The Big Picture
- Sex Education explores the complex mother-son relationship between Otis and Jean, defying norms and maintaining a line of honesty.
- Despite some ups and downs, Jean’s occupation as a sex therapist has been important in shaping and supporting Otis’s ventures.
- Otis gains a newfound respect for Jean and her profession, realizing the importance of her work in helping others understand sexuality.
Sex Education is a series chock-full of dynamic duos, but perhaps the greatest pairing of them all is the one that always ends up shoulder-to-shoulder on the same red couch together. After all, there’d be no Otis Milburn (Asa Butterfield) without Dr. Jean Milburn (Gillian Anderson), which means there’d be no Sex Education at all without the two. Most of the action might take place at Otis’ school, but at home—once everyone else in their revolving door of life heads back to their respective lives—it’s always just the two of them.
Television tends to hone in on the intricacies of the mother-daughter relationship, but Sex Education explores just how equally complex the relationship between mother and son can be. After all, not every kid has a mother who’s a sex therapist, and not every mother is the Gillian Anderson, which is what makes this duo so addicting to watch. While we don’t get as much screen time with the two as we do with, say, Otis and his best friend, Eric (Ncuti Gatwa), pivoting back home for scenes with Otis and Jean is always a welcome refreshment, which is a testament to their incredible chemistry and the overall believability factor between them. From every annoyed sigh to each secretly necessary hug, they genuinely feel like mother and son.
A Mother-Son Relationship Like No Other
Mother-son relationships are as vast as they are complicated, and that’s certainly no exception for the one between Otis and Jean. While Otis has been embarrassed on more than a few occasions when it comes to his mother’s line of work as a sex therapist, she’s actually been an incredibly important force in his life with regard to that. After all, if it weren’t for Jean’s occupation and tendency to be overly talkative about it, Otis would’ve never been able to launch his quasi-career in off-the-books sex counseling for students at his school. Though that business venture had its ups and downs, it let Otis into Jean’s world, which is something he tried to keep himself away from after having to endure plenty of conversations about sexuality with his mother over the years.
Many mother-son relationships end up with some major walls up on both ends, but for Otis and Jean, there are zero walls at all, which has certainly served as a negative for Otis on more than one occasion. Overall, their relationship defies every norm we’ve ever been taught about parent-child relationships, regardless of gender, and while that lack of personal space has backfired a few times, it keeps a line of honesty open between Otis and Jean at all times. Sure, Otis definitely figured out some ways to manage Jean’s prying eyes throughout the four seasons of Sex Education, but even he realized that her eyes were never actually trying to pry at all: they were just attempting to fully understand him.
The thing about Jean is that she was never going to treat Otis exactly like one of her other patients, which is probably what he feared most when it came to their relationship. Instead of digging for more information about whatever conflict he was currently experiencing, Jean mostly sat back and waited for him to come to her. Sometimes Otis did eventually come to her, but sometimes he didn’t—and that was okay with Jean. Whereas another parent might’ve wanted to force the information out of their child, Jean always prioritized Otis’ trust in her (though she was known for sneaking around his room a few times, that’s practically a mom’s rite of passage at this point).
After Four Seasons, Otis Gains a New Respect for Jean in ‘Sex Education’
Having lived the bulk of his life being subjected to his mother’s openness regarding sexuality, Otis was both numb to and a little tired of hearing about the subject. However, through all that time spent listening, he unconsciously attained a wealth of knowledge about sexuality, which ultimately ended up helping both himself and his classmates at school. As much as Otis has held onto a bit of resentment for the years of embarrassment he’s had to endure because of Jean’s profession, Season 2 of Sex Education brought him a bit more respect for his mother. From helping his classmates with their sexuality issues, Otis realized that what Jean does for a living is actually extremely important—not just the butt of a joke.
Season 3 definitely brought a bit of a shift to their relationship, as it was revealed that Jean was pregnant, meaning that Otis would now not be the only child in her life. Otis also gets to witness his mother being a mother from the outside looking in instead of the other way around, which gives him a newfound appreciation for just how much work goes into raising a child. With Otis going off to college soon, though, things are changing quite a bit for Jean, who was just about to have an empty nest—that is, until she unexpectedly became pregnant. With things up in the air with her partner, Jakob (Mikael Persbrandt), it’s double the stress on Jean from just about every angle.
The fourth (and final) season of Sex Education just dropped, and with that came the largest change to Otis and Jean’s relationship as Otis is officially attending Cavendish Sixth Form College, leaving Jean at home with his baby sister. It’s truly a new era for both characters, as Otis and Jean are entering into completely different chapters in their lives, and for the first time ever, it’s not just the two of them. And that’s not necessarily a bad thing, it’s just different from the world they’ve become used to over the last 18 years. Despite this new chapter, though, they’re still the same Otis and Jean that we’ve always known, and regardless of how old Otis gets, he’ll probably never stop being mildly embarrassed by his mother, and Jean will never stop caring about her son.
