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The thing I resent most about this episode of Dying for Sex, which would otherwise be the series’ best, is that it made me look stupid. Just one episode ago, I was praising the show for having the smarts and the guts not to reunite Nikki, the scatterbrained but saintly best friend of main character Molly, and Noah, her incredible ex-boyfriend. Their relationship failed because Nikki chose dying with Molly over living with Noah, an understandable choice that nonetheless can’t help but have lasting consequences.
Having Nikki and Noah get back together in the end, now that Molly is actually dying, feels like a huge cheat — you can have your cake and eat it too, as it turns out! — not to mention a hugely inappropriate “well, when life gives you lemons!” response to the fact of Molly’s death itself. If they had gotten back together, it would have been as if the filmmakers were saying “Wow, wasn’t that something!…Well, now that that’s all over with…” And they couldn’t possibly be that crass, right?
Right?
Similarly, I was impressed by the show’s use of Sissy Spacek as Molly’s mother Gail. Appearing for only one episode, she wasn’t welcomed back into the fold by Molly, “c’mere ya big lug”–style, as a reward for simply showing up. Molly told her it’s better for them to love each other from a distance, Gail agreed, they went their separate ways. I suppose if I’d thought about it I wouldn’t have been surprised by one last appearance, since many estranged families come back together around a family member’s deathbed.
But as I’ve seen happen with people I care about deeply, death doesn’t automatically mend fences. There’s nothing supernatural about death; as Amy (Paula Pell), Molly’s boisterous hospice nurse puts it, “death is not a mystery” but a biological process. It doesn’t have magical powers to make women forgive each other after a decade of not being on speaking terms following a lifetime of neglect.
Right?
And throughout this episode, I admired Dying for Sex’s final hour for its unwillingness to flinch from the reality of death. From the moment Amy spells out for Molly, Nikki, and Gail exactly what will happen to Molly, mind and body, during the weeks leading up to her death, writer Kim Rosenstock and director Shannon Murphy show you exactly all those things happening. Promising something that you then deliver is an ace up the sleeve that not enough works of art employ; the best example I can think of, inappropriate though it is here, is the way the title of The Texas Chain Saw Massacre did basically all the advertising for the contents of the film anyone needed to do.
That technique is used to devastating effect here. When Molly starts hallucinating, when she has a sudden burst of energy and mental clarity, when her breathing slows and becomes irregular, when her throat gurgles, when one last breath is exhaled without a subsequent inhalation to answer it — well, we’ve been walked through what all of this means, just like she’s been. Via Amy’s speech, the show gives us no choice but to know what we know, to see what we see, to hear what we hear, to face what we face.
And it’s all beautifully acted. There aren’t a lot of roles out there for people that require you to both die slowly over the course of eight episodes, pee in the mouth of a man dressed like a cartoon dog, and romantically caress Rob Delaney’s voluminous chest hair; Michelle Williams sinks her teeth into all these facets of her role and gives the impression you’d need to bodily tear her away for her to relinquish her grip. Jenny Slate underplays Nikki in this final episode, toning down the comic relief bits and just playing a burned-out woman whose best friend is dying. The way she lays her head down on the hospital bed, holding Molly’s hand after she dies, will stick with me for a long time.
So, actually, will the closest this episode comes to a “uh-oh, things are getting too sexy or too serious, better make a joke about balls” moment. After entering hospice care, Molly makes Nikki promise she won’t let her die with her mouth open. (Nikki agrees as long as Molly agrees to indulge an irrational fear of hers and promise not to bite.)
When the moment comes, of course, Molly’s draw droops open, since that’s just the way things go. Nikki, calmer than you might expect (again, Slate underplays things deftly here), pushes her dead friend’s jaw shut and expects that to do the trick. Of course, it falls right back open again, and eventually Nikki just wads up a hoodie and props it under the head of Molly’s corpse in order to force her jaws shut. This isn’t “who farted at the end of the sex-abuse monologue” humor, it’s genuinely black humor, as close to literal gallows humor as you can get without a noose. It doesn’t let the air out of the room, it makes it even stuffier. It’s great.
And yet, somehow, most of them live happily ever after?
As I said in my review of the premiere, I’m not reviewing the podcast on which this show is based, and I am absolutely not “reviewing” the life and death of the real Molly, or the experiences she shared with the real Nikki. Maybe this is exactly how things went down. Certainly no show is under any obligation to be a huge bummer just because a critic is goth and likes depressing sex stuff like In the Realm of the Senses better than the more uplifting alternative.
But let’s say it did all go down like this. Molly never had any need to earn a living during her illness. Her estranged husband kept her on his insurance, even as he formed a happy new family. Her “sex quest” was more or less effortless, guided by her palliative care counserlor, its culmination coincidentally living across the hall. Her best friend gave up everything for her but didn’t give up anything in the end — same great boyfriend, even better relationship with his quasi-estranged daughter, even better gig in showbiz as a skilled director instead of struggling actor. Her ex-husband is having a baby with his wonderful new partner. Her ex-junkie mother who never respected a boundary of hers in her life finally got the picture and was a helpful, warming presence instead of a draining one. Death itself was greeted with a cheery “Let’s get this show on the road!”
Let’s say it all happened like it did in Dying for Sex. Again, no show is required to be bleak. But shows about dying from cancer, I think, are required to explore the ways in which they aren’t bleak a lot better than this one did. Money, beauty, a unflagging support system, legions of sexual suitors, a love that demands little of her but gives her a cure for her lifelong trauma — with one or two very obvious exceptions!!!, Molly has so much going for her, and Dying for Sex doesn’t address any of it as such even once. For all the skill of its execution, it’s half a show.
Sean T. Collins (@theseantcollins) writes about TV for Rolling Stone, Vulture, The New York Times, and anyplace that will have him, really. He and his family live on Long Island.
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