‘Sex Education’ Season 2 Episode 4 sees Jean’s personal space and love life messed after Remi cheats with her
Spoilers ahead for Season 2 Episode 4
Dr. Jean Millburn (Gillian Anderson) -- loving mom, control freak, sex guru, and hopeless at love. For someone who gives Otis Milburn (Asa Butterfield) heartburn because she can't give him space, she is quite particular about her own boundaries.
Something that her space-hogging boyfriend Jakob Nyman (Mikael Persbrandt) doesn't quite get. Jakob, in some ways, exploded into her life and now his detritus is all over control freak Jean's house and she is not quite sure she likes it.
She subtly asks Jakob to get his stuff back home but he has no idea that he is getting on her nerves. Jean has been on her own for so long that the messiness of couplehood, from sharing a bed with a snoring partner to sharing a kitchen with a man who likes using noisy kitchen gadgets and leaves a trail of his things behind him, is something novel and not entirely welcome.
But while her house is being overturned by Jakob, she finds her groove in Otis's school as the sex-ed counselor. What started with a few students has now become a flood with a line of students, leading to her room, stretching into the hallway.
Jean is also mesmerized by the problems the students are bringing to her, scribbling furiously in her notebook. It is a part of her life that she can't quite share with Jakob as an intellectual equal.
So when Remi (James Purefoy), her ex-husband and her one-time collaborator turns up unannounced, to spend time with Otis, her love life gets messy. After a polite pissing contest between the ex and the boyfriend, Jakob leaves suddenly unsure of himself in front of Remi who subtly shades him for being just a plumber.
Remi then proceeds to seduce Jean with wine. He praises her work with the students -- giving her the validation Jakob can't. After Jean is too drunk to remember what a slimeball he really is, she starts kissing him. Thankfully, they hear Otis come in and spring apart before he can discover them.
Jakob, the next day, also feeling the heat from the competition for Jean's attention decides to put in a pan shelf, trying to be useful. Unfortunately, all this achieves, is irritate Jean further. Hopefully Jean will figure out why she left Remi.
Plus, since Remi married again, he is technically cheating again, even if it was just a kiss with Jean, his ex-wife. Otis, meanwhile, is feeling the heat from his mother's sessions with the students as his and Maeve's "sex clinic business" is hit with one student asking for a refund.
Jean is also dangerously close to finding out he is the "sex kid" that students keep referring to when they come to her. But the clinic takes a back seat as just like Jean, Otis is caught in a love triangle between Ola who he is "in like" with and Maeve, whom he secretly loves.
When he disappoints Ola, it has the effect of her getting closer to Lily who is there to sympathize and make her feel better. Eventually, Ola makes a decision not to talk to Otis till he pushes Maeve out of his life for good.
Eric Effoing (Ncuti Gatwa) is in the same position as Otis, torn between his attraction to Adam Groff (Connor Swindells) who takes him out on night dates in secret and Rahim (Sami Outalbali) who asks him to be his boyfriend during the day. A song plays about choosing between the devil and the angel as he looks conflicted -- and we couldn't agree more.
'Sex Education' Season 2 episodes can be streamed on Netflix from January 17.