Sex Education Season 4 Review: Enjoy the Journey Because It Doesn’t Last Forever
Cast: Asa Butterfield, Gillian Anderson, Ncuti Gatwa, Emma Mackey, Connor Swindells, Kedar Williams-Stirling, Alistair Petrie, Mimi Keene, Aimee Lou Wood
Created By: Laurie Nunn
Streaming Platform: Netflix
Filmyhype.com Ratings: 4/5 (four stars) [yasr_overall_rating size=”large”]
Too Much is a Good Thing could be the subtitle of Sex Education Season 4, on Netflix from Thursday 21 September. The exaggerated “woke”, pedagogical-educational drift of these last very long episodes ends up suffocating even the best parts that made the series a success. The balance between the comic component and the in-depth analysis of adolescent dynamics and the discovery of sexuality, which has always been a strong point of the series, is completely broken in the second part of this fourth and final season. Since its first season, Sex Education has been one of the most popular and appreciated Netflix series, enjoying success worldwide and effectively entering the cultural imagination of Generation Z. Created by Laurie Nunn, the series focuses on a group of high school students discovering themselves and sexuality, tackling important topics such as self-love, LGBTQIA+ relationships, disability, healing from trauma and parenting, always with a frank approach and free of any form of rhetoric.
Sex Education Season 4 ends up doing the exact opposite of what it intended: giving lessons. The fairy world of the new school where the protagonists end up amplifies the effect of a parallel universe outside of time and space of the series, set in an English village in the countryside, far from the big cities, but completely out of this world. A sort of utopian island, a refuge from the distortions of the world, where everything is possible and comes true. All the very right social and cultural demands that the TV series brings forward, against violence, against harassment, in favor of inclusion, of every form of disability, of self-acceptance, end up not transmitting a message but giving educational pedagogical lessons that are repelling. So far, it has been an emotional journey, capable of surprising us, entertaining us, and making us move, but which, above all, kept us in suspense as we impatiently followed all the relationships born and then ended during these four-and-a-half years of the show.
Now, with the arrival of the fourth and final season – available on Netflix from 21 September – there are many questions we want to find answers to: what will life be like in the new high school after Moordale closes? What paths will the individual characters take? And, above all, how will the love story between Otis and Maeve end now that they are closer than ever but physically distant? As we will see in our review of Sex Education Season 4, the last chapter of the series will answer all these questions (but we won’t give you spoilers!), keeping intact its unmistakable humor in describing the extremely multifaceted world of teenagers and its vintage aesthetic so captivating. All the narrative arcs of the main characters are well developed, and the viewer will be able to watch his heroes grow and find themselves, as they face the last moments of their lives as teenagers.
Sex Education Season 4 Review: The Story Plot
After Moordale closes, Otis (Asa Butterfield), Eric (Ncuti Gatwa) and their friends Aimee (Aimee Lou Wood), Ruby (Mimi Keene), Jackson (Kedar Williams-Stirling), Viv (Chinenye Ezeudu), Cal (Dua Saleh) and Isaac (George Robinson) face their first day at school at Cavendish Sixth Form College. This new high school, however, is much more progressive than the previous one: the students self-manage extracurricular activities, practice yoga in the common garden, do not promote school competition and they all seem to be incredibly kind. What better place to open a new sex therapy clinic? It’s a shame that Cavendish already has his therapist and Otis will have to do everything he can to bring out his innate talents. Not only that: he will also have to learn to manage his long-distance relationship with Maeve (Emma Mackey), who is in the United States to attend a course for gifted students.
In the meantime, the other Moordale veterans will have to learn to find their path, trying to free themselves from the attempts at homologation of previous years and pursuing their real inclinations. Otis (Asa Butterfield) and Maeve (Emma Mackey) are on two different continents and the first episode opens with them, far away yet close, needing each other. They say to each other what all couples who have experienced/are experiencing a long-distance relationship say to each other, needing confirmation and words to forget about the planes they would have to take to get closer, necessary phrases to appease desire. In the two studies, Otis does research for the sex clinic that he will open in the new school – or at least he thinks he does – but it’s not always easy to stay focused when your thoughts turn to the person you would like to have next to you. The photos that try to ignite the other’s desire and requests for photos – it is Maeve who asks Otis for one, which is no small feat because it is even easier to say the opposite – to tickle the mind and body, put Otis in difficulty.
