Before we begin, I feel the need to add a disclaimer to this blog post at the risk of looking foolish: I originally wrote this post in May of 2022 for Patreon, before the now infamous HBO Max and Discovery+ merger was announced, and when Netflix was the streaming service that everyone liked to dunk on. If you had asked me several months ago which streaming platform was going to implode, my answer would have been Netflix, without a doubt.
Instead of scrapping this review, however, I decided to post it anyway, because I still like the shows I mentioned in it, and I think this post is funny in hindsight, especially if HBO Max goes the way of the dinosaur along with all the other failed streaming services I mentioned in this post.
All that is to say, take this review with a HUGE grain of salt.
Now back to your regularly scheduled programming.
Hey there, hot stuff!
Is that a phone in your pocket or are you just happy to see me?
Either way, I'm here to tell you about the sexiest streaming service out there right now.
I hope you're ready...
In the midst of the current streaming wars between the biggest players (Netflix, and Disney+, and HBO Max) it has come to my attention that Netflix, the prodigal service, has recently fallen from grace. Netflix, the titan of the streaming world, has hit a lot of stumbling blocks as of late. Whether it was announcing their new price hike, or releasing their low quarterly numbers and conducting layoffs, Netflix keeps getting in its own way.
Take it from someone who has reviewed plenty of bad Netflix films (see my reviews on the entire Out of My League trilogy, or my review of The Royal Treatment as proof) Netflix has plenty of reasons to worry when it comes to losing the streaming wars. In fact, believe it or not, all of their solutions to make up for loss of interest and lost revenue in recent months have only made things worse (the idea to limit the amount of people on one Netflix account was especially a doosey).
Which leads me to why I've gathered you all here today. I've come here to let you know that there is a better alternative to Netflix- a sexier option, if you will.
HBO Max is my new streaming service of choice in light of Netflix's multiple controversies and price hikes. Even though I still have and watch Netflix, HBO Max is where I go to unwind.
I wouldn't be surprised if Netflix soon became a thing of the past like Quibi or CNN+. In fact, soon, teens will no longer refer to sex as "Netflix and Chilling." It will soon be known as "HBO Maxing and Relaxing" so they can dry hump while the latest season of Euphoria plays in the background.
Anyway, in keeping with the sexy theme of this post, let's skip the foreplay and get right to it. Here're a couple of shows that you should watch on HBO Max. They share a common theme, and I bet you'll pick up what it is very quickly (*wink, wink*).
The first show: Minx (season 1) - A
(That wasn’t an intentional dick joke, but if you want to read it as one, that’s totally on brand for this post.)
This show is probably my new favorite thing to watch on any streaming platform, because it's basically perfect. It has all of the best things: precocious female characters, smart writing, male nudity, Jake Johnson- you name it!
The plot itself is brilliant and loveable from the very beginning. The story of Minx follows Joyce Prigger (I know, really unfortunate last name) as she attempts to start her own magazine in the mid 1970s, when the magazine industry was booming. She hopes to start a feminist movement with her magazine that encourages women to take political action and embrace early feminism. She's snobbish and well educated, but determined to get her message to the women she believes truly deserve to read it. Only- no publisher wants to print her magazine the way it is, because they don't understand feminism or the needs of female readers.
Enter Doug Renetti (played by Jake Johnson). Doug likes what Joyce stands for, and decides to publish her magazine. The only catch is, he's an infamous publisher of pornographic magazines for men. So obviously, Doug decided to disguise Joyce's feminist magazine as a porno magazine for women, instead of her original idea. This way, they both get what they want. Since this market was previously untapped, he thinks the idea is worth its weight in gold. This entire show is set right before Playgirl magazine was created in 1973, and so this idea is truly the first of its kind.
Most of the comedy in this show comes from the premise: Wouldn't it be funny if women had a porn magazine like Playboy? What would that look like? Would the women really read it for the articles?
Now, I adore Minx with my entire heart, and a lot of that is due to the characters and their relationships with one another. Funnily enough, though, in a lot of ways, Joyce is a little insufferable as a main character. She's prudish and snobby, often looking down on others for not being as well educated as her, including her own sister. She fails to understand the value of something like pornography, and does not want to be associated with it at all. Her early feminism is very limited in scope, as it fails to consider the perspective of different kinds of women, and how to attract allies to its cause. Essentially, she's kind of the worst.
