Here Are All The 'Mean Girls' References In 'Sex Education' Season 2
With so many high school rom-coms that hit similar tropes, it can sometimes be difficult not to make comparisons, and for Mean Girls fans that will hold especially true when watching the second season of Sex Education. The return of Netflix's quirky, pubescent comedy doubles down on all the love triangles complicating the lives of Moordale High's student body, and it also takes a few pages from Mean Girls when it comes to paying homage to iconic scenes. The Mean Girls references in Sex Education Season 2 add a whole new layer of rom-com love to the episodes.
Spoiler alert: This post contains spoilers from throughout Season 2 of Sex Education. The new season picks up where Season 1 left off: Otis is ready to get physical with his new girlfriend Ola, Maeve has realized she does harbor romantic feelings for Otis, Jackson has become disillusioned by his swimming career, and Eric has been cut off from Adam after their surprising hookup due to Adam being sent to military school. And things definitely get more interesting (and complicated) from there.
Towards the end of Season 2, a lot of the big moments actually share a ton in common with the story of Mean Girls. For instance, when Otis decides to roast a chicken for a "small gathering" at his home, it sounds just like Cady saying she bought enough cheese and crackers for eight guests at her own house party.
However, both of those parties went the exact opposite of how the host expected, since their friends (Eric for Otis and Gretchen and Karen for Cady) wind up inviting the whole school.
At his party, Otis got incredibly drunk to the point where he began firing off deeply hurtful insults at both his girlfriend Ola and at the girl he wanted to be with, Maeve. Similarly, Cady also spilled some hurtful truths to Aaron Samuels and to her friends Janis and Damian after getting drunk at her party. To top it all off, both Otis and Cady also ended up puking.
In the scene that seemed to be the most clearly inspired by Tina Fey's 2004 comedy, a fed-up Mr. Groff stole Jean Milburn's sex education notebook and made copies of the pages, then littered the school hallway with them. The act led to everyone at Moordale learning the intricacies of each student's sex life and led to total pandemonium, exactly like what happened when Regina George threw pages from her Burn Book into the school hallway.
The chaos led to students discovering "Miss Sands is a dirty talking sl*t" written in lipstick in the girls locker room. Hurt by the message, Miss Sands held back all the girls who discovered the lipstick in detention and tasked them with a feminist assignment to bring them together as women. The scene is very similar to when Ms. Norbury, having just been anonymously accused of being a drug pusher, addressed all the girls in the school in detention and led exercises to try to get them to bond with, rather than attack, one another.
And finally, Maeve was able to channel her true Cady Heron spirit when she joined the Quiz Heads and helped the high school's trivia team to win the final championship. As all Mean Girls fans know, Cady did the same thing as part of the Mathletes by correctly identifying "the limit does not exist" for the final equation.
Really, the only major difference between Mean Girls and the second season of Sex Education is, well, the actual sex education. The kids at Moordale should count themselves lucky they have an informed and caring sex therapist like Jean Milburn on campus, rather than Coach Carr's pathetic excuse of a sex ed lecture.
After looking at all these similarities, it might be time for another Mean Girls rewatch. If you've already finished all of Sex Education Season 2, it'll be a good way to tide you over until Netflix hopefully announces a third season.
