each other, their egos won't let them truly fall in love.
At first, the teenagers give up, especially when they learn that Burcu has a boyfriend that she gets engaged to. However, when they see that Burcu's boyfriend is a bad person and that Burcu and Kemal are interested in each other, the teenagers try to bump the teachers in the same direction again.
In the process, Sinan falls for Isik and Kerem falls for Eda. As we see these three relationships play out, we see the different things that hold each of them apart. For the kids, it's fear. But, they talk it over and get over their hurdles.
Meanwhile, it takes nearly the whole season for Kemal and Burcu to decide to be with each other. Burcu finally breaks it off with her fiance when she realizes he's not the best for her and Kemal finally tells her that he likes her.
While Burcu and Kemal try to look out for the students and help prevent them from being expelled, it would do both of them a world of good if they stopped and even listened to their students. And Burcu did just that when she spent one evening with Isik and Eda having wine. We can't decide whether that was inappropriate -- serving alcohol to underage girls -- but the scenes were heartwarming as Burcu spent time listening to Eda and Isik.
All episodes of Season 1 of 'Love 101' are now streaming on Netflix.