However, ironically, in meeting Doug Renetti, Joyce learns some lessons (that are admittedly pretty obvious if you didn't grow up rich and white in the 70s) about judging people and the value of something that actually stimulates people (like pornography). He and his staff, which is wonderfully diverse, teach Joyce not to dismiss the porn industry just because of its lewd content, and to embrace its ability to get people interested in more socially relevant topics. Throughout the show, Joyce and Doug play off of each other as foils, even though they both need each other to get what they want. They work together to print the first three issues of Minx (which is what they eventually name Joyce's magazine) to see if they can make a splash in the magazine industry. The heart of the show rests on their dynamic, and it's completely delightful, and hilarious to watch.
(The irony didn't escape me that a man and his porn company had to teach a woman not to be such a terrible feminist, but you know.)
I also love the fact that this show was set in the 1970s, and yet it feels almost timeless in its critique of the response to women's sexuality. Many of the episodes of the show condemn Minx for catering to the sexual desires of women. Despite the fact that Doug publishes dozens of male focused porn magazines, the moment a female focused porn magazine becomes popular, it inspires riots and government protests, and death threats from a misogynistic hate mob. It would be funny if it weren't all so painfully accurate.
I love the diversity in this show as well, as Doug's staff at Bottom Dollar Publishing (his publishing company's name) employs all kinds of people. There's Bambi, the former model/porn star who is likely bisexual; Richie, the photographer who is gay and Latino; and Doug's assistant Tina, who was a black woman. These characters all help to flesh out not only the studio that they worked in constantly, but the environment that they were working in as well, in which all of these groups were looked down on and discriminated against in the 1970s (and today for that matter), but Doug took them in anyway.
It's pretty clear I love this show for a lot of reasons, but one reason that could easily be overlooked is the 70s style of the entire show. Since this show is set over 50 years ago, that meant that everything had to have the right aesthetic to seem realistic. That meant that everything from the furniture to the cars had to be from the right decade. But most of all, it meant that the clothes had to be exactly the right style.
A tweet that voices my exact thoughts on men's attire in the 1970s.
I mean, look at Jake Johnson with this open shirt and exposed chest hair, and tell me that you want men to continue wearing hoodies.
Disgusting. Men's fashion peaked in the 70s.
Jake Johnson as Doug Renetti rocking an open shirt with a medallion and multiple rings.
As a woman who likes men, this show is fantastic. This show is great for everyone, really, but it has a fair amount of tasteful nudity and hot men that anyone who likes men will enjoy. The nudity was never too much (although it did make me giggle like a schoolgirl when it happened), and I enjoyed not only the content of Minx (*wink, wink*) but the show as a whole.
All in all, I can't say enough nice things about this show, other than you should also watch it so that we can be fans of it together. I honestly cannot wait for the next season to come out.
The second show is: The Sex Lives of College Girls - B
I've mentioned this show before on this blog, but this is the first time I've actually had the chance to talk about it as a whole.
The Sex Lives of College Girls is a college dramedy was created by the incomparable Mindy Kaling. As someone who has been a fan of Mindy Kaling since The Mindy Project, it's basically a given that I would adore any show that she had a hand in creating.
The title is perhaps raunchier than the actual show would suggest though, as in reality, the series is a fun college romp about a group of four girls who room together in the same dorm at the fictional Essex College. The girls are all freshmen in college who have never lived away from home before, and have never met prior to their first day. This obviously causes a bit of culture shock, as the richest of the four girls, Leighton, is shocked to find herself living with roommates who weren’t pre-approved.
Many of the episodes deal with this group of girls as they tackle their first semester away from home, living with others in their new environment. Of course, this means dealing with new friends, schoolwork, and obviously... boys.
The strongest part of the show, though, is the series' characters. All of them shine, and they each have very clear arcs and desires. These girls bring life to an otherwise very standard dramatic comedy show. (SPOILERS FOR THE FIRST SEASON AHEAD)
First, there's Bela- the Indian-American aspiring comedy-writer who is boy-obsessed and sex-positive (Bela seems to have been a stand-in for Kaling herself, but that's just my speculation). Bela is determined to do two things while in college: the first is lose her V-card to someone hot. On this quest, Bela is basically the human embodiment of this gif:
Or more accurately, she's the live action version of Tina Belcher from Bob's Burgers:
Her second goal is to secure an internship so she can live her dream of becoming a comedy writer. Bela wants more than anything to become a writer for the school's leading comedy platform, The Catullan, but soon she quickly discovers that success may not be everything it's cracked up to be if she has to suffer abuse and assault to get it.
Then there's Kimberly, the small-town nerd turned fish-out-of-water in her big, expensive university. She's in over her head because she's one of the poorest students on campus, and has to work a campus job just to be able to subsidize her tuition. She's also not nearly as smart as she thought she was, because she was a big deal in her small town back home, but in the huge Essex College, she can barely keep up, especially not if she keeps being distracted by her roommate's brother, Nico.
