Sex/Life Season 2 Review: Who Will You Spend Your Life With? Netflix Series
Cast: Sarah Shahi, Mike Vogel, Darius Homayoun, Cleo Anthony, Adam Demos
Creator: Stacy Rukeyser
Streaming Platform: Netflix
Filmyhype.com Ratings: 3/5 (three stars) [yasr_overall_rating size=”large”]
You know the book I do. Do I? written by Carrie Bradshaw in Sex and The City 2? Well, Sex/Life Season 2 could very well be the next volume. The Netflix series, based on BB Easton’s novel 44 Chapters About 4 Men, debuted last year examining marriage and female desire, appealing to a predominantly female audience (especially for its itchy undertones). For this new chapter, the creator Stacy Rukeyser faces the step following the marital crisis, divorce, which is followed by a sense of redemption on the part of the main protagonist. Will Billie be able to set aside the past and look at the present with more optimism? Sex/Life Season 2 is tasked with answering that question. All that remains for the public is to wait for March 2. Things immediately get much more complicated than that in this second and apparently final season: as we will see in this review of Sex/Life Season 2, the plot of this second tranche of episodes explores an alternative condition – the “third way” that we mentioned in precedence – for the protagonist.
Billie has separated from her husband and has not crowned her dream of love with Brad (Adam Demos), who is expecting a child from another woman, and now she finds herself starting that single life all over again in New York that she had missed so much in the previous season. There could have been many interesting foods for thought – we have a protagonist who, after a decade-long marriage, finally can rediscover herself, even from a working point of view, what could be more stimulating? – but once again the story for the protagonist ends in the search for love. Billie’s sexual voracity is perhaps less important in this case to keep the plot going, but that doesn’t stop the author (Stacy Rukeyser) and writers from inserting exploits of passion whenever possible. After a while, however, the spicy moments end up being repetitive and boring for the viewer, who would instead like more substance from the point of view of the plot.
Sex/Life Season 2 Review: The Story Plot
The plot of Sex/Life Season 2 picks up a few months after the events of the season finale of the first season. The breakneck rush to Brad’s house ends for Billie (Sarah Shahi) as a stalemate the man rejects her revealing that she now has another partner and a child on the way. Back home with Cooper (Mike Vogel), things fall further: from the comparison between the two it is clear that the separation is inevitable. The story then jumps forward a few months, now Billie lives alone in New York and returns to Connecticut only to be with her two children, three days a week. Meanwhile, Cooper has begun a clandestine relationship with his boss Francesca, rediscovering that passionate impulse that he did not have with his wife.
Billie, for her part, does not seem to be looking for a new love, but when her friend Sasha forces her to spend an evening of revelry, it seems impossible to keep men away from her. It only takes a few minutes in a club to meet Majid (Darius Homayoun), a charming restaurateur who seems willing to do anything to see her again, even though he soon learns of the complicated situation – between imminent divorce and lost “true love” – in which the woman finds herself. Even Sasha cannot escape her feelings for much longer: her situation as a free and unrepentant single is put to the test by the return to the stage of her ex, Kam (Cleo Anthony), who after 17 years from afar still seems to love her like the first day.
Sex/Life Season 2 Review and Analysis
The new element that restarts Billie’s story is therefore the entry of Majid, who is positioned as a new and further love interest for the protagonist. A burst of a novelty designed to change the dynamics of the first season but does not make the plot much more intriguing, which however always brings Billie back to her sense of guilt towards her husband and her irresistible passion for Brad. If nothing else, these two characters are different from the first season: Cooper falls into a self-destructive spiral – between alcohol, drugs, and unbridled sex, not only with Francesca – Brad is instead less present, busy trying to be a partner and future father responsible. It’s a bit of a shame because his charismatic presence made an otherwise rather repetitive and boring viewing more enjoyable.
The arrival of Majid, therefore, does not change the dynamics of the series too much. As the episodes progress, one gets the impression that much of what happens serves solely as filler to arrive at the inevitable (and let us tell you, predictable) conclusion. The many flashbacks (both about Billie’s past, but also about Shasha’s), don’t help in a better understanding of the characters but end up repeating the obvious, boring the viewer too much. If in the first season, it was necessary to understand the protagonist’s background, here they only point out how she feels unfulfilled and dissatisfied. In the case of Shasha, they explain what happened between her and Kam, even if they are not particularly necessary because we would have understood all the same from the exchanges – in the present – between the two characters.
The Big Apple reprograms the whole life of the protagonist. If in the first chapter, Billie was at a crossroads, happy marriage or a fulfilling sex life, she is now aware that she can have both. An important goal for her, however, is not governed by concrete narrative development. It is never possible to have a complete picture of the events, often fragmented and unresolved. Even when she seems to have found peace with Majid, Billie is faced with crucial choices, intimate considerations, and introspection phases already explored previously and which clash with her new path. None of these then scratch that surface which, as in the first season, appears to have a very hard and tasteless shell. Between sex on the Ferris wheel, licentious confessions, and grand soirée, Sex/Life Season 2 declares its nature right from the start: a static product, trembling in the face of progress and engulfed in mediocre plot twists.
Still shows only hardcore scenes and is reluctant to dig deep, which should be followed by a three-dimensional construction of the characters and a greater writing effort. There is only a succession of disconnected dynamics, which fill a cauldron without a functional story. There are many filler scenes – often those with a hot background – introduced to dilate the time of the episodes, and the emptiness and lack of verve of the characters do not allow the viewer to participate. The questioning is missing, the courage to go out of balance, and, above all, a decisive glow-up that leads the protagonists toward maturity. A false maturity that suddenly arrives in the final wavering climax only for narrative purposes, and which is not supported by incisive events that justify it.
The only one to save himself in this dull caravan of Sex/Life Season 2 is Sasha Snow, even able to represent the leitmotif of the series: female empowerment. Sasha takes hold of her life, frees her image from being the object of commodification and, at the same time, faces her sentimental past with awareness. She is the least stereotyped character, as well as being the best constructed in terms of the script: Sasha gradually faces that metamorphosis from caterpillar to the butterfly which, according to the logic of the plot, would have been due to Billie. Too bad she’s the only one.
Sex/Life Season 2 Review: The Last Words
After the six episodes of Sex/Life Season 2, the last thought is that the second season went on by inertia. Lacking new topics and perhaps even the will on the part of its authors to give it depth, it appears to be a dull and faded product, to which are added some very gray recitations. A series that initially made the audience enticed by its spicy note, which has now become obvious and full of rhetoric. Sex/Life Season 2 lacks new topics and perhaps even the will on the part of its authors to develop the story better. The new season is a dull and faded product, to which are added some very gray recitations. A series that initially had made the public greedy for its spicy note, which has now become obvious and full of rhetoric. The second season of Sex/Life is a somewhat useless and repetitive filler to bring the protagonist Billie to fulfill her dream of love.
