Dying for Sex

I don't know what I expected when I pressed play on Dying for Sex. Maybe something raunchy as hell. Maybe something extremely depressing. But I wasn't prepared for was how this series would crawl under my skin and just... stay there.

Molly isn't a character. She's a woman unraveling in real time. Her body's failing, and no one knows what to do with that. Not her husband, not her doctors, not even herself. So she does the thing she does best, she makes meaning out of chaos. She dives headfirst into sex, story and sensation. She's doing anything that feels like life while she still has it.

Yeah, this series definitely have it's funny moments. Some parts made me laugh out loud in fact. But the other parts? The other parts felt like being punched in the chest while smiling because underneath Molly's wild stories is a loneliness so sharp it bleeds.

What broke me most wasn't even the diagnosis. It was the friendship. Molly and Nikki. The way they held each other through the fear, the dark jokes, the quiet knowing. It reminded me how love can be both the thing that saves you and the thing that makes the goodbye all the more unbearable.

This show doesn't give you answers. It just hands you the pain, and asks you to feel it.

A really beautiful and well written series.

I will have to start this review by saying I'm a nurse for a Cancer Institute. I work specifically with patients as the survivorship and sexual health nurse. Sexual health is often dismissed. To see this show explore all the needs of a patient especially a stage IV survivor was extremely refreshing. Most of the reviews I have seen said this was not tasteful well unfortunately cancer is not. We strive to not only take care of the patient, but also the caregivers. I will have to say I knew going into this show, I would be quite biased as I'm a huge fan of New Girl. I love the contrast between comic relief, and the intense moments. I've lost many patients over the years, but when I lost my mom it was completely different. This show was true to real life and being able to see Molly and Nikki grow and learn peace is something we will all have to do. This is a beautiful take on past, present, future, but mostly learning to be in the moment. I hope everyone will watch this with an open mind and a loving spirit. Thank you all who worked on this and brought it to the forefront of many conversations.

Some shows are best for watching alone in a binge, and being completely devastated by the end of it. This is one of those shows. It's a funny show, but it's so so heavy. There are quite a few troupes and unrealistic TV things (person of color that's basically her fairy godmother, hot stranger that's her neighbor, and apparently she has the best health insurance in America despite not being wealthy), but the core ideas of the show feel so true. So many devastating truths are beautifully explored in nuance and with a rawness that's rarely seen on TV. We might never move past our trauma. Our trauma is part of who we are. We long for intimacy with another human being but we are so scared of it. It might just take death for us to face our truths. The performances are excellent.

I don't have a lot of words after finishing this. As a cancer survivor, they really nailed it. As someone exploring what intimate life can be like after a cancer diagnosis strips away your identity, knocked it out of the park. Beautiful performance by Michelle as always. Stunning emotion driven performance by Jenny. I found it incredibly realistic in many aspects and couldn't look away. One of the more graphic shows I've seen but that wasn't an issue for me as it seems to be so many, given the negative reviews. Hysterical, touching, devastating. We need more realistic representation of the good, bad and ugly sides of this bastard of a disease.

I still can't decide if this was the best or worst thing to watch while agonizing through a current covid infection, but wow. I'm weak and on meds, hyper aware of who is (or will ever be) there for me when I really need them, that coupled with a pretty rough couple years otherwise medically, this series really shattered me. We all wrestle with these thoughts and this show paints it so thoughtfully and beautifully. May we all have someone like Nikki. Michelle Williams is of course perfect, Jenny Slate just the best work I've ever seen her do, Rob Delaney was lovely, Esco Jouléy was exceptional, and I was so jazzed to see Robby Hoffman as well. Everyone was truly in masterclass form. Remove eye makeup before watching, I watched the entire series in one sitting and just shut the tv right off after, I've laughed, I've sobbed, I'm emotionally drained, literally. But it was so worth it. Emmys and Globes don't let me down.

Ps: to any pearl clutchers (or claspers if you will) in the reviews; ART HAS NO RESPONSIBILITY TO BE PALATABLE OR MORAL FOR YOU. Not everyone is you, we're all on our own journey, and if THIS series doesn't get that through to you, then you're a lost cause. *tips hat*