Leighton is a stuck-up heiress-type who is uncomfortable truly being herself around her friends and family. She constantly worries about maintaining an image, even though the person that she portrays to others doesn't align with her actual sexuality. Her brother, Nico, a frat bro who also attends Essex College, doesn't even know the truth about who she is. After defacing campus property one night in a fit of anger, Leighton is forced to volunteer at the women's center on campus where she learns to accept not only her own sexuality, but how to be more tolerant of other people.
Finally, Whitney is a black student athlete who also happens to be the daughter of an influential politician. She's been trying to escape her mother's overprotective rules and do her own thing since she started college. Too bad that meant that hooking up with her married soccer coach. To make things even worse, even after Whitney tries to hide it, this all comes to light. Then she is forced to face the consequences of her actions not only with her mother, but with the school.
It goes without saying that the show features the trials and tribulations of these girls navigating their sex lives in college (as the title pretty much explains that right off the bat). The first season of The Sex Lives of College Girls tackles the issues of first relationships, sexual identity, and even touches on incidents of sexual assault. Even though this show is primarily a comedy, the show handles these subjects with a fair amount of grace that makes the show feel sincere. Unlike other shows about college that can be too preachy or raunchy to capture the reality of these situations, The Sex Lives of College Girls really tries to breathe through these moments in a realistic way. The truth is that sometimes these things aren't always as black and white as they seem to be- sometimes things are gray.
Of course, there are some cliche situations, and Kaling's ever-present nerdy girl pining after the hot guy trope, but I think it's fun. This trope is a classic because it’s entertaining to watch a Cinderella story blossom in real time. (Of course, things in this show are a lot messier than a classic fairy tale, but I love that, because it adds drama.)
In a way, this show reminds me of another show of Kaling's, Never Have I Ever, which deals with a young Indian- American girl who recently lost her father and wants to date the most popular boy in school to cope with it. This plot, like The Sex Lives of College Girls, features plenty of cliches and boy-crazed characters, but it puts a new and comedic spin on the plot, which prevents the show from seeming stale, or like it's been done before. Like Never Have I Ever, The Sex Lives of College Girls had a decent amount of nuance, humor, and character development throughout it, and that's why this show works. Not to mention, I can't help but notice a few similarities between two of the main characters in the show. For example:
Bela from The Sex Lives of College Girls
Comparing this clip to a clip from Kaling's other show, Never Have I Ever, it's hard not to see a theme...
Devi from Never Have I Ever.
(This is proof that Devi from Never Have I Ever and Bela from The Sex Lives of College Girls are basically the same person but with a twist.)
It's clear that both of these shows share the same creator and style of comedy, which works as a throughline in Kaling's work while also serving to tell unique stories featuring young diverse voices. I'm all about it, honestly. Truthfully, it's one of the many reasons why I was excited to watch this show in the first place.
Don’t get me wrong. The Sex Lives of College Girls is not a perfect show. For one thing, the title leaves something to be desired. Sure, it's provocative and attention grabbing, but every time I Google the show, I feel like I should have safe search turned on just in case. I also feel like while it is an accurate description of everything that the show encapsulates, the creators should have called it something a little more generic that focused more on their friend group, like Friends (which was basically entirely about the sex lives of 6 people who lived together at various time periods).
Outside of the title of the show, there are several points to be made about how quickly all four of the girls became friends, and how unrealistic it is that all four of these women would interact outside of sharing a dorm room. All the girls come from different backgrounds and socio-economic situations, and they barely have anything in common. If anything, this show is setting up unrealistic expectations for the types of friends that you're going to meet in college.
However, the truth is that we don't look to TV for realism, we look to it for an escape.
Truthfully, in a lot of ways, I kind of wish I went to college with each of these girls. I feel like they definitely would have made my college years an adventure I would never forget.
I just want to make it clear that HBO Max didn't pay me for any of the things I wrote in this post. I just really think they're killing the streaming game right now. I have yet to watch a bad program on HBO Max since I've had it, and I just wanted to highlight a couple of my favorites as of late.
I hope I was able to convince you that HBO Max was the sexier streaming option right now, if only for the fact that you can watch Minx and The Sex Lives of College Girls and become a fan like me.
Thanks for reading everyone. I hope you're doing well out there.
XOXO, from your favorite
Stay safe, y'all.
If you liked this post, then be sure to subscribe to my Patreon, where you can get posts like this one up to three months earlier than they release on this site. This post was originally released to patrons in May of this year, so if you want to stay up to date, then click the banner above to follow me on Patreon. If you don't want to support me monthly, then consider making a one-time donation on Ko-Fi using the button below.
Thanks for reading. See you soon.
No comments:
Post a Comment