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In the debut of the darkly comic new FX miniseries Dying for Sex, Molly (Michelle Williams) learns that her breast cancer has returned and is now terminal, then thinks on her nonexistent sex life with husband Steve (Jay Duplass) and declares, “I’ve never even had an orgasm with another person. And now I’m gonna die.”
What follows is an alternately hilarious, bawdy, and sad attempt to solve the former problem before the latter befalls her.
Adapted by Kim Rosenstock and Elizabeth Meriwether from the podcast of the same name, Dying for Sex has the unenviable task of juggling what should be two completely incompatible tones. On the one hand, neither Molly’s oncologist (drolly and sweetly played by Succession alum David Rasche) nor the show itself attempts to sugarcoat the nature of this kind of cancer. Her story will only end one way, and relatively soon, and that is inescapably sad. Yet the ticking clock created by being in Stage 4 also encourages her to leave Steve, and enlist best friend Nikki (Jenny Slate, fantastic) to act as her support person for both her treatment and her quest to find sexual satisfaction by any means necessary. And that part of the show is often utterly ludicrous, including a scene in one episode where Molly’s mother (the great Sissy Spacek) tells a guy in a dog costume, “Don’t drink my daughter’s pee if you can’t handle it!”
Rosenstock and Meriwether first worked together on the Zooey Deschanel sitcom New Girl,which would have had room for the absurdity — if not necessarily the amount of explicit detail regarding its heroine’s sexual journey —and found occasional moments of pathos. But it didn’t have inevitable tragedy baked into its premise in the way Dying for Sex does. Still, the duo make the two halves fit together expertly. The comedy feels like a welcome release from the sadness, but the heaviness of the material in turn keeps the jokes from feeling too over-the-top.
It helps, of course, to have Michelle Williams playing this character. It’s her first TV role since 2019’s Fosse/Verdon (also made by FX), for which she won an Emmy. She might want to clear a spot on her mantel for another one. She holds the story’s two spiritual halves together through charisma, sheer force of will, and comic chops that have been woefully underutilized over her career. Anyone who’s heard the excerpt of her reading the audiobook for Britney Spears’ memoir, about Justin Timberlake greeting Ginuwine, knows how wickedly funny she can be just with deadpan line readings. Dying for Sex puts that talent to good use, periodically drifting into voiceover where Molly tries to distract herself from the latest bad cancer news by making herself think about dicks: “Yes, dicks. Dicks! Big dicks, little dicks!” And when things go poorly with Molly’s health — or as Molly wrestles with having been abused as a child by one of her mother’s boyfriends — Williams doesn’t need to push hard to get the audience’s tear ducts flowing.
As Molly’s sexual journey takes her from epic masturbation to clumsy app hookups to a discovery that she enjoys being a dominatrix for men who get off on humiliation, she’s wonderfully paired with Rob Delaney as a slovenly neighbor who both repulses and arouses her, often at the same time. Anyone who watched Delaney and Sharon Horgan’s great Amazon series Catastrophe knows how comfortable he is acting in the space between silly and sad, and his character’s relationship with Molly keeps going to unexpected places.
There are some hiccups with the pacing here and there —Molly’s marriage largely ends off camera, though Steve keeps popping back up —but for the most part, the series stays on that tightrope. Even the final episode, where Molly enters the final stretch of her illness, is made bearable by a funny and warm performance by Paula Pell as a hospice nurse who pulls no verbal punches.
You’ll laugh, you’ll cry, you’ll never be able to watch Scooby-Doo the same way again.
All eight episodes of Dying for Sex begin streaming April 4 on Hulu. I’ve seen the whole thing.
