The plot: an awkward 16 year old who is a son of sex and relationship therapist opened up an unlicensed sex therapy clinic at his school. The business idea came from his übercool super-smart classmate who observed the gap in sex education among their teenage peers who are at their peak puberty phase.
Set in Moordale, a fictional county that is supposed to be in UK—based on the landscape as well as students’ accents and racial demographics (yet the school infrastructures seems American. Lockers, no uniform and Ivy League look alike school insignia).
Moordale is a liberal democratic socialist utopia. Interracial families and social cliques are common, European (open) attitudes toward sex, no homeless: all immigrant families live in proper housing and even the trailer park is decent, pro-life activists are laughable minorities, and zero racist or homophobic harassment incidents.[1] Moordale people has the privilege that every individual’s problems are existential and no longer basic economic needs.
Like in Channing Tatum’s 21 Jump Street, Moordale’s public high school social ecosystem has evolved progressively. The cool kid is the smart feminist with strong sense of individuality who reads all of Jane Austen’s books by the age of 12. The pretty South Asian gay boy is a member of the popular gang (because ‘homophobia is so 2008’). The dumb blonde with big tits is kind. The big bully is an outcast. The jock is still the stereotype of high school jock of the 90s: athletic (the star of the swimming team), handsome, and popular—except he is black and a son of a mixed race lesbian couple.
The series’ characters are a model of successful diversity initiative programme. The main star Otis Milburn is still a white male. However, he is not portrayed in a traditional escapist masculine character that glorifies jocks. He is sweet boy who tries to get through high school as an invisible, always in the corner unnoticed. He is also a virgin who cannot masturbate due to childhood trauma.
Otis lives with his mother Jean, a therapist with PhD and a man eater. She co-authored a best-selling book ‘Pillow Talk’. Her past success working collaboratively with her ex-husband on the book made her struggle in writing independently. And, despite her wealth of knowledge teenage puberty, she could not help not to pry and invade Otis’ privacy out of her maternal instincts.
Jean does not subscribe to monogamy, especially after her ex-husband cheated on her and left. However, when he met Jakob Nyman, the Swedish hunk plumber, and developed love interests, she projected her insecurities to him despite her years of professional experience and wealth of knowledge in psychoanalysis. Jean wrongfully assumed that Jakob is like her, a divorced womanizer who often romances his customers.[2]
Maeve Wiley is the smart attractive bad girl with charming dark personalities from a broken home. She is above popular. She is cool. She lives in a trailer park (another hint of Americanisation, poor Brits live in council houses), her mother is a drug addict, her father left the family and a brother who disappears regularly due to trouble with the police or the mob. At odds with her white trash upbringing, she consumed literatures and philosophy books. Exposing and exploring her thoughts on feminism, existentialism and transcendentalism and punk music. Maeve was the one who came with the idea to monetise Otis’ innate gift to listen and counsel on sex and relationship matters by setting up the underground therapy clinic.
Otis’ best friend, Eric Effiong is gay boy from an African immigrant family. Eric’s father as a first generation immigrant is always mindful to ‘assimilate’, repressing his self-expression to fit in his new Western society. Therefore, he is worried of Eric’s exuberant non-conformist queer sense of style that makes Eric stand out.
When Eric experienced homophobic assault, and Otis failed to listen to his agony since his best friend was self-absorbed with infatuation towards Maeve at that time, he changed his style to be more conformist. To be more invisible guy in the corner like Otis. Nevertheless, he found comfort in his family’s African church that he is loved.[3] Eric decided to come to the dance ball with full on African style. He stood up against the bully, denouncing his fear to be different. At the dance, Otis asked him to dance and mend their broken friendship. The dance ball, ‘the sexist tradition appropriated from American culture’, can be fun and a platform to bridge platonic relationship between a heterosexual from upper middle class family and a homosexual from a working class minority.
I think when Eric and Otis danced (Eric lead, of course), it was the most heart-warming and poignant scene in the entire series (and the series is full of them). The scene summarises the progressive values: that ultimately we as species can transcend our corporeal homophily and cultural concepts. That all values and concepts are malleable. They are not constant nor absolute. They are open for modification and upgrade.
The core theme of the series is sex. Real sex. Not sex as falsely advertised in porn or lifestyle magazines. Baseline and carnal, sex is a force of nature that shapes our personalities and emotions. By openly discussing about sex and breaking down the social taboos, we can emancipate societies from sexist traditions and archaic heteronormative mindset to liberate ourselves from toxic masculinity that oppresses both women and men.
Sex
Education is a cultural propaganda with powerful progressive liberal agenda. It
can be an important arsenal in the cultural war against populism and orthodoxy.
[1] Eric the black teenage queer experienced one homophobic incident in an episode, but it happened outside the county.
[2] Jakob is widowed and has not had sex since the death of his wife.
[3] As described by the Trevor Noah, black churches are the most passionate and warm with all their communal singing and dancing. See T Noah, Born a Crime: Stories from a South African Childhood (Spiegel & Grau, 2016).
