The sophomore slump is a pretty well-documented phenomenon in television. A series starts off strong, building buzz and growing its fan base throughout its first season while also ratcheting up expectations as to the heights the show can achieve when it returns for its second go-round. To say Sex Education, the British high school dramedy exploring sex, love, and adolescent life on Netflix, manages to avoid that particular pitfall in its second season (which dropped on the streaming site two weeks ago) wouldn’t be quite right. But the series certainly didn’t fall of a cliff from a creative standpoint between seasons one and two either. It’s just . . . not as good as season one. I’d say it’s a solid B effort.
For fans of the show’s first season (and, just from speaking to co-workers over the past several days, there certainly seem to be far more than I thought), I suspect season two will be (or, was) a fun return to the halls of Moordale Secondary School. But for a series that seemed to find novel ways to approach well-trodden tropes in season one, the second season had a harder time avoiding traveling down the road of cliché when it came to some storylines.
When it succeeded – as with Maeve’s familial issues or Orla’s journey to discovering that she might not be as straight as she thought – the arcs felt authentic and interesting. When it didn’t – Otis’s journey throughout season two was a bit of a mess from start to finish and nothing that we hadn’t seen depicted better in other shows – the strong performances weren’t enough to prevent the arcs from feeling tired. By episode eight, I was more than ready to not see Otis again for another year, while I desperately wanted to spend more time with Maeve as she dealt with the fallout of her monumental decision in the finale.
In the grand scheme of things, I did enjoy Sex Education’s second season, I just wish the series had taken more chances rather than opting to spend so much time on stories we’ve already watched play out time and again. Jackson’s struggle to stand up to his mom and admit he doesn’t enjoy swimming anymore is a common experience for many teen athletes. But this version of the story didn’t offer a new perspective on the trope or even give enough screen time to Jackson to warrant it being part of the season.* The arc with Headmaster Groff’s crumbling marriage and his petty acts of retribution against Jean (and, by extension, the entire student body) felt shockingly juvenile. I know we were supposed to be repulsed at his final act of revenge, but it played as farce within a series that spent a great deal of the season grounded in more concrete dramatic issues for major characters. Finding the humor in dramatic moments is necessary for a show like Sex Education – leaning too far into the humor so that a very real, painful act becomes a joke hurts the entire series. Keeping the correct balance in tone within a dramedy is an art, and there were far too many wild swings in tone this season to achieve the needed balance to keep the series afloat throughout.
*A larger issue in season two was simply having too many characters to serve in an eight-episode season. This meant that some interesting and impactful arcs (for example, Aimee’s assault on the bus) felt truncated and seemed to be missing key beats. For the Aimee arc, I wish we’d had more time in later episodes to get into the psychology of what it meant for her, rather than spending several episodes with only hints at the true mental and emotional impact of the assault before addressing it head-on. I actually forgot that the assault had even occurred until it was brought up in the Breakfast Club homage. It’s a powerful storyline, but one that deserved more time than it was given.
It’s not easy to create and sustain a good dramedy, so missteps are expected. I just wish I didn’t feel like I had whiplash at some of the plot “twists” within the season. It’s all the more disappointing when the show did manage to get the correct tone for several of its central storylines. I mentioned the Maeve and Orla arcs above – incredible performances from Emma Mackey (Maeve), Anne-Marie Duff (Maeve’s mom, Erin), and Patricia Allison (Ola) throughout the whole series – but the show also hit the right notes with Viv’s arc, and was pretty solid in laying out Eric’s love triangle.
There’s some troubling elements to Eric opting to be wooed by his former bully Adam (although having Rahim call Eric on this was a positive step), and I suspect that’s going to play out in the recently ordered third season of the series, but presenting Eric with two viable love interests is far more than most teen-centered shows would do (for all the progress with LGBTQA+ characters and visibility, there are still far too many hurdles when it comes to treating their romantic options as equal to their straight counterparts). It’s also easy to see why Eric would fall for Adam (the inadvertent nudge from his mother, whose support he still craves, certainly helped). I’m willing to accept the show taking the more traditional road with an arc if it takes the time to lay the groundwork for the endgame.
So, would I recommend season two of Sex Education? Well, in light of Netflix canceling a large portion of its best shows, yes, I would. It’s head and shoulders above most of the original content from the streaming site these days (and, considering their new-found love of canceling shows before their time, I suspect we only have a couple more seasons of Sex Education left to enjoy). Netflix’s other series delving into adolescent sexuality – Big Mouth – remains the superior of the two shows, but there’s a lot to enjoy here, even if it didn’t live up to the heights of its debut season. I’m hopeful that season three will better focus the narrative of the series while finding a better balance between farce and drama to craft a thoughtful, yet biting, season of television.
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