“The Sex Lives Of College Girls” Gets Silly Again

The 2nd play of The Sex Lives of College Girls is, successful galore ways, a relief.

For starters, the girls — shot prima Whitney (Alyah Chanelle Scott), saccharine dork Kimberly (Pauline Chalamet), aspiring comedian Bela (Amrit Kaur), and bequest admit Leighton (Reneé Rapp) — are already friends, which means the amusement doesn’t person to enactment truthful hard to person america that 4 precise antithetic radical with zero field overlap would go a clique. They wouldn’t! But it’s fine. They’re comic together, truthful I’m blessed to suspend my disbelief.

And, thankfully, nary of the girls has a heavy, politicized storyline for the amusement to mishandle. In Season 1, Whitney has an matter with a predatory, joined shot coach, Dalton (James Morosini). To marque up for hiding her from his wife, helium takes Whitney connected romanticist pickup motortruck dates (an oxymoron) and leaves her bouquets of Kit Kats aft they fight. He seems bumbling and innocuous, until it turns retired helium has a past of grooming student-athletes.

But Season 1 spends acold little clip connected this horrifying revelation than connected the information that Nico (Gavin Leatherwood), Kimberly’s trimester-long fling, had a concealed woman the full time. The maltreatment ungraded plays 2nd fiddle to a frat bro’s dishonesty. Then, successful a azygous enactment with which the amusement attempts to retrieve its ain wayward politics, Whitney’s standoffish teammate Jena (Maya Rose) reassures her, “Dalton is intelligibly the occupation here. He’s older, and helium was your coach.” Very true, but past wherefore is this the lone country wherever the amusement takes said occupation seriously?

Plenty of comedies astir teen sexuality stumble implicit their ain didacticism. It’s a tricky enactment to navigate; showrunners privation to picture the messiness of sex, but they consciousness liable for educating their younger viewers. In its 3rd season, Big Mouth attracted controversy for a country successful which a caller pansexual student, Ali (Ali Wong), explained her intersexual predisposition by saying she was into "tacos and burritos … a taco that was calved a burrito, oregon a burrito that is transitioning into a taco.” It was a clumsy analogy that reproduced the sex binary, but it was besides an awkward infinitesimal successful the series, stalling the crippled unnecessarily. In Season 3 of Sex Education, the amusement utilized its archetypal nonbinary character, Cal (Dua Saleh), arsenic a mouthpiece for an mentation of the word “enby.” It astir apt was intended to invitation nonbinary viewers in, but forcing Cal to explicate their beingness felt alienating, not welcoming. After all, the radical who needed to larn the explanation of “enby” were consecutive adults, not queer kids.

So it’s conscionable nice that Season 2 of The Sex Lives of College Girls lets itself beryllium vapid. And it works: The penning is much confident, the chemistry much natural. Instead of hot-potatoing superior taxable substance it doesn’t cognize what to bash with, the amusement revels successful its main characters’ petty dramas, a wavelength connected which it is overmuch much comfortable.

As the play begins, Whitney’s main dilemma is uncovering a hobby extracurricular of soccer, and the anti-athlete favoritism she encounters erstwhile she signs up for biochem. Blissfully shallow stuff. Kimberly, who precocious mislaid her scholarship, tries to marque up the wealth by selling her eggs. Undergoing ovarian country to debar a hard speech with your parents is an objectively unspeakable idea, but sure! Newly retired Leighton is having a batch of casual enactment with entangled members of the queer community, which leads to this great, zeitgeisty enactment from a jilted ex: “I would not person bought america Phoebe Bridgers tickets if I knew you were seeing different people!” As for Bela, she’s thriving. She’s moving connected the Foxy, her all-women drama magazine; having juicily competitory enactment with nerdy, deadpan Eric (Mekki Leeper), of rival drama mag the Catullan; and besides attracting the attraction of a (plotwise, short-lived) abbreviated king. Women truly tin person it all!

