“This feels like the beginning of something,” says Joyce Priger (Ophelia Lovibond) in “Minx” season two. She’s referring to the early ’70s, when America was rethinking gender roles and sexual rules, sparking the launch of a feminist pornographic magazine that also earned a comedic title.
But this was almost the end for “Minx”. HBO Max, which aired its first season in 2022, canceled the show The second time it went out of production, leaving the fan with an empty brown wrapper.
Season 1, when Joyce started minx with low-rent pornographer Doug Renetti (Jake Johnson), was a rough ride. Its sleazy pop history and sitcom-like bizarre couple hijinks just didn’t mesh. But I prefer a show that does exciting things inconsistently to a show that does boring things well.
The series was revived by Starz and returned on Friday. Eight new episodes don’t quite settle for that freewheeling chaos, but they make up for it with bravery and enthusiasm. “Minx” is a racy, smart snapshot that should be accepted without fixing certain blemishes.
Created by Ellen Rapoport, “Minx” is something of an alternate history. The kind of magazine it envisioned—essentially Miz with a beefcake insert and a newsstand blockbuster—didn’t exist. But the series could have been a credible case for comedy if its post-’60s self-indulgent energy had been channeled in a slightly different direction.
“Minx” introduced Joyce as an idealistic Vassalle graduate pitching a mockup to the controversial magazine Matriarchy Awakens. Doug is a sharp-tongued, zeitgeist and foul-talker, but he believes he’s up to something, but only if it can be commercialized. “You have to hide the drugs,” he says. Even if that means using a male model who has nothing to hide. (“Minx” may be the biggest bastion of equal opportunity nudity on television.)
The first season came after Doug’s company, Bottom Dollar Productions, reorganized as a pioneer of the sexual revolution. Season 2 sees the magazine having a successful run, but struggling to keep its spirits up.
Often caricatured in the first season as naive and docile, Joyce (with “Prig” in her surname) is now a confident boss and the sort of public knowledge she aspired to be. becoming a person Doug adapts to achieve her greatest success at the price of being unnecessary in her own company. And their platonic pairing adds a third wheel, Constance Papadopoulos (Elizabeth Perkins), a wealthy investor who speaks the word empowerment, but whose money comes with a string.
But “Minx” really excels in supporting characters. Joyce’s sister Sherry (played by Lennon Parham, played by a little miracle) is forced into her suburban role as her mother in the wake of an affair with Bottom Dollar CFO Bambi (Jessica Lowe). I am reconsidering my existence. Her Doug’s lieutenant and her on-and-off lover, Tina (Yidara Victor), explores her own career ambitions that may be at odds with her Doug.
The season’s most distinctive subplot involves Minx’s art director and photographer, Richie (Oscar Montoya). His sensibilities as a gay artist have shaped and enhanced the magazine’s aesthetic, but he must restrain his creativity to avoid thinking that Minx is a magazine for gay men. His signature project, artistic photography in public baths, is a window into another kind of liberation that hasn’t easily made it into the mainstream.
“Minx” plays all this with lightheartedness, both awed and amused by the treasures we find in the attic of our culture. The tone resembles Netflix’s 1980s female wrestling comedy GLOW more than HBO’s porn industry historical drama The Deuce. Like Doug, he believes in hiding drugs.
“Minx” has the playfulness of how pulp culture exposes the politics of the time, in this case completely head-on. The season 2 episode took place at the screening of the groundbreaking pornographic film “Deep Throat,” which became such a mainstream sensation that the screening attracted “The Alans, Alda and Arkin.” (Joyce mocks the film’s premise of a woman getting satisfaction from her clitoris deep in her throat. “The clitoris is always the last place you look,” says Tina.
Period comedies like this often run through familiar cultural traits. “Minx” has his share of swingers and streakers. Minx’s office gathered to watch the “Battle of the Sexes” tennis match by Billie Jean King and Bobby Riggs.
But “Minx” also has an eccentric interest in the intellectual and artistic history of the time. For example, Joyce runs into Joan Didion at the “Deep Throat” premiere, but the celebrity sighting made a bigger impression on her than Alan. Another episode features younger versions of Rolling Stone photographer Annie Leibovitz and astronomer Carl Sagan.
The way the show zig-zagging where ’70s stories usually zig-zag is reflected in its aesthetics. Directed by music supervisor Brienne Rose, the soundtrack eschews most of the usual AM rock suspects and employs deep cuts such as: “Jesus Was the Maker of the Cross” Written by underrated singer-songwriter Judy Sill, Season 2 shows him jamming with Linda Ronstadt on the verge of breaking out.
That ‘minx’ is especially excited to explore the 70’s hidden places, the famous places everyone knows. It says something about the underdog’s mind in this piece. It remains a comedy about authenticity and compromise—how much you can change until your vision is no longer yours.
Season 2 can feel disjointed and condensed at times, as if the connecting elements were cut to make it 8 episodes (the first was 10 episodes). But the conflict over Richie’s bathhouse plans escalates, and Minx must consider whether it’s too risky for the magazine to speak to gay men, or even gay women, so it’s a strong finish. ing.
Moments like this make historical fiction feel completely unhistorical. The idea of whether a larger audience is “ready” for a particular group to expose themselves openly. Emancipation justifies the reservation of the rights of others. This is not so different from what we sometimes hear today in the debate over, say, transgender rights. “Minx” is a spicy, fun song that looks back on the beginning of something. But it’s also a reminder that some patterns are never-ending.
