Sex Education series 4

[Imamumgetmeoutofhere]

Drops today on Netflix. Is anyone else looking forward to this?

The first 2 series I felt were really good and highlighted so many important issues. The 3rd series however felt a bit forced and like they were trying to cram as many current and relevant issues into it as possible. Plus the "evil" head teacher felt a bit silly too.

What do we think will happen this series?

I've watched two episodes and it feels preachy and ott (more than usual!).
I'm gonna keep watching to see what happens with Adam, Adam's dad, Jean and Eric. It's a bizarre show where the two main characters are quite boring compared to the secondary characters imo

I’m still confused about Abbi and Roman.

I get that Roman was supposed to be a transman, but was Abbi supposed to be a transwoman?

Yes, she is a transwoman.

Abbi has a penis, and Roman has a vagina - in their sex scene, Abbi says "I love being inside you".

I had to skip half the first episode it did my head in so much. The new smug students got on my tits.

I'd love the series just to be about Adam and his family and Aimee, the acting from them both is so glorious, they can both convey so much with a look . But I'm old and not the target demographic and all that.
Actually I do like the storyline of the former popular girl adapting to fit in.

I could quite happily watch a show about Aimee. She really was an interesting character

I have absolutely loved this season and I’m so sad it’s ended 😔😔 it’s made me all nostalgic for being that young again, making mistakes and the sense of excitement at what’s ahead in your life, the choices and possibilities. It’s made me feel very old at my 42 years 😆

I love Adam and his Dad. And I thought the whole Roman and Abbie storyline was interesting. My dd is bisexual and has a lot of trans friends and she said it was like watching her friendship group on the tv!

I am wondering if there’ll be a spin off of some sort.

Yes I agree. Her dealing with what happened on the bus with her photography was very powerful.

It's a real shame this series focused so much on new and such annoying characters because they could've spent more time on the original cast and given them a better ending. It felt like it was all part of Eric's god delusion and someone was dreaming the whole college!

Aimee and the Groff family were a big highlight.

Another thing I found weird was why Maureen and Jean spent no time together despite Jean clearly struggling. That was a major drop of the ball from the writers.

What exactly is the Abbi and Roman storyline though? It wasn't at all clear to me, as there was so little substance given to their characters.

They were going through a rough patch early in the series, because Abbi was masturbating. One session with Otis (not shown to the viewer) seemed to sort it. Later on Abbi didn't want sex and started a fire to avoid it. Then there was an overly dramatic scene about how her toxic positivity was due to fearing rejection. Then her and Roman had sex - yay! It's all fine now.

It made no sense and had no depth at all. I couldn't have cared less about the characters because we had no information about the backstory at all, and they were deeply irritating.

Hmm I guess I can see what you’re saying but I was coming more from the angle that Romans character was interesting as a “trans masculine” (as they called themselves)- top surgery, but wearing feminine clothes, long feminine nails, yet identifying as male, clearly taking testosterone as they have a deep voice, and going out with someone who was born male and has become a trans woman (Abbie) and then I liked the fact their storyline wasn’t actually about any of that at all - which is the way it should be. I just found it refreshing against a lot of the anti trans etc stuff I regularly come across. The actor who plays Roman, Felix Mufti is a very strong supporter of trans rights and my dd and her friends really like them.

My take was that they were aiming to represent every possible queer permutation through Abbi and Roman (and others). None of it was used to flesh out the characters or make them into believable, interesting humans though.

They would have been better off representing fewer types of queerness, and doing them well, rather than aiming to tick every possible box, but in the most superficial way possible. Honestly, it felt insulting to the viewer's intelligence.

E.g. Eric is gay, and that forms part of his character arc, but it's not his whole story and his character has a lot of depth because it's been developed properly.

The new trans characters, including Cal, are so two dimenionsal it's unreal. We barely saw Cal all season, just occasional scenes of them looking unhappy, then suddenly Cal is the main subject of the final episode? And the narrative that surgery fixes everything for a suicidal person - really?

