A convincing
argument could be made that the era of Peak TV owes as much to the WB as it
does to HBO. That small network barely managed to last a decade but we are
still rejoicing in the world of great television it created.
I don’t just mean with series from Buffy
to Felicity, Smallville to Gilmore Girls, that are deservedly
part of the pop culture landscape but how it has been a wellspring for all the
talent that has been part of television ever since. For such geniuses as J.J.
Abrams, Ryan Murphy, Greg Berlanti and Alexis Sherman-Palladino the CW was
their finishing school from which they have been blessing us with great works
of television to this day. And just as important were the young actors and
actresses who came out of it who even now continue to make impacts on television
nearly twenty years after they left their original shows. From Alexis Bleidel
to Sarah Michelle Gellar, from Chris Pratt and Joshua Jackson they have never
left the world of that gave birth to them, though it has taken more than a few
enough time to get the awards they should have gotten from their work on the WB.
But even among these towering talents Michelle
Williams has been in a class by herself.
Unlike so many of the actors and actresses who spent much of their time
in television Williams has by far had the most success in the film industry.
Less than two years after Dawson’s Creek came to an end she received her
first Academy Award nomination for her stunning work in Brokeback Mountain. Since
then she has received a total of five Oscar nominations, though she has yet to
win the grand prize once. (It will happen.) She has spent the majority of her
career as the grand dame of the independent film industry best known (though
little rewarded) for her collaborations with Lucy Reichardt for whom she is as much Reichardt’s muse as
Jennifer Lawrence has been David O. Russell’s during the early 2010s. Four of her five nominations for Oscars have
come from playing wives who suffer from the fallout of a disastrous
relationship, from the failing marriage of Blue Valentine to the
disastrous one of Manchester by the Sea to the mother of young Sammy in The
Fabelmans. There is a more direct
connection to her most famous return to television when she played half of the
title roles in Fosse/Verdon where she played a genius Broadway actress
who is quickly overshadowed by her more successful husband before he flames
out. She deservedly won an Emmy for that incredible performance.
All of this is a roundabout way of saying
that if you had described the plot of Dying For Sex to me, I would have
to think about watching the fictionalized versi0n of a true story of a forty-ish
women who has recurrence of cancer that
is terminal and decides that she would like to spend what time she has left
having as much sex as possible. However, if you then told me that Michelle
Williams was playing the role of Molly, my response would be: when and where?
Dying For Sex debuted just a few weeks ago on FX on Hulu
and I have just this past weekend watching the first two episodes. One of the reasons
I chose to make this my next Emmy watch series to catch up rather than, say, Disclaimer
or Adolescence (I will get to both trust me) is the fact that not
only are there are only eight episodes but they have the added benefit of all
being relatively short, all within the half-hour range. Most limited series episodes
are always an hour or so long, if not longer but Baby Reindeer set the
tone by saying, yes, you can tell great stories in limited series in episodes that
can be shorter than certain episodes of The Bear. That comparison in particular is worth noting
because I probably laughed more in two episodes of Dying for Sex then half
the episodes of Season 2 of that show and considering that Dying For Sex makes
it clear from the start that its material will be even darker then what
we see hanging out with Carmy’s family that may be the best argument as to why
that show might be more content to be in the drama category. (Not me, I still
think it’s a comedy but one dark series at a time.)
And to be clear Dying for Sex is
hysterical in almost every minute of it. I think a large part of this is due to
Williams talent as a performer and her work with Reichardt in particular. So
much of Reichardt’s work deals with women trying to work through the
aggravations of every day life, such as her most recent collaboration Showing
Up where she plays an avant-garde sculptor who at one point ends up digging
a hole in her backyard. So many of Williams’s role are women who are deeply
restrained in public with a yearning beneath the surface. It’s not much of a
reach to see Molly Koohan as much different from those women, trying to remember
a sexual encounter while going to couples counseling with her husband. Molly is
dealing with the issue that she and her husband haven’t had sex since she went
to remission and Steve (Jay Duplass at his most nebbish-like) tries to explain
how much of this is not his fault. Then she learns that her cancer’s back from
her doctor and immediately walks out of therapy and to the bodega. Her first
reaction is to by a liter of terrible diet soda.