once again Sex Education shows how fragile and insecure human beings are. Otis, faced with Maeve’s message, panicked, and repeatedly revealed the difficulties in accepting his own body, and in loving himself, and this time it is yet another test, however, the boy’s silence may not alarm Maeve especially when it is far away. The girl, unlike the always wavering, clumsy, funny Otis, is much more confident, a free, independent young woman who has matured over these seasons but who has always been emancipated even when a boy made her suffer, even when fears typical of anyone shook her. Both Otis and Maeve will have their problems, one will have the writer Thomas Molloy (Daniel Levy) as a teacher who will question her, making her doubt that she has taken the wrong path, and the other will have to live far from the girl and will get closer also to the one he had pushed away, Ruby (Mimi Keene). In addition to solving other people’s problems, she will also have to experience a complex situation, the birth of her sister Joy, the daughter of her mother, Jean Milburn (Gillian Anderson), and the latter’s postpartum crisis.
Sex Education Season 4 Review and Analysis
In the past, Sex Education had been able to make all these elements organic to the story, the important ideas on understanding the other, the difficulties of family dynamics, the discovery of one’s being, and the definition of identity, were inserted into school contexts and again youth, trying to speak to those who perhaps don’t know these things, don’t live them or are just exploring them. In this last season, Sex Education ends up speaking “to its own”, to those who know and experience these themes. There is a “villain” missing in this Sex Education Season 4. We perceive the absence of an enemy, of a disturbing element capable of representing the unaware public. To the point that the feeling is that the audience far from this world is the “villain” of the season. Some elements of the story are unconvincing compared to the past.
Like the storylines linked to Adam who so far had been among the best characters for the path undertaken over the three seasons but who in this fourth is separated from the rest of the story. The choices made for Jeane and Maeve are not convincing. As well as the character of O and the rivalry with Otis. Sex Education greets fans by consoling them with a warm reassuring cloth, forgetting in the second part what had been its most convincing components in the past. The start gave us hope, but then the desire to teach a lesson rather than offer a story capable of entertaining prevailed. One of the strengths of Sex Education was that it did not show teenagers dealing with adult situations. In this last season, this aspect is also missing.
The latest season of Sex Education places the protagonists further and further apart, for example, Maeve (Emma Mackey) and Otis will try to make their long-distance relationship work, after the girl’s transfer to the US college which took place last season. The two will soon experience the difficulties of a long-distance relationship and this will bring inevitable problems, especially after a new rapprochement between Otis and Ruby. This dynamic, however, will not be a repetition of what we saw in season 3, but will allow us to see Rubyin in a new light and this will undoubtedly contribute to the girl’s growth path (already started in the previous year). Eric (Ncuti Gatwa) and Adam, the show’s other main couple, will also share very few scenes in this final season but the single path taken by both characters may surprise fans of the couple.
Despite attending the same school, the friendship between Otis and Eric will undergo a notable slowdown, as both will understand that they want different things and for this reason, their relationship will be put to the test. The two will remain the constant of the series in this last cycle of episodes, but they will be developed more individually than as a couple of friends. The great protagonist of the last season of Sex Education will then be the gender theme, the latter will be treated from a new perspective for the series: transsexuality. The difficulties experienced by trans people in their transition journey will be highlighted. Once again, the show therefore proves to be extremely close to the new generations, trying to embrace any type of person and sexual orientation. The latest season of Sex Education debuts today September 21st on Netflix and we are ready to bet it will make you very emotional, so we advise you to keep your handkerchiefs nearby!
In this latest season of Sex Education, we observe the individual characters embark on the path that will finally lead them to self-discovery; Otis and his friends stop aspiring to approval, seeking the approval of others at all costs, and begin to pursue what are their real inclinations. This also means that, especially in the first episodes, the concept of the group to which we were used to is lost a little: arriving in such a queer and progressive school pushes the former Moordale students to open up to new perspectives and to undertake a search process. Eric finally seems to have found a welcoming place in which he can express himself without fear, alongside people who share the same interests and the same approach to life.
