Bad Education S3E3 - "Sports Day" Recap

Alfie is horrified to learn that Fraser has hired Preet to be the school's replacement P.E. teacher. Preet's fresh out of prison but Fraser believes everyone deserves a second… or third chance. Alfie passes out the sports assignments for Sports Day at random to his pupils. He then learns that Rosie's ex, Richard, will be coming to Sports Day and Alfie decides that he needs to take the opportunity to outdo him. Alfie and Rosie are still on a break.

Stephen suggests to Alfie that he challenge Richard to an endurance event at Sports Day. He has Preet give him and his pupils a crash course on fitness, as he used to be a personal trainer and will be designing the endurance event. This involves several exercises and Preet repeatedly tackling Alfie to the ground. Meanwhile, Joe is worried about having to compete against school bully Grayson in the hurdles.

At Sports Day, Alfie's father ends up getting along great with Richard. The endurance track set up by Preet is highly dangerous, including attack dogs and barbed wire. Before the hurdles event, Joe has a green paint grenade go off, courtesy of Grayson. But Grayson doesn't win the event, while Joe spends the whole event roaring while running through the hurdles. There's also been a steroids story going through the school but Xing later admits to Alfie that she made the story up just to make her story seem more interesting. Alfie believes that Richard has an unfair advantage when he mentions having a secret weapon so he and Xing go snooping in the locker room. Alfie finds a bottle of pills which in Richard's bag, which he believes to be steroids. He takes one, and downs the rest after Xing leaves but is caught by Preet, who had been on the toilet with the door open. Preet tells Alfie how he had wanted revenge on him when he was sent to prison but then shows him a sketchbook he has as part of his art therapy which is filled with homoerotic drawings of Alfie, or Alfie and Preet together.

When Alfie tells Richard about the pills, Richard admits that the pills were Viagra. Being an older man, he feels he needed some help and had hoped to become friends with benefits with Rosie. The clock is ticking till the pills kick in so he insists Preet hurry up and start the race. Alfie begins speeding through the race but has to drop to the ground and crawl to hide his erection, which allows Richard time to catch up. Preet tries to shoot Richard with the tranquilliser gun as he and Alfie are racing to the finish line but ends up shooting Alfie instead. Richard gives Alfie mouth-to-mouth to get him to start breathing again and then Alfie's erection becomes visible to everyone gathered around. He confesses how he tried to cheat but mistakenly took Viagra instead. Richard is forced to admit his "plan to succeed" plan, and a furious Rosie slaps Richard before storming off. Also, Preet is arrested.

When the photo-finish comes in, Alfie is revealed to have won the race "by a head." Xing is thrilled, as it has become the highest-selling edition ever and Alfie has saved the paper. She happily tells him that everyone is reading it, and Alfie responds with an embarrassed, "Great."

Bad Education airs on Tuesdays on BBC Three at 10PM.