Editor’s warning: I’m baring it all so if you haven’t watched Sex/Life Season 2 yet, I suggest averting your hot and bothered gazeπ
I, uh, came, I watched and I sort of enjoyed this sophomore season of Netflix’s NSFW adaptation of author BB Easton’s memoir.
Before I tell you if it was good for me or not π,let’s get into the recap:
When we left our star-crossed lovers Brad (Adam Demos) and Billie (Sarah Shahi) at the end of Season 1, the latter had ditched her blonde, blue eyed, perfectly bland husband Cooper (Mike Vogel) to fully embrace her hot Aussie and his particularly large member in Downtown New York.
Alas, the road to the best sex of her life and her happily ever after does not end well: Brad has knocked up hot model Gigi (Wallis Day, the recasted Kate Kane/Batwoman on the now cancelled Batwoman) and is committing to being a Zaddy (sizzling hot dad).
Billie, bereft, runs home to Cooper, who gives her the boot. Fast forward to three months later and our girl is living her best newly separated mom-of-two life with a cool psychology lecturing gig and an apartment in the Big Apple.
After a crazy night out on the town, Billie meets Majid, a sexy Persian restaurant owner, who thinks “she is really something else”. No, seriously, who wrote this drivel?!
As it turns out, Brad is one of Majid’s investors, and so multiple awkward run-ins happen as Billie and Majid become serious. Brad does the typical “I’m a married man with a baby on the way but if you hurt my Billie, I will f*** you up” thing with Majid. Yes, thank you, uninspired writers, we’ve only read this in every erotic novel ever.
Meanwhile, in between sharing custody and splitting time at the house in Connecticut with his and Billie’s kids, Cooper is losing his damn mind in a hailstorm of drugs, booze and sex.
Many tears, OTT sex scenes, child endangerment, divorce proceedings and occasional work later, everyone gets their happy endings. Seven hours of tension and only some of it was good.
Ugh.
Impressions:
“Now, f*** me…”
When the first episode of Sex/Life Season 2 opens with that stinger, one might be forgiven for thinking you’ve mixed up your streaming sites and accidentally (or not) clicked play on your Pornhub watchlist.
Let’s be honest: Sex/Life is no literary or cinematic masterpiece. If I’m being completely truthful, I’ve never watched this show for the plot. My eyes were burning from all of the gratuitous sex this season.
As Leonie so eloquently put it:
“That thing has more rolling hip thrusts than an actual porno.”
Shahi as Billie possesses no actual acting skill. None. Nada. Zilch. Oh, she can fake having a huge orgasm, no doubt, but when it comes to really connecting with the audience on the challenges of being a suddenly single mom who must balance her new found freedom, her insatiable lust, her emotional distress at being rejected by the sex god love of her life and figure out how to co-parent with a hostile ex, she’s completely out of her depth.
A lot of this is down to bad writing, to be fair, but the pretty crying, endless sighing and pointless giggling is just too much.
By stark contrast, all of the supporting female characters have such strong arcs, it makes Billie’s look silly. Sascha (Margaret Odette) finally becomes a bestselling author with multiple books published on being an independent woman, only for the one who got away, Kam (Cleo Anthony), to come back into her life 17 years after nearly destroying it and sweep her off of her feet.
With a very long and twisting road that sees them break up, make up, go viral on Twitter, and bitterly part a second time because she won’t give up her career for him, they both make career sacrifices to be together.
Trina (Amber Goldfarb), who introduced Cooper and Billie to those suburban swingers’ parties last season, is fed up with being overlooked at home by her brute of a husband Devon (Jonathan Sadowski) and being deemed a boomer by the Gen Z girl bosses of the world. After a rather regrettable bondage incident with Cooper (which Billie forgives her for way too quickly for my liking), Trina gets divorced and starts a vaginal muscle toning class that involves a coconut Kegel training device I am going to have nightmares about for months.
Sweet prim Caroline (Meghan Heffern) discovers she doesn’t hate sex, she just hates sex with her husband, and has been seeking pleasure from massages with a very happy ending by her hot Swedish male masseur.
Gigi is a fascinating character who is sorely underused this season. Positioned entirely as a foil for Billie, she outshines the lead character by being an extremely beautiful yet wonderfully vulnerable pregnant wife who just wants her husband’s ex to back the f*** off. There is something strangely erotic yet ethereally beautiful about the scene where she lifts her heavily expecting, naked gold painted body off of a couch during a modelling gig to lay down the law with Billie. A golden lioness, if you will, protecting what is hers. Day knocks this scene out of the park.
Francesca (Li Jun Li), Cooper’s boss and girlfriend ,gets seriously screwed over by that literal f*** boy as he tries to drown his sorrows over Billie by ploughing into every woman he sees. Not even Francesca’s local Chinese food restaurant is sacred. The man has dirty bathroom sex with a fellow patron whilst waiting for their dumpling order β¦ have some damn respect, dude!
After Francesca and Cooper get caught banging on her desk, she gets fired and he gets a slap on the wrist. Naturally. Toxic companies ALWAYS blame the woman because society can’t let go of the Eve led Adam astray narrative. Even after all of that, our girl Franny is willing to become the perfect Stepford wife and stepmom for Cooper and he is like “nah, thanks, I’ll stick to snorting Coke, banging hookers and destroying hotel rooms”. His loss.
While there are many, many, close-up shots of happily orgasming women this season (yay for the focus on female pleasure), hitting the climax in the same position in every scene is just lazy direction and camera work.
The toxicity of all of the other men in Billie’s life is heavily played up this season to make her inevitable reunion with a newly reformed, matured, responsible father Brad seem like a nicely tied up sweet ending. Completely predictable, right down to the beach wedding and the whispered “I’m pregnant” reveal right before the credits roll. Sigh.
So…was Sex/Life Season 2 good for me? Hmmm… let’s just say it got me going in a few good hot scenes (I would not have objected to a post-Halloween Sascha and Kam making love in their Catwoman and Batman costumes π) but I’d need to be completely turned on mentally for this show and its lazy writers to satisfy me. Sue me, I’m a sapiosexual with a geek fetish and proud of it.
Netflix has not renewed Sex/Life for a third season yet and, knowing how they love to cut their shows off at the balls… I mean knees, that might not be such a bad thing.
Sex/Life Season 2 is available to binge-watch on Netflix.