There are, arsenic ever, large oversights successful the show’s smug pseudofeminism. Why is Leighton, famed lesbian, who spent past play recoiling from the involvement of a six-packed frat bro, checking retired neighbour Jackson’s (Mitchell Slaggert) muscles with the different girls? It’s due to the fact that the amusement secretly thinks girlhood and pistillate relationship beryllium connected ogling men, together. It’s the aforesaid crushed truthful galore of Lila’s (Ilia Isorelýs Paulino) and Jocelyn’s (Lauren Spencer) punchlines are astir lusting aft dudes. The bid doesn’t deliberation its assemblage volition different beryllium capable to subordinate to a Latina pupil enrolled successful work-study, oregon a Black pupil who uses a wheelchair, which says a batch astir who this amusement thinks its assemblage is. But, according to the series’ blinkered mentation of enactment positivity, women of all races and backgrounds tin unite nether the banner of being vocally horny for men. Even the token cheery miss tin spell to the Magic Mike portion show, get a thigh creation from an oily guy, and say, “Weirdly, I’m into this!” Leighton, honey, blink doubly if you request help.

There’s plentifulness other to instrumentality contented with. Why does Whitney person to autumn for Andrew, the condescending prick from her biochem lab, who does thing but neg her? When did Leighton’s mom, who has the property of a pearl necklace travel to life, get woke? Why does Bela support wearing specified atrocious outfits? It’s honestly a crippled spread that Miu Miu skirt–wearing, Prada-shaming, too-glam-for-her-own-good Leighton doesn’t rip those disfigured ties close disconnected of her roommate’s neck.

But the show’s spot has ne'er been its interior logic. Creator Mindy Kaling favors soap-operatic pivots and flourishes; 2020’s Never Have I Ever, astir the enactment lives of precocious schoolhouse girls, unfurls successful a drawstring of convenient choices. After the main character, Devi (Maitreyi Ramakrishnan), spends an occurrence moving up the courageousness to inquire her impossibly blistery crush, Paxton (Darren Barnet), to person enactment with her, helium agrees without missing a beat. It makes the full lead-up autumn a spot flat, but hey! Onto the adjacent thing. Watching Kaling’s enactment is much amusive if you springiness yourself up to the chaotic ride.

And the amusement does excel astatine zingy one-liners that support the communicative moving. When Canaan (Christopher Meyer), Whitney’s ex, catches her having enactment with her laboratory spouse successful the library, helium jumps, grabs a publication disconnected the shelf, opens it, and says, “I came to get a publication about, uh– Ronald Reagan! So, I’m good.” This infinitesimal rules. Nothing much needs to beryllium said. When Leighton returns to the Women’s Center she resented past season, and leftist archetype Ginger (Amanda Ripley) declares, “Succulents are inherently feminist,” it ceases to substance that this plotline came retired of nowhere. That 1 portion of dialog is comic capable to plunge america merrily backmost into the Women’s Center world.

You can’t beryllium everything to everyone. In its archetypal season, The Sex Lives of College Girls tried to beryllium weighty and witty, showily astute and raucously sexy. All that ever did was make a tonal clash truthful maddening that each country was haunted by what it didn’t bash good enough. In Season 2, the show’s main failures inactive travel from trying to beryllium much important than it is. The bland multiculturalism of its ensemble, which studiously checks disconnected demographic boxes to guarantee Diversity™, means the series’ mincing engagement with contention goes lone arsenic acold arsenic Whitney experiencing a microaggression and past shutting down her TA’s (literal) achromatic tears.

But erstwhile the amusement knows its limits and works wrong them, it each runs smoothly. It’s amended this way: arsenic a silly, unpredictable romp that draws its spot from chaotic asides (Kimberly: “I deleted the calculator app connected my telephone and I can’t get it back”), scene-stealing insignificant characters (Canaan: “Chopin was the Pitbull of his day”), and specified a dense thicket of jokes that there’s nary constituent looking backmost for excessively long. ●