Scrolling through 12 streaming platforms but still can’t find something to watch? You’re not alone. Our television columnist Michel Ghanem, a.k.a. @tvscholar, watches over 160 seasons of television each year, and he is here for you. Perhaps you’re in the mood for a hidden gem sitting undiscovered on a streamer or a show with mysteries so tantalizing we can’t stop thinking about it. It’s all about carving out time for the shows that are actually worth your time or “appointment viewing.” Fire up that group chat, because we’ve got some unpacking to do.
Last month, we covered Adult Swim’s Common Side Effects, an animated thriller-comedy that examines big pharma and a discovery of life-saving mushrooms. This month, we turn to a new FX limited series starring Michelle Williams as a woman at the mercy of the medical industry, who, after a terminal cancer diagnosis, decides to explore her sexuality in the time she has left. We’ve covered a few FX miniseries in this column; they rarely disappoint, and Dying for Sex is no exception.
Why should I prioritize watching Dying for Sex this month?
I know a show has really rocked me to the core when I’m wiping tears away by the finale, when I’m struck by how brief our little lives are on this planet and the absurdity of it all. FX’s Dying for Sex hits all the right notes — and it’s pretty horny, too! The limited series is inspired by the real story Molly Kochan shared on a Wondery podcast about her life in the months finding herself — and her orgasm — following a terminal breast-cancer diagnosis. On the show, she’s played by a phenomenal Michelle Williams.
The diagnosis phone call arrives while her husband Steve (Jay Duplass) is trying to explain why he’s unable to have sex with his wife post–double mastectomy in couples therapy. Molly’s natural instinct when told she has a terminal diagnosis? Run to the bodega across the street mid-session, chug a liter of generic-brand soda, and summon her best friend Nikki (Jenny Slate) to tell her about how she’s been reminiscing on oral sex she received in her 20s. With a shortened window of time left in her life, she realizes years of pent-up horniness have bubbled to the surface. She wants to have sex, as much of it as possible, before she leaves this earth — and deal with the trauma that has gotten in the way of being able to do so previously.
Where can I watch it?
All eight episodes of FX’s Dying for Sex will stream on Hulu starting on Friday, April 4. Half-hour episodes make it a relatively quick binge, but I personally split my viewing up in two sittings in anticipation of Molly’s health deteriorating in the last few episodes.
Wait, what exactly is the tone of this show?
Somehow, Dying for Sex is just as comedic as it is raunchy and emotionally resonant. The series is co-created by Liz Meriwether, the writer who straddled a similarly off-kilter tone with The Dropout and has years of punch-line-writing experience from her time showrunning New Girl. Unexpectedly, the absurdity of a woman with terminal cancer engaging in kink for the first time is naturally quite funny. Molly employs Samantha Jones’s “try-sexual” philosophy by embarking on a journey that includes everything from having sex with hairless 20-something men to pup play. A more involved relationship develops with her next-door neighbor, played by Rob Delaney, where a submissive-dominant dynamic develops. She even consensually kicks him in the dick, which reportedly took a full day to film.
The beating heart of the show, though, is Molly’s friendship with Nikki, a ball-busting and confrontational actor who takes over caring duties for Steve once he’s out of the picture, despite her inability to keep an organized purse. She essentially puts her entire life on pause to take Molly through the last months of her life. It’s a moving and Emmy-worthy performance from Slate, who reminds us once again that her range goes far beyond playing the funny sidekick.
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There have been a few shows that focus on cancer over the years, but Dying for Sex is like a hybrid of Showtime’s The Big C and HBO’s Mrs. Fletcher. The former comedy starred Laura Linney as Cathy, a woman whose cancer journey stretches over four seasons. That show ends on a poignant note not unlike Dying for Sex, and Linney won an Emmy for her performance. Mrs Fletcher, on the other hand, isn’t cancer-related but follows a single mother played by Kathryn Hahn. When her son finally goes off to college and Mrs. Fletcher finds herself an empty nester, she gets the opportunity to fully explore her sexuality (spanking herself while watching porn and having ill-advised threesomes).
In one episode of Dying for Sex, Molly laments the time she wasted wondering if she was normal for her sexual proclivities and figures out that part of her mission post-diagnosis is to explore sex in all of its nuances beyond penetration or just seeking out an orgasm. “Sex is a wave,” Molly’s social worker Sonya (Esco Jouléy) says in one of my favorite scenes of the season. As Vulture explains in a recent interview with Williams, Dying for Sex arrives during a cultural moment of sexual repression (e.g., the FDA cracking down on poppers and studies suggesting that Gen-Zers aren’t having as much sex as their predecessors) and also exploration (the MILF-movie renaissance, for example). Dying for Sex, though, radically centers pleasure as the protagonist’s way of experiencing self-liberation without the show ever feeling too crude or like it was made for the male gaze (astonishingly, in a show all about sex, Williams is rarely nude). For Molly, and perhaps many of us right now, it is a radical act to decide to feel through pain — to choose erotic curiosity over denial, repression, anger. Or at least to let it all coexist, as it should.