After that she immediately meets her best
friend Nikki. Nikki is played by that whirling dervish of a talent Jenny Slate who
has spent twenty years almost always playing someone who has the emotionally
maturity of a child. This is something that Slate, who is a hyphenate has
really leaned into and it’s always been wonderful to watch her playing a woman
who never grew up. (Slate and Williams first met when they were starring the
complete opposite of everything they work in: Venom.
Nikki isn’t much different from the character
Slate always plays which is basically a hot mess. This is a good thing to have
in a friend and support, it’s not necessarily the best thing for a caregiver. We
see just how badly this will go when Nikki comes with Molly and her doctor
(David Rasche) and is gently told she’ll have to take notes. She then goes into
her bag, which Molly will later describe as a black hole, before finding her
laptop. Then she asks the doctor to keep slowing down as she types.
I’m not yet clear on the origin of Molly
and Nikki’s friendship yet but you do get why the two have been friends all
this time: for all her messy attributes Nikki is extremely, ridiculous devoted
to Molly. She will shout at bodega owners from her car, yell at people in
wheelchairs and support her best friend in these final days whether it is by yelling
at hospital staff or gazing approvingly at dick pics from a dating site.
Because Molly is determined not to go
gentle into that good night but her desire is far less selfish and destructive
then most television characters diagnosed with cancer. She accepts that she’s
dying and what she tells her palliative care giver is that she wants to have an
orgasm with another person. It’s clear from the start that Steve represents the
worst aspects of a spouse in every way; he has basically seen Molly only
through her disease and seems to be seizing on it as a chance to be supportive.
When Molly decides that what she wants is to perform oral sex on him, he
collapses into tears before she finishes which is not the ideal reaction.
So Molly decides to go on her journey and
she is hysterically bad at ai in the first episodes. She sets up an online
encounter which she backs away from, tries to pick up a stranger in an elevator
and failing at that, makes a $200 charge at a sex toy workshop. She then spends
the next six hours pleasuring herself in some of the weirdest ways possible, to
Keanu Reeves talking to Sandra Bullock in Speed, pictures of tropical wildlife,
online with an online personality who she then discusses cancer treatment. This
ends up leading to ransomware when he gets pictures of her pleasuring herself
which ends hysterically.
What mere descriptions can’t tell you is
how funny and light-hearted these two episodes are. To be clear Dying
for Sex is upfront about what is going to happen to Molly and everyone
around her is perfectly aware about it. Yet I can’t help be reminded of that
exceptional dramedy The Big C in which Laura Linney spent all of Season
1 dealing with a cancer diagnosis determined to enjoy every moment of
her life and how funny it was right up to the end even when it dealt with the
real life horrors. Linney is just as capable an actress as Williams and I do
see the wonderful parallels in their work.
And it helps immensely that the showrunner
is Elizabeth Merriweather, who first brought us the adorable New Girl and
then in her FX limited series threw us in the deep end with The Dropout. Her follow up project is closer in formula
to her comedy series but it has the same level of darkness at its center
(though it has yet reach that). Williams has always worked best with women creative
forces and there’s a confidence to both her and Slate’s work that they know
they will never be led wrong. All three women are likely to be making rounds of
awards circles in the months to come.
Because Dying for Sex is based on a
real life person we know how the story will end before we tune in. And I
realize that having so much discussion of the two great taboos – death and sex –
in such a light-hearted fashion may seem in bad taste for some viewers even
now. I’d argue that’s all the more
reason to watch it. Considering how dark
the world seems to be in all the big ways, we might as well not take seriously the
two things we all have to deal with in our personal lives. As the series finale
itself is titled: “It’s Not That Serious” And if Molly can say that given everything she’s
facing, who are we not to do the same?
My score: 4.75 stars.
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