But from season 3 onwards I think cracks have started to show. The moment I blame for it going slightly off the rails is deciding to row back on Otis and Ruby's relationship. That was a genuinely fascinating pairing and somehow, over two seasons in, we were somehow still learning more about the show's main character. That episode where Otis goes to Ruby's house and realises she's not like she seems at all is probably my favourite episode of the series because it peels back so many layers of both of their characters.
But you can tell the writers got cold feet and just couldn't move away from the Otis and Maeve storyline. It started to get a bit like Friends, which just couldn't grow beyond the Ross and Rachel "will they or won't they?" storyline and, in the end, stopped being able to grow at all. But when it's a sitcom that benefits from stasis, that's mostly fine. But Sex Education is ultimately a show about growing up, but a lot of Otis' behaviour has been deliberately regressive and contrived so that Maeve can always be close to him. It's never matured.
And at the same time, they've just started shoving in too many storylines. The end of season 3 was genuinely exhausting. You had Gillian Anderson's pregnancy and split from that Jakob bloke, Adam entering that dog competition, Lily coming to terms with her identity, Maeve going to America, the headmaster going crazy and then deciding to have IVF, the school shutting down, Eric and Adam splitting up, Mr. Groff trying to get back with his family, Cal's whole identity issue and Jackson's relationship to her. And then Gillian Anderson was suddenly bleeding to death but then survived? It all just became too much too fast. Overstuffed and undercooked.
And I think my main issue is that the sudden influx of new characters in season 4 really hampered the show because we didn't get any time to actually know them. They introduced the deaf girl, which is great on the surface because there are very few deaf stories in mainstream TV. But they gave her almost nothing to do and they didn't really explore what her deafness means to her personally because they just didn't give themselves the time to do so. Unfortunately she just became a ticked box. Isaac, the lad in the wheelchair - we learned how his disability affects his perspective on the world but it was just a part of him rather than his whole identity. But that's because he was introduced during a much, much stronger era of the show.
And then there was Abbi and Roman, the people Eric was hanging out with. Jesus Christ, they just never settled on whether we were supposed to like them or not. Because they were clearly hypocritical Mean Girls types who preached inclusion but practised exclusion, but we were supposed to be involved in their romance storyline as well? And then one of them set a blanket on fire? Again, it just comes across like box-ticking because they were so underserved by the story. I feel like I never got to know them, they were just taking up space. And fucking hell, O, what was that whole thing with her and Otis? A rivalry thought up out of nothing.
I also never worked out whether the show was positive about Cavendish being one of those hippy-dippy type schools or if it was a satire of liberal arts colleges? It felt like it wanted to have its cake and eat it. This is what I mean about the show losing the run of itself and forgetting what it was meant to be about.
And Jackson, crikey. He had the start of about five different storylines in season 4 and none of them were allowed to grow. At first he was wondering why he liked a finger up the arse, then he was worried he had cancer, then he didn't have cancer after all, then he was searching for his real dad, then he was helping Viv with her randomly abusive boyfriend, then he was rejected by his dad, then he was mad at his mums for lying to him. And Gillian Anderson's bloody sister! Whose entire abuse backstory was shoved into a little prologue scene of the penultimate episode? And Otis' sex fear suddenly coming back with about two episodes left, hahaha. Fucking hell, man.
Adam's horse thing, Eric's baptism thing and him drifting away from Otis, and Maeve's identity crisis after her mum died, plus Gillian Anderson's postnatal depression thing - that was enough really for a cracking season but it was just broken up by so much underdeveloped nonsense.
From moment to moment it was completely fine. The original cast are great, the characters are fun to watch, and I think it's great that kids are getting to watch shows like this. When I was 16 and awkward I would have killed to have a show that told me it was perfectly natural to be unsure of yourself and horrendous at navigating relationships and whatnot. But it is several leagues below where it was even in season 2. A shame that it had to go out the way it did but at least we'll always have the first two seasons.