Adam has instead decided not to return to school, a courageous decision that will lead him to discover his true aspiration, caring for horses. Cal grapples with the changes brought on by his transition, Viv discovers that a high school without competition can translate into a finally happy school life, and Jackson tries to forget Cal by exploring his sexuality. And Otis? In addition to what we have already said about his relationship with Maeve, the boy is busy reconciling his sexual therapy clinic, an expression of his true self, and his new role as big brother, a task of great responsibility given his condition. of his mother Jean (Gillian Anderson), single but determined more than ever to start working again immediately. However, we want to reassure you: the kids, after having moved away to find themselves, will have the opportunity to get closer to each other in an even more sincere and conscious way, reconstituting that group that we have become so fond of in recent years.
The fourth season of the show keeps intact that characteristic that had largely contributed to the success of the previous ones: a wise use of irony – never mocking – in capturing the thousand facets of the adolescent world, without lapsing into rhetoric or generalizations. How Sex Education has demonstrated its ability to dose humor to describe even the most complex situations – such as abuse, bullying, and illness – with a certain lightness (which is not superficiality) is what has always made us fall in love with this show. And now that our protagonists will find themselves facing increasingly difficult challenges (we won’t reveal which ones), this approach is even more effective. Yes, the fourth season represents the chapter of maturity, the entry into adulthood for children with all the responsibilities and uncertainties that this entails; but it also teaches us that it is always possible to choose from which perspective to look at life, even in its hardest moments.
Another strong point of the show certainly remains its captivating vintage aesthetic. Despite being set in the present day (even if a precise temporal reference is missing), the clothing of the protagonists of Sex Education draws heavily from the Seventies, Eighties, and Nineties, fitting into that trend of nostalgia that began in 2016 with Stranger Things. This choice, in addition to being visually satisfying thanks to a super colorful palette and a mix of different styles, makes the series universal, not classifiable with precision in space and time. A freedom that translates into the opportunity, for Otis and his friends, to experiment and create their own very personal look: in this sense, it is above all Eric who is the protagonist, free – more than he was before – to express himself through clothes, now that it finally finds itself in a stimulating context from which it can always receive new influences. In short, even in its (unfortunately) last season, Sex Education confirms itself as a balm for the eyes and the heart which, we are sure, will not disappoint its loyal audience.
Sex Education is the story of a full, rich, even fragile, and therefore intense and poignant community. In recent years Otis and his men have talked about life and death, sex and identity, body and soul, love and friendship, masturbation and orgasm, violence and bullying, everything is captured with delicacy and amused urgency that involves and already makes you miss them. of this generation so beautiful and in need of a place in the world, capable of sincere hugs and sensational gestures as well as timidly whispered words. Sex Education is a perfect example of how essential it is to represent all individuals, all stories so that the most people can find themselves in as many stories as possible. The episodes show how often the paths diverge, walls are built to keep away those who cause suffering but also those who love themselves too much, they focus on a complex, often difficult age in which everything “perceivable” is felt with the body and with the soul, loneliness, love, friendship, failure, pain. The series has revolutionized teen drama by entering the soft underbelly of the stories, opening drawers and wardrobes, and bringing out all the truths that are often kept hidden.
Sex Education Season 4 Review: The Last Words
Sex Education Season 4 keeps intact its unmistakable humor in telling the extremely multifaceted world of teenagers and its captivating vintage aesthetic. All the narrative arcs of the main characters are well developed, and the viewer will be able to watch his heroes grow and find themselves, as they face the last moments of their lives as teenagers. Sex Education Season 4 demonstrates once again, with the show’s usual unscrupulousness, that the important thing is to enjoy an engaging, unique journey, a gift for those who are young today, who are experiencing those stages right now, and for those who are adult and can find in the series, in the plurality of these amazing people, how vital plurality and inclusiveness are. Sex Education is a collective and personal song of an identity that is being sought and formed, of a personality that is being built, it is a cry of emancipation and acknowledgment, it is a colorful painting of how plural and natural the human being is. Enjoy the journey because it doesn’t last forever.
Sex Education Season 4 Review: Enjoy the Journey Because It Doesn't Last Forever - Filmyhype
Director: Laurie Nunn
Date Created: 2023-09-21 14:05
4
Pros
- The show's willingness to tackle difficult topics in a sensitive and nuanced way.
- The performances of the cast, particularly Asa Butterfield, Emma Mackey, and Ncuti Gatwa.
- The show's humor, which is both funny and heartwarming.
- The show's positive message about self-acceptance and diversity.
Cons
- The season's uneven pacing.
- The underdevelopment of some of the storylines.
- The departure of some of the show's beloved characters, such as Maeve and Ola.
