Finally got around to watching Minx, the period dramedy about a feminist writer working for a porn magazine in 1970s LA. I was a touch underwhelmed at first, but glad I stuck it out, because overall, I really enjoyed the two-season series, and wish it had been continued for a third.
It centers around Vassar-educated feminist writer Joyce (Ophelia Lovibond), and Doug Renetti, (Jake Johnson), a small-time publisher for seedy men’s magazines. Joyce meets Doug after a long day of unsuccessfully pitching her idea for hard-hitting feminist magazine, The Matriarchy Awakens, to potential publishers—all staid, suited, middle aged men. And since it’s the seventies, these men (obviously) think women belong at home, cooking dinner, not harassing them about birth control and other feminist causes. Doug offers to bankroll Joyce’s idea at his company, and Minx is born: the country’s first erotic magazine for women, a combination of high-brow feminist critique and analysis with photo spreads of naked men as palate cleansers.
As Joyce settles into life at Bottom Dollar Publications, she forges new friendships and alliances with members of the staff, and, of course, butts heads with her new boss. Much of the show’s charm comes from the relationship between Joyce and Doug as they each attempt to navigate the other’s world. Joyce was an annoying protagonist, and she’s supposed to be, but it doesn’t make her likable, especially during the first season. My complaint wasn’t the feminist rhetoric; I loved that. It was that Joyce continually failed to grasp the concept that since Doug was supplying the money, she might have to compromise on some of her column ideas in order for the magazine to sell copies and be successful.
I couldn’t help comparing this show to the 1997 film Boogie Nights, even though Minx offers an entirely different premise. While Minx plays dress-up in grandma’s funky old bell bottoms, Boogie Nights is banging groupies backstage and snorting lines of coke off the amplifiers. Boogie Nights *embodied* that decade, while Minx merely does impressions of it. This feeling doesn’t come from costuming and props alone—Minx tackles its subject matter with a fully modern sensibility (the show aired in 2022) that is obviously imposed upon it by the writers. The characters are simply too emotionally, politically, and socially-evolved to be believable as products of their time. And that’s precisely where the show lost me—for a while. By the second season, I’d managed to overlook that little detail and just settled in to enjoy what was left of the ride.
Now, onto the naked men. Yes, the show is full of them. (It also has a couple quick shots of naked women.) Full disclosure: I only wanted to watch this because I knew Taylor Zakhar Perez was in the cast, and that he would possibly be naked. (Priorities, right?)
He plays a beautiful and charming himbo who graces the cover of the first issue of Minx, and he is so gorgeous, you only need to look at him once to understand the casting. Sadly, Perez is only present for the first couple of episodes. Interviews with writers and cast are quick to point out that much of the male nudity in the story is achieved with prosthetics. In fact, Taylor Zakhar wears a prosthetic cock in his scenes. However, a hilarious montage wherein magazine staff search out a cover model shows actual nude men, sans prosthetics. And It’s one of the funniest scenes in modern television.
By the way, the technology? artistic ability? for making fake cocks has come a loooong way since Marky Mark wore that laughably-horrible dong in Boogie Nights almost thirty years ago.
Long story short, if this is your sort of thing, it’s a fun, brisk two seasons of witty, engaging television with some very lovely, top-shelf eye-candy for the cherry on top.
