'Sex Education' Season 2 premiere sees Maeve try to rejoin school, Eric ever confident and Otis with girlfriend
When you are in high school, there are hormones raging and that accompanies all kinds of change of both the physical and mental nature. We begin to explore our identity and the many myriads of what it means to live within a social construct that pits individuals against each other.
Any high school is a world with its own set hierarchies, and different students belonging to different classes. The popular, the not so popular, the bullies, the ones who get bullied, nerds and girls who have a bad reputation among many others.
'Sex Education' is set in one such high school - Moordale Secondary - and the daily life of these students is fascinating. The first season set great grounds by introducing us to Otis Milburn (Asa Butterfield), Maeve Wiley (Emma Mackey), and Eric Effiong (Ncuti Gatwa) with each of them fighting their own fight.
Maeve was trying to be more than what her reputation makes her out to be, Eric was fighting to understand what it really meant to be a black gay man, while Otis mostly fought childhood trauma that has stopped him so far from being able to masturbate.
In addition, it is clear Otis finds sex distasteful because of the things he saw his father do to another woman and how that broke their family apart. In season 2's first episode, the introduction is quite similar to how the show was introduced in the first season.
We meet Otis again, but this time he is not fake masturbating. In fact, after having to come to terms with his trauma in the previous season, things are going great for him. He is aroused at the sight of everything and anything and gets to work anywhere.
In a really hilarious situation, he masturbates in the car when his mother is grocery shopping, but he is interrupted and knowing Dr. Jean Milburn, her comment about respecting personal space is the icing here.
The problem for Otis this time around is his incapability to get his equipment to work when he tries to have sex with his girlfriend, Ola. It is very reminiscent of his problem with masturbating in the first season. This time around, Otis' problem could very well be a result of his unresolved feelings for Maeve.
Speaking of Maeve, after having been kicked out of school, she has now begun to work at a local waffle store and has mostly managed to stay out of trouble. Then, she sees her mother, an alcoholic who claims to be clean and Maeve sees that the only way she will live a better life than her mother is if she continues to go to school.
However, with the headmaster of the school Mr. Groff (Alistair Petrie) being dead set against Maeve returning to school, there is but one way for her to find a way in --to try and change the way people perceive her.
Maeve dyes her hair black and approaches the headmaster to let him know she deserves to be in school because she was the one who helped the school with its academic ranking by helping students out with their papers. Mr. Groff disagrees.
Eric is the one student who is in a much better place than either Otis or Maeve. When Eric found confidence in his identity, he learned to stand up to bullies and when he understood what it meant to leave behind all doubts in season 1, he saw a change in his life for the better.
The confidence he gained then has carried over to this season, and this change in him has got him the attention of his fellow students. Something Eric had wanted quite desperately in the past, but now that he is slowly being recognized, will this change him?
Eric's interest in Adam, the headmaster's son who was sent to the army school, remains and he even tries to check if Adam will return to school anytime soon. He is however told that Adam will not return for a while.
For Otis, the majority part of whose school year in the past season went toward educating fellow students about sex, this year is different. He doesn't have Maeve to take care of clients and by using Eric to do what Maeve did in the past; Otis understands that the sex clinic is not the same anymore.
His girlfriend Ola has also joined the same school now, and he hopes for things to move as smoothly as possible. But when have things ever been simple. To add to the pressure these students face in school, home is not really their safe space, but more a place where burdens are added further.
In the case of Otis, he is now being approached to talk about chlamydia in school because misinformed students have now come to believe it could spread just through touch. At home, he realizes his mother Jean is dating his girlfriend Ola's father. How will they move on from this new mess?
'Sex Education' Season 2 can be streamed on Netflix.
