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TV sex gets hotter (and smarter)

 
On Looking, sex conversations are frank — but not necessarily honest.
On Looking, sex conversations are frank — but not necessarily honest.
Published Nov. 26, 2014

When the FX biker drama Sons of Anarchy kicked off the Nov. 11 episode with a montage of sex scenes involving its main characters, Tim Winter, president of the Parents Television Council, was less than amused. "In order to watch cable news, ESPN, Disney or the History Channel, every family in America must now also pay for pornography on FX," Winter groused in a statement. "If history is our guide," he added, "we should expect a host of other basic cable networks to air similar — or even more explicit — content in the name of 'staying competitive.' ''

Sadly for Winter and his constituents, it is not just basic cable that is dropping trou and getting busy. Broadcast television has joined the competition, and together they're transforming viewers' experience of sex on TV. What once passed for edgy, "adult" content on television was a woman on top of a man, her breasts strategically bared and everything else improbably concealed by well-draped sheets. But as Showtime President David Nevins put it earlier this year: "Just having sex on television is not so amazing anymore. So you have to have something interesting to say about it and something interesting to explore."

And so shows have gotten more adventurous in their depictions of dating sex, married sex, adulterous sex, straight sex, gay sex. Television isn't just showing a lot of it — it's being a lot smarter about it, with series and scenes that talk in direct and revelatory ways about intimacy, relationships and power.

Start with the portraits of sex and dating in The Mindy Project, the Fox sitcom from longtime comedy writer Mindy Kaling, and Looking, HBO's sexually frank drama about young gay men in San Francisco, created by Michael Lannan.

In the third season of The Mindy Project, Mindy Lahiri (Kaling) and her doctor colleague Danny Castellano (Chris Messina) have settled into a serious relationship. Their commitment means that the show has room to watch them get to know each other in a new way, which for Mindy includes taking Danny's mother (Rhea Pearlman) on a terrifying swimsuit-shopping trip.

It also means that they worry about a sexual slump. And in the Oct. 7 episode "I Slipped," Danny tries a position that takes Mindy by surprise. "Wait. Danny. Danny! That doesn't go there! Oh my God, Danny!" Mindy says, panicked, in an off-screen scene. "I slipped!" Danny insists.

Mindy's bragging about her sexual experience had convinced Danny that she was more adventurous than she really was. "He thought it was something I had done thousands of times, like jaywalking or lying under oath," Mindy confesses to a co-worker. "I know that I talk this big talk, but really, I'm a prude. A prude that slays dudes like, whoa."

The Mindy Project may not have shown Mindy and Danny in bed or to name the act in question. Instead, the show had Dr. Prentice give Mindy hilarious sex lessons with the office skeleton. And even with limits on what they could say, Danny and Mindy still found a way to talk about their sexual anxieties — especially after Mindy gave herself a date-rape drug in an effort to be more receptive to Danny's advances.

In HBO's Looking, free of the restrictions of broadcast television, the characters can do and say almost anything to one another — but that doesn't mean they are communicating clearly or honestly with each other.

During the first season, Patrick (Jonathan Groff), an anxious video-game designer, begins dating Richie (Raúl Castillo), a working-class hairdresser. In one episode, Patrick calls in sick to work so he and Richie can spend the day together talking about everything, including Patrick's sexual discomfort zone. Patrick tries to explain that he is not sure of his own desires. "I'm not sure I'm into it," he confesses. "Pretty much as soon as it's in, I'm like, take it out."

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Richie diagnoses Patrick with shame and discomfort. And after they break up, pulled apart by race and class, it seems he was right. But Patrick, who has had a season-long flirtation with his boss, Kevin (Russell Tovey), finally sleeps with him. And with a partner who he feels is his match in race and education, Patrick is quick to set aside the concerns he used to turn down Richie.

But what Patrick sees as emotional intimacy, Kevin just sees as a fling. Patrick realizes that being physical was no guarantee of an emotional bond, and that being honest with Richie might have been the riskier but more rewarding path.

• • •

TV shows are also becoming bolder and better about exploring the complications and possibilities of the marriage bed. In one of the relationships in the time-traveling period drama Outlander, sex does not even start until marriage. Nurse Claire Randall (Caitriona Balfe) is reuniting with her husband, Frank (Tobias Menzies), after World War II, a second honeymoon that includes a vigorous sexual awakening for both, when she is transported back to the 18th century.

There she meets a young Scotsman named Jamie Fraser (Sam Heughan), whom she eventually marries. The idea of an experienced woman breaking in a younger, grateful man is a well-worn trope at this point — from The Graduate to American Pie — but as Jamie says on their wedding night: "I said I was a virgin, not a monk. If I need guidance, I'll ask." The sexual relationship instantly becomes complicated: The episode that follows acknowledges Claire's fear, grief and lust as well as her new husband's nerves. Jamie may know the basic mechanics of sex, but the idea that Claire might enjoy herself is foreign to him, as is the notion that making her feel good would be satisfying for him.

Even couples deep into marriage have sex lives that grow and change. And The Americans, an FX series about a pair of Cold War-era KGB spies who live in the Washington suburbs with their two children, offers one of the most piercing explorations of marital sex anywhere on television.

Two scenes in the show's second season stand out. In one, Elizabeth (Keri Russell) and Phillip Jennings (Matthew Rhys) are engaged in simultaneous oral sex when their teenage daughter, Paige (Holly Taylor), walks in on them. For Paige, it is a shocking introduction to the idea that her parents are sensual beings who very much desire each other. And for Elizabeth and Phillip, whose marriage has shifted from an arrangement brokered by their KGB handlers to a late-blooming love match, the way Paige casually walks through their bedroom door is a low-stakes but unsettling reminder of how vulnerable their secret identities are.

While Phillip and Elizabeth are sexually experienced, they are novices in navigating the connection between their bodies and their hearts. Phillip, using a false identity, has pursued a relationship and even entered into a not-quite-legal marriage with Martha (Alison Wright), a secretary for the FBI office that is hunting KGB agents in America. Elizabeth, who poses as his sister as part of the ruse, visits Martha in her apartment and ends up getting an earful about how her husband performs in his alternate marriage. Back home, a curious Elizabeth asks Phillip to treat her like he does Martha.

The request turns out to be a terrible mistake. Elizabeth is a rape survivor, and Phillip's rough handling of her recalls her assault. Her bid to prove that she is just as game as Martha ends with Elizabeth twisted into herself, crying. As a couple, the Jenningses learn that Elizabeth has limits she was not aware of.