It took me less than a full day to binge watch this one-season series on Netflix. Sex/Life is dramatic, shocking and erotic. With this show, the loves definitely outweigh the hates, but no show is perfect.
A Quick Overview
Sex/Life’s main character is a woman in her thirties named Billie. Billie is married to who she thought was the man of her dreams, except she can’t stop thinking about her ex. And their fantastic sex. Fantastic as in much better than her husband. Billie and her husband have two children together, live in a fairly large house in a suburb of New York and are the picture-perfect family. Or were.
Before settling down with her suit and tie banker husband, Billie lived a pretty wild life in New York City. She partied a lot. She had sex with a lot of men. Her typical go-to guy was the kind that contains a 90% toxicity level when it comes to being in a relationship. Her husband had no idea of any of this, until he read her private journal. With this, Billie’s life begins to unravel, yet she still can’t stop craving her ex, in more ways than one.
What I Love
Billie is a strong and independent woman. In the fictional worlds of shows and movies, this is always something that I admire. I think that it is great when writers, directors and actors want to represent a powerful woman. Billie is a wife and mother, yet throughout the whole show it is obvious that she is her own person with her own wants and needs. She puts her children first sometimes, her husband first sometimes and herself first sometimes. This woman shows that it is more than acceptable to go to college, work, party hard, sleep with whoever she wants, not finish college, be a stay-at-home mom, go back to college and go back to work all within the show. Billie is a great example of a woman being more than capable to make her own choices for herself.
This next thing kind of goes along with Billie being strong and independent, but it’s more specific. She isn’t afraid to admit all of her sexual desires. At the beginning of the season, it seems as if Billie and her husband have a dry sex life. Billie makes many moves to initiate something sexual between the two of them, an action that is usually expected from a man. She is not afraid to ask for sex, to say what she likes and to say what she doesn’t like. As the show progresses, you get to see that Billie has sexual desires that are unfufilled, lots of them. I applaud the creator, Stacy Rukeyser, for including all of this in the show. It really shows the audience that women have every right to crave sex just as much as men. It also shows that if you’re not in a relationship that fufills all of your sexual wants and needs, you likely won’t be satisfied for long.
The plot is just remarkably done in this show. Rukeyser did a great job creating an enticing show that holds your attention the whole time. I found myself not being able to stop hitting the button to play the next episode. I was lucky that I didn’t have anything else to do during the day that I started this show, because finishing it was my top priority. Sex/Life intertwines so many aspects of life that most shows don’t. It shows the life of Billie, her husband, her ex, her best friend, her kids and how they are all connected. The amount of drama in the show is large, but not large enough that you can’t handle it.
What I Hate
There wasn’t a lot that I hated about this show, however I do think that some parts weren’t my favorite. Billie makes some really bad decisions that affect her marriage and her children. It would be one thing if she didn’t have any kids, but she did. As I was watching, it tended to bother me that she was making poor choices that could negatively affect her kids. Billie also lied, a lot. This was another thing that I cringed at while watching because it almost seemed ridiculous. She was unable to make up her mind about a lot of things throughout the show, and she would ultimately lie to herself, her husband and her friends. It was almost as if she didn’t realize how bad her spewing lies was, which was not something I enjoyed watching.
If you are debating whether or not to watch this show, I say do it. Make sure you have lots of time, though, because it will be hard to turn off your TV or laptop after starting the show.