And Aisha - what did we see of her over the 8 episodes?

She tells people to look at her when they're speaking (performing a function of highlighting disability issues, rather than having a genuine story arc), and also makes a speech about disability rights near the end (again, this is not part of a story arc for her, the writers are just looking for a way to insert this topic). She's bi and in an open relationship. She's into horoscopes. And.... that's it?

We know almost nothing about her, despite her being one of the main new characters. No development at all.

In fact, the disability issues were best highlighted by the lift being repeatedly broken when Isaac needed it, and when the cinema didn't turn subtitles on. Good writers show you the issue through the story, and credit you with enough intelligence to see it for yourself, rather than spelling it out via a character making a totally unrealistic ad hoc speech.

I noticed the disability issues as well.

They did it so well with Isaac because he was at times an extremely unlikable character. He was horrible to Maeve and rude to many people. They didn't try to make him this hugely sympathetic and classically lovely character which some writers have a tendency to do when they introduce a character with disabilities. He was well rounded and had storylines that really weren't about the fact he used a wheelchair.

Cal's storyline was completely irresponsibly handled. She was clearly struggling mentally and no one (including the mother!) thought getting some mental health support would've been sensible. It was shown as if a mastectomy would solve everything.

I honestly just think that someone in the writers room should've sat up and asked what they were trying to say with this series. It all felt like a box ticking performance.

I was really disappointed by this - too many new characters and not enough time to develop them. When you are on the 4th and final series, that's not the time to write in loads of new people!
I missed the characters left out of (or hardly in) this series, like the teachers and Lily. Would have liked to see Jakob and Ola.
All in all, I thought this was a very weak ending to a brilliant series. It had some good moments but was nothing like the first 3.
Am also not okay with normalising top surgery - permanent body alterations should be what happens after proper therapy and maturation of the mind has occurred, not something developing terms are led to believe is the solution to all their problems.

Yeah, I agree about Isaac. He was a rounded human, albeit an unlikeable one. He had a backstory, and you were able to understand his fears/motives through that lens.

Aisha is just a random disabled person plonked in the series, seemingly for the sole purpose of reminding viewers about disability issues every half an hour or so. Her character is nothing more than a vehicle for disability, which is really tokenistic and problematic. (And you can say the same thing for quite a few of the newer characters.)

In the bit at the end, where a third disabled person rocked up to join the (utterly unbelievable) disability rights protest, and admitted that they didn't even attend the school - were the writers taking the piss out of their own writing?

I also agree with pp about how irresponsibly Cal's storyline was handled. The writers are writing for a young audience, and should have given more thought to what message they were sending. Body modification surgery is not some kind of instant fix for depression and suicidal feelings.

The more I think about this series, the more problematic I find it. It's presenting itself as 'woke' and enlightened in many ways, but is actually pushing some really harmful stereotypes and the writers deal with the various new minority characters appallingly.

It's performative wokeness.

Not actually woke in the real, original sense of the word (which would be a good thing), but a performative, virtue signalling, insubstantial version of what the writers think 'woke' looks like for a teenager.

I love Isaac. And as someone disabled myself I really liked the way they made him such a well rounded character. At times he was intensely irritating 😆 but none of that had anything to do with him being disabled. And rightly so. And the lift bit was really good!

I didn’t like Cal at all. I am not even sure why. I just couldn’t warm to them at all and felt really uncomfortable about the way they were suddenly meant to feel better by having the funding for the top surgery - which to be fair DOES help a lot of trans people feel comfortable with themselves - but they were clearly struggling with their whole identity / having periods / mental health etc. I don’t think there was enough time and space in the season to cover it all responsibly and well.

