The Sex Lives of College Girls – Season 3 Episode 1 “Welcome Back to Essex” Recap & Review

Welcome Back to Essex

In The Sex Lives of College Girls Season 3 Episode 1, Bela is told she can’t transfer schools, as her GPA is too low. She’ll have to return in the fall and work on getting her grades up.

We then fast forward to the fall semester, when Leighton and Alicia return to Essex after a long summer vacation together. Alicia steps out for a call, and Leighton’s dad wonders if she’s talking to another girl.

Meanwhile, Whitney moves into the Kappa house and notices an attractive basketball player during the process.

The other girls feel strange living without Whitney, who hasn’t returned any of Kimberly’s calls due to her kiss with Canaan. Oddly, Kimberly and Canaan haven’t done much to progress their relationship since.

Bela announces she’s going to take a break from comedy after being kicked out of the Foxy. She’s decided she wants to be a better person this year too. So, when Frude asks for a volunteer, Bela decides to be a FAF to help the new freshmen. 

But when she starts the job, she’s roasted by a new student named Taylor, who undermines her authority to be giving them advice by taking digs at her style and GPA.

While Kimberly looks for an apology gift for Whitney, Whitney takes out her anger against Kimberly during soccer practice. But she has new competition in the team with the arrival of a new girl. Back at the Kappa house, she’s penalized for missing a sorority activity to go to soccer. 

Kimberly shows up to Whitney, but when her sorority sisters overhear what she did, they all surround Kimberly and push her out of the house.

One of Leighton’s math classes is canceled for low attendance, so her professor advises her to take a similar class at a different school.

Later, she learns what Alicia’s mysterious phone calls have been about. She’s gotten a job with the mayor of Boston and will be dropping out of Essex to move there. At the Y2K party, she tells Leighton she loves her and doesn’t want to end their relationship. Luckily, Leighton loves her too, and she doesn’t want to end things either.

Whitney has been struggling with differences between her and her sorority sisters, which surface again when they make her change to match them at the Y2K party.

At the party, Kimberly and Canaan try hooking up for the first time but find that it’s too awkward. And anyway, Kimberly decides that she can’t sacrifice her friendship with Whitney.

Bela forces the former friends into a closet together until they make up, which they do. When they emerge as friends again, Leighton remarks that Bela might actually make a good FAF.

The episode ends with Leighton telling her professor she can’t do the bus rides to take the classes she wants. She tried it and it was horrible. Her professor informs her that Essex simply isn’t the school for people who want to study math. But has she considered MIT? Which happens to be Boston, where Alica will be living?

The Episode Review

Ok, what was this? I’ve been excited about the return of The Sex Lives of College Girls, but this was a dumpster fire of a reintroduction to these beloved characters.

The show has always struggled somewhat with its tone, often sounding more like it’s about millennials than the college students who drive the story. But this premiere is something else entirely, with lazy comedy writing that has no idea what a conversation between college students even looks like.

Inelegant changes deviate sharply from the plots that drove last season. We start out by learning immediately that Bela won’t be transferring, turning that news from last season into nothing but a cheap cliffhanger. Kimberly and Canaan end so abruptly so that Kimberly and Whitney can make up just like that–a boring resolution for last season’s exciting upset. Renee Rapp’s upcoming departure is being so sloppily written, and it seems the show has a ready replacement for her–a new queer character in Taylor with the same style. As if they could replace Leighton!

Luckily, the cast continues to deliver on chemistry, giving me hope for their characters–whose drama I usually find so entertaining. But whatever plans creators Mindy Kaling and Justin Noble have in store for them had better be good enough to make up for all the harsh, lazy backtracking this episode has done already.