Jean, meanwhile, strikes up a friendship with the lonely Maureen Groff (Samantha Spiro), reassuring her that she deserves sexual pleasure and inspiring her to end her suffocating marriage
I never thought I’d have to have The Talk with Sex Education, a show that should know better than “impossible” pregnancies, much less impossible pregnancies that only exist to complicate the life of a woman played by Gillian Anderson. But in the colorful dramedy’s Season 2 finale, Jean (Anderson) discovers that she’s pregnant, despite the fact that her former partner, Jakob (Mikael Persbrandt), had a vasectomy. “That’s impossible,” she protests. Raise your hand if you’ve heard that one before. This is, by my count, the third time a Gillian Anderson character has been shocked by a pregnancy she didn’t think was possible and the second time in the last two years alone. I’m not mad; I’m just disappointed.
Sex Education, which premiered a year after Scully’s second immaculate conception, is an antidote to The X-Files’ obsession with purity
The twist is particularly frustrating given how often — and how explicitly — Sex Education insists that women’s bodies belong to them alone. In Season 1, Maeve (Emma Mackey) gets an abortion, and Aimee (Aimee Lou Wood) joyfully discovers masturbation. In the new season, which premiered Jan. 17, the girls come together to support Aimee after a man jerks off against her on the bus; she finds release when they take her to smash things in a junkyard. For everything men put them through, the women of Sex Education are encouraged to own and enjoy their bodies. Continue reading “Please Stop Making Gillian Anderson’s Characters ‘Impossibly’ Pregnant”