I enjoyed the series and while I agree that the newer characters weren’t very fleshed out, in the previous series we had side characters that we didn’t know everything about either, so I don’t necessarily see that as an issue. The Abbi & Roman plot and characters were as fleshed out as other supporting characters in previous series, and actually they did have character arcs - the annoying toxic positivity arc was their story? They managed to have sex at the end when Abbi stopped repressing their negative thoughts.

I totally agree that the Cal plot line was incredibly dangerous though - especially considering Jean spent a lot of time talking about how important therapy would be for Joanna, and we have two sex therapists on campus - surely a solution would have been - we are going to fundraise for professional medical health support for Cal and someone to assess the impact of taking testosterone on their mental state. We already had a “happy” top surgery story in Roman so the show could have explored a more complicated “to trans or not to trans” style story with Cal.

I actually really like how they made Otis this season, he was a shit and selfish and unfair to his mum - this is what teenagers are often like! And it was so good to have Jean be the hero in Maeve’s story - to show how important it is to have a parent or someone in your corner. With all the focus on LGBTQ stuff in culture these days it was an important reminder to show that actually socioeconomic disadvantage and childhood neglect etc can so easily derail a life!

I adored Eric’s church plot line and I don’t think they showed church in a bad light at all, it was realistic and they had the pastor offer the olive branch at the end. I loved the supernatural aspect to it was well, it was fresh and fun.

I think the way they showed Ruby’s origin story and pain and how they demonstrated how the “cool” queer kids were just as capable of creating a bullying excluding clique was also really important.

And the random disabled guy in the disability speech scene made me laugh out loud, the show was definitely acknowledging that they were almost going too far with the preachiness and pulled back at the last second.

I had high hopes for Cal getting a good story. They said they wanted to feel like a kid again and were jumping on the bed. The orgasm and her period really knocked them right back down so I thought they were going to show how difficult they were finding growing up. There was an explanation for the accent in the earlier series or am I getting confused with something else?

when Eric found Cal he really reached out and his whole attitude changed, definitely indicating the preacher but I thought ok someone is going to see Cal’s searing pain and see it’s not just about the external. But then it just didn’t.

I think the problem is that questioning whether it is right for Cal to trans would go against a lot of the ideas that are currently being pushed in that sphere.

I think the writers will have been fully aware that the only approach that would be considered acceptable is that obviously Cal needs top surgery to feel better.

The random disabled character at the protest was a nod to 'Mean girls' with They don't even go here being a line from the film. Quite lazy way to get out of a ridiculous preachy scene.

The broken lift and the humanising/rounding of Isaac was great though.

Agree the Cal storyline felt dangerous, both the blind affirmation of Cal and the way the mum was given the affirm or lose them message, it wasn't the brutal alive son or dead daughter mantra but close enough.

Didn’t realise how much this was living in my head.

I think the writers have been “corrected or updated” after the script was written. When the church didn’t accept the money for the soup kitchen, it seems the very logical step that Eric would run the soup kitchen as part of his queer friendly church. Otherwise do everyone just stops caring about the homeless people that they have obviously been working with for a while. And you can’t just change your mind about fundraised money!

that twinned with Cal wanted to be a child again and the weird, almost throw away mention of Otis’s anxiety been routed in his mothers breakdown. Maybe our childhoods affect our adulthood and adolescents have to find a way through?

also Otis gets away with being pissy with his girlfriend taking a brilliant opportunity in America? Maybe who has nothing and no one, literally no safety net and nobody to help her, unlike Otis with 2 rich parents. Aaaaaaand I thought Maeve would have something to say when he was disgruntled about Joy taking his mother attention when she was literally looking after a toddler when she was younger.

I do actually like the show. I just don’t like plot holes.

They ruined s4 with diversity box-ticking. It so performative, there was no depth to the characters whatsoever.

So disappointing after the last 3 series which I loved.

I found the new characters extremely one dimensional and very irritating. Loved Adam and his Dad, and Eric's story. Aimee is fab!
I think both Otis and Maeve are really unlikeable 😆 Agree with PP who said he's a shit friend.