Dying for Sex

When we first meet Molly Kochan (Michelle Williams) she’s in a therapy session with her husband Steve (Jay Duplass). She is timid, distant, and distracted, talking more to herself in her head (which we can hear, by the way) than to her husband or the therapist. She’s absolutely breaking the primary therapy commitment by not expressing her true feelings. For his part, Steve is more forthcoming, but in a decidedly annoying, slightly preachy, exasperated way that exudes caretaker, not lover energy. For Molly, that’s the core problem.

You see, Molly has just survived a gruelling breast cancer diagnosis through which she underwent a mastectomy. But while she has survived physically, her behaviour clearly indicates that something is amiss psychologically. During her illness, Steve sank a little too eagerly (in Molly’s opinion) into a caregiver mode that he has yet to relinquish. So, Molly who has endured a difficult health diagnosis, which has literally transformed her body, has emerged still feeling sexual and wanting a vibrant sex life with her husband while Steve is oddly alienated and consumed with making sure she is ok. The disconnect is that Steve’s idea of Molly being ok no longer involves understanding his wife as a sexual being.

So, when we meet Molly in therapy with Steve, she is drifting in and out of focus, not to linger on traumatic thoughts of her former cancer diagnosis, but to relive a memorable former sexual encounter – not with Steve mind you – in which a lover performed cunnilingus. Yes, Molly is horny, and Steve is not receptive to his wife’s needs. As Molly puts it, confiding in her quirky and attentive best friend Nikki (Jenny Slate), Steve only wants to take care of me, “because I’m his sad, sick, unfuckable wife.”

There is much to consider in her brutally honest revelation. How do people cope, as individuals and as couples, after suffering the battle wounds of illness? Where does sex reside in your list of priorities after so much of your energy has been directed towards making sure you or your beloved survived? Does sex even rate? Can you move seamlessly between roles like lover and caregiver? This is all heavy, dramatic stuff, but what makes Dying for Sex so unique is that these topics are handled with wit, charm, and  laugh-out-loud humour.

In the same therapy session, we are jarred when Molly takes a call from her oncologist’s office only to find out that the cancer is back and now terminal. Her reaction says it all. She does not seek comfort in Steve or even the therapist. Instead, small, pale a waif-like, she flees from the therapist’s office to a bodega across the street, purchases a mysterious green soda (that no human should ever drink), and calls her best friend, Nikki – unfocused, disorganized, endearing Nikki.

From the co-creators Elizabeth Meriwether and Kim Rosenstock, the FX limited series Dying for Sex follows Molly through the shock of her second cancer diagnosis. But at the heart of the show is Molly’s rather unusual reaction. Nikki and Steve are clearly more traumatized by her diagnosis than she is. It is not that she is not upset, but clearly, she also sees the cancer as a wakeup call to live the rest of her life, however short, on her own terms. After the awkward white male oncologist Dr. Pankowitz (David Rasche) gives her mere months to live, the knowledge of her impending death propels Molly to live the rest of her life fully and authentically.

So, it is the scatterbrain Nikki – a struggling actress who carries a huge hand bag complete with plastic wrapped crumb cakes, yes more than one – who Molly chooses as her healthcare proxy and not her reliable, roommate-like husband Steve. The charm of Dying for Sex is its awkwardness and the comedy that emerges from cringe-worthy “did that just happen?” situations. In one such case, Molly returns home reluctantly with Steve, determined to re-connect with him sexually and communicate to him the fact that she needs to focus on living, not dying. But when she eagerly seeks to pleasure him with a blow job, Steve’s distraction turns to tears as she encourages him to fondle her breasts and his touch recalls her mastectomy, breast reconstruction, and yes, her cancer. In another scene, after a jarring appointment with Dr. Pankowitz and Nikki, Molly retreats alone to a hotel ordering a huge vibrator, watching internet porn, and masturbating all day, only to accidentally be filmed in the act and blackmailed into paying a bribe to a Bahamian con artist who threatens to release the footage.

Set in New York City and filmed across different urban setting (apartments, hospital rooms, bodegas, street corners, and bars), the uniqueness of Dying for Sex is its insistence on focusing on the life of a terribly ill woman instead of her death. Put another way, the show calls us to experience Molly’s energized, clumsy, even silly process of living. Despite her diagnosis or perhaps because of it, Molly is more awake and more alive than she has possibly ever been as we watch her enlist the quirky and tender-hearted Nikki to support her in her urgent exploration of a sexuality that has been dormant for far too long. While illness and death are sadly a normal part of life and a normal focus of TV and film, the irreverent comedic approach to this heavy, typically dramatic theme makes Dying for Sex a truly original contribution.