What does Sex Education get right about the teen experience?
Comedians Cassie Cao, John Cullen and Brandon Ash-Mohammed discuss the new season of Sex Education
For this week's wrap panel, comedians Cassie Cao, John Cullen and Brandon Ash-Mohammed join host Elamin Abdelmahmoud to discuss the recent revelations that some of the personal stories from comedian Hassan Minhaj's stand-up routines were not true. Listen to that in depth discussion in the podcast. They also get into the fourth and final season of the much loved Netflix series Sex Education.
We've included some highlights below, edited for length and clarity. For the full discussion, listen and follow the Commotion with Elamin Abdelmahmoud podcast, on your favourite podcast player.
Elamin Abdelmahmoud: I would like to talk about a comedy that is getting a lot of praise…. Sex Education has become one of Netflix's most popular shows over the past few years. It just returned for a fourth season this week. It is about teens at a school in the U.K. who are trying to figure out intimacy and sexuality. Cassie, you're someone who works in comedy and TV writing. What do you think it is about sex education that sets it apart from the typical sort of teen comedy show?
Cassie: Well, I think that people really love this show. Yeah. People are really into.
Elamin: I'm people. You can say that to me, I'm people.
Cassie: It talks about such intimate, salacious, sex kind of details that normally shows would scandalize or glorify. But in fact, the tone of this show is very wholesome and they blend in a lot of friendship stories and positive relationships between everyone. I think that's such a nice mix. It's got a real Ted Lasso kind of vibe to a topic that could go another way. I think that juxtaposition is really refreshing for everyone to see.
Elamin: That's true. Like kind of even treats like the darkness, parts of people's fetishes, in a really earnest way. It makes it feel like a very welcoming space. John, we should say you used to be a high school teacher. What do you think the show gets right about the high school experience that other shows don't?
John: Well, I think most kids live in a beautiful home on a river in the middle of England.... So they do get that right. But no, I think what it gets right, and Cassie was kind of alluding to this, is the confusion around sexuality at that age. You know, everybody's kind of trying to figure themselves out and figure out maybe where on the spectrum they are, if they're LGBTQ+ or whatever. I think the show deals with those issues very well. And it's not played so much for: "oh, I'm just having this revelation." It's not like one episode, "I'm straight" and the next episode, "Oh my God, I'm gay. And I figured it all out and, and everything is happy and we've got it," you know? Like, it really deals with these characters going through figuring it all out. And it's not easy when you're a teenager, right? Lots of stuff is running through your brain. And so I think that part of the show really nails it — it's a very fluid, just like sexuality is very fluid, look at what a lot of these characters are going through and I think that's very true to real life.
Elamin: Brandon, I think the one thing that I'm really struck by is the fact that this season, this fourth season of Sex Education, is the final season. The show is landing on a week when there have been protests in this country and counter protests in this country from people who have very strong feelings about who should be the people to educate children and young people about sex and about the questions that they have about sex. And to me, the thing that that sex education gets right is at the end of the day, kids just want to know and they will find out — figure out — ways to know. Maybe ways that you don't want them to know. So as a result, maybe you want trusted figures to be the people to pass down information about sex. But were you thinking about the relationship between sex education and those protests this week?
Brandon: I was just like, oh damn. What weird timing? And, you know, as a teen, as a young teen, I was just like, "Oh my God, the show is about my life — what I'm going through. My mom is also Gillian Anderson." I don't know, it's just so interesting how the timing of everything has happened and it's also like, yeah, fine. I remember as a child, nobody would tell me anything, but I would just find books in the library and I would just take them out. I would read. So it's just like the kids are going to find out anyway.
You can listen to the full discussion from today's show on CBC Listen or on our podcast, Commotion with Elamin Abdelmahmoud, available wherever you get your podcasts.
Panel produced by Stuart Berman.