Attention, SPOILERS appear in this text!
The last time I blogged about Sex Education, I praised the show a lot. I also defended him outside of him, mainly in right-wing circles that unfairly criticized him. Not all of them, because there were people who might not defend him, but also avoided stupid criticism and said "Well, at least he has arms and legs and it is not completely pointless." (Regards Unbearable Pain of Existence on YT). I didn't have much to complain about the first season. Yes, it did have stupid elements at times, but this is a teen show, so you can turn a blind eye to it. Especially since he made up for the positives and I don't mean naked pretty girls. My point is to present sexuality, dispel some lies and show that, contrary to appearances, teenagers have real gaps in knowledge about the sexual sphere, and some parents avoid these topics. Also, while I sometimes make this mistake, i.e. find some teenagers' problems petty, this series reminded me of some of my problems that were important to me at the time. As people grow up, they forget about it, because problems, unfortunately, multiply and are even more complicated, but those that affect young people cannot be ignored. Thanks to "Sex Education", the awareness of some circles, as well as of teenagers themselves, has probably increased. Consequently, at least some of them will save time and most of all the nerves that were wasted by the inability to find an answer and excessive frustration. Season two continued it well, but there was a long storyline that left a lot of disgust. It is about a play by one of the protagonists who was stupid, strange, distasteful and unnecessary. Although the conclusion of this event was important (the author of this play has a harmful approach to sex, which harms her friends, but most of all her, which is partly due to her "illness" - this term is not entirely adequate, but I do not know a better one), it could have been better portrayed. And certainly shorter and less invasive. Nevertheless, I still defended this season despite this stage.
When it comes to season 3 ... Let me put it this way, it still touches on important topics - e.g. the patchwork family (how the relationship between a new mother and a partner's daughter or between a new father and a partner's son), sexuality and social alienation of a disabled person (problem ignored by many people, i.e. leaving the disabled to themselves without help in elementary matters, not to mention basic emotions), why the school should focus primarily on learning and discipline, and not on the expression of students, marking their individuality (I'm not saying that This is important, but schools have long gone too far in this direction, which raises additional problems in various spheres.) He still asks important questions, focuses on students' problems, delves into the minds of various personality types (chads, ordinary boys, the more shy, with strange fantasies, quiet mice, girls with liberal morals, gays and lesbians, teenagers growing up in more or less pathological or unsettled houses, etc.), but it is less and less, and their quality is declining. Instead, the number of these stupid elements is growing. Comparing it to the HBO series, which in a way touches on similar topics, it is much worse. "Euphoria" presented some things better and stronger, but there were also nonsense there. However, there were definitely fewer of them than in Season 3 of SE - in HBO, despite a few unnecessary threads (relatively - they were badly presented and written) and a poor last episode, we were only disappointed with this. In a Netflix production, me and my girlfriend laughed harder and harder at episode after episode, and at one point we felt it was a waste of our time for this comedy. A comedy full of banalities, a weak script or ordinary idiots.
What it comes from? I'll start at the end. I will not give too many examples, because I feel sorry for the keyboard, I will say it generally based on 1 example. In previous seasons, as well as in many Netflix series, there are silly, surreal scenes ("Orange is the New Black", "Sky Rojo" , supposedly "Money Heist", which I have not seen) . A friend of mine once compared it to "Indiana Jones" - it was allegedly similar there, but either it was shown in such a way that you didn't pay attention to it, or there were so many good things that we could turn a blind eye to the creators' fantasy. In SE season 3, we have way too much of it to pass by indifferently. Twice we had a sex scene in a public place which shouldn't have happened there. Ok, it wouldn't be surprising during a meeting of wizards and wizards in "The Witcher" (whoever reads the books knows it happened) or a show about swingers. Ok, such things can happen (e.g. on the bus, I once read in the UK that one couple was drugged and they had to pour cold water over them like a couple of dogs during copulation because they couldn't be separated by other methods) but not fucking at school or on a trip when everyone can look at it. Besides, there were other scenes (thankfully not that exaggerated) where the writers probably thought we were idiots or were completely fucked up about our reaction.
Characters that previously made a good impression and genuinely encouraged further viewing have been underdeveloped this season. Okay, some of their threads went further satisfactorily, but others didn't. Additionally, in previous seasons they were simply better written. Someone may say that this is due to the fact that earlier it was an effect of freshness - we didn't know them, they had a clean slate. Ok, I agree, but I will reflect it with another argument - the creators now had a free hand. Since they had already introduced the characters, they could easily focus on their development, deeper penetration into their personalities, they could develop these problems or show them from a different angle (because it is difficult to solve at least some of them so quickly and so easily, I know after myself and my own friends that they often come back or echo in the future, and thus continue to influence our behavior and decisions). Besides, the heroes and heroines were remarkably flat in contrast to earlier seasons, where their characters were more complex. This season they are driven in a line, as if it were a weak continuation that does little to develop the previous parts. Some threads seemed interesting at first, but their solutions were sometimes too trivial or it went too fast. They generally followed the least resistance line.
As for the good things, I wrote about them before and basically I have nothing to add - there were too few of them + they were too imitative compared to the two previous seasons and they are not able to balance the bad ones. All in all, Netflix has ruined a good series and I do not plan to return to it, even if season 4 (which has already been officially announced) will be much better. Too bad our time + we have other things to watch. By the way, when I finally complain about Netflix, the more I watch Amazon, Hulu or HBO series, the more I see the difference in quality. Of course, this does not apply to all series, because Netflix cares about the most important ones, but if it is not so important or is intended for a younger audience, Netflix probably doesn't give a shit about refining it ...