Dying for Sex review: Michelle Williams horny miniseries will break your heart
In FX’s Dying for Sex, one woman’s quest for her first orgasm with another person becomes a remarkable journey of both self-discovery and reckoning with death.
The miniseries is based on the Dying for Sex podcast, hosted by actor Nikki Boyer (who executive produces the series) and her friend Molly Kochan (Michelle Williams). While the series is a fictionalized account of Molly’s life, it does take the same starting point: After being diagnosed with Stage IV metastatic breast cancer, Molly leaves her husband Steve (Jay Duplass) and explores her own sexual desires in ways she never thought possible.
Naturally, this means Dying for Sex is full of frank portrayals of sex, be it awkward, revelatory, pleasurable, or (usually) a combination of all three. But these experiences, as life-affirming as they are for Molly, share space with honest conversations about mortality. That makes for a potent, tear-jerking combination, one that Dying for Sex still somehow manages to lighten in a remarkable balancing act.
What’s Dying for Sex about?
As Dying for Sex introduces Molly and Steve in couples’ therapy, it’s clear her decision to leave him has been a long time coming. After her first bout with breast cancer, treatment for which included a double mastectomy and breast reconstruction, Molly wants to be intimate with her husband again. But Steve no longer feels that desire. When Molly does initiate oral sex, he becomes too sad to continue. He pities her, and when Molly receives the diagnosis of metastatic cancer, she realizes Steve seems excited for her to once again be pitiable. Meanwhile, Molly just doesn’t want to die without being touched or feeling sexual pleasure again.
Upon making that realization, Molly leaves Steve and turns to her best friend Nikki (Jenny Slate) to be her new caretaker. With Nikki’s support, and with the advice to start a “bucket list” from her sex-positive palliative care social worker Sonya (Esco Jouléy), it’s not long before Molly submerges herself in a new world of sex, revelling in everything from dating app dick pics to submission and dominance.
Dying for Sex pulls no punches when it comes to sex.
Many people in Molly’s life, including Steve and her mother Gail (Sissy Spacek), judge Molly for her exploration, even going so far as to “blame” it on childhood trauma. But Dying for Sex has no interest in pathologizing Molly’s wants, even though later episodes do somewhat clumsily emphasize how her trauma has affected her intimate experiences as an adult.
Instead, Dying for Sex launches Molly into a judgment-free rollercoaster ride of human sexuality. She experiments with vibrators, goes to sex parties (that are also potlucks!), and learns about new kinks with a variety of partners, including her hot neighbor (Rob Delaney). The scenes are understandably raunchy, but also full of communication about limits and boundaries. One such conversation — about orgasm torture, specifically — takes place in a crowded cafe, just one of many scenes where Dying for Sex finds humor by placing discussions of intimate desires in mundane surroundings. Williams’ bright-eyed curiosity and excitement about the subjects at hand adds further lightness to the series, emphasizing Molly’s open embrace of a world she’d previously denied herself.
But Dying for Sex‘s sex scenes can be heartbreaking, too. Molly spends much of the series trying to prevent people from reducing her to her cancer, even going so far as to join a support group for people with earlier stages of cancer in order to separate herself from her terminal diagnosis. That mentality extends to the bedroom as well. She hides her cancer from her partners and chooses to keep her bra on to hide her mastectomy scars, each decision a reminder of why she’s on this road to sexual enlightenment in the first place.
Also heartbreaking are Molly’s early attempts at post-Steve sex. Often, she finds she can’t voice what she want, or she doesn’t even know what feels good. But as Dying for Sex continues and Molly discovers what turns her on, those desires snap into place. Thankfully, the series takes as candid and forthright an approach to depicting those desires as Molly is in communicating them.
Michelle Williams and Jenny Slate make Dying for Sex a beautiful love story.
Amidst all the sex, Dying for Sex fashions a gorgeous, heart-wrenching love story. Not with any of Molly’s partners — although her relationship with Delaney’s neighbor character may grow to fit that bill — but with Nikki.
That’s because as Molly is forging new connections with her partners, she’s also strengthening her bond with Nikki. Thrust suddenly into the role of caretaker, Nikki gets off to a tough start when it comes to helping Molly with her medical needs — especially with Steve breathing down her neck. Yet just as Molly settles into her search for new sexual experiences, Nikki soon finds her footing in a world of insurance claims and medical records.
That adjustment doesn’t mean Nikki’s responsibilities aren’t difficult. In fact, people in her life keep telling her to set boundaries with Molly — perhaps a parallel to people like Steve who doubt Molly’s sex quest. Yet like Molly, Nikki holds firm. Her best friend is dying, after all, and she’s going to do everything she can to get her solid care (and help her find a way to get off).
Dying for Sex is likely going to be a tough watch for anyone who has experienced cancer or who has watched a loved one go through it. I sobbed through quite a bit of it, and much of that came down to the chemistry between Williams and Slate. As a duo, they oscillate between gallows humor and genuine heartbreak at a moment’s notice, a dichotomy that feels so natural you can’t believe you’ve only been watching their takes on Molly and Nikki for a few episodes. You also can’t believe that their friendship will one day come to an end, but Dying for Sex faces that inevitability head on, as honest about death as it is about sex.
“I told [Steve] I don’t want to die with him,” Molly tells Nikki in the show’s premiere. “I want to die with you.”
It’s that simple statement, and all the beautiful, terrible baggage that comes with it, that forms the foundation of Dying for Sex, paving the way for Molly and Nikki’s messy journey through death, sex, and everything in between.
