Michelle Williams’ Superb ‘Dying for Sex’ Is a Defiantly Joyful Tale of Terminal Cancer and BDSM: TV Review

“It’s a bodily process,” a hospital worker tells cancer patient Molly (Michelle Williams) of her impending death. “Like having an orgasm.”

The end of Molly’s life is not a spoiler. She is, after all, the main character of an FX show called “Dying for Sex,” based on the 2020 podcast of the same name and, before that, the actual life of Molly Kochan. When Kochan’s breast cancer recurred as a more aggressive, ultimately terminal illness, her diagnosis unlocked a period of erotic exploration she chronicled with her best friend and caretaker Nikki Boyer, played in the TV series by Jenny Slate. The thesis of “Dying for Sex” is summed up by that piece of advice the screen version of Molly receives in hospice: death and sex may seem like opposites — one life’s conclusion, the other its potential beginning — but are, in truth, connected at their core. Both are building blocks of our basic biology. Both can be unexpectedly funny. And both, as Molly learns in this lewd, hilarious, unabashedly expressive work of television, can bring out hidden depths in our most intimate relationships.

Related Stories

VIP+

‘Born Again’ on Disney+, ‘Daredevil’ Viewership Beats the Odds So Far

Jesse Armstrong's HBO Film 'Mountainhead' Sets May Debut With First Look Photos of Steve Carell, Jason Schwartzman as Billionaires in the Snow

The first of Molly’s close ties to be irrevocably altered is her marriage to Steve (Jay Duplass), a simpering drip she’s horrified to realize is relieved when she gets a fateful phone call in the middle of their couple’s therapy session. Molly had just been lamenting that Steve could no longer see her as a sexual being instead of just a patient. When she learns the pair won’t have much time to untangle this dynamic, Molly concludes that “I don’t want to die with” her partner of over a decade. Instead, she strikes out on her own, pursuing chemotherapy and casual sex in tandem.

In portraying a middle-aged woman who defies sexual taboos, Williams — returning to FX after her Emmy-winning turn in 2019’s “Fosse/Verdon” — takes up the mantle from Kathryn Hahn, still the micro-genre’s reigning queen despite shifting gears for “Agatha All Along” and “The Studio.” Hahn’s frequent collaborator Joey Soloway, of “Transparent” and “I Love Dick,” is an obvious antecedent to “Dying for Sex,” which takes a similarly non-judgmental eye toward carnal abandon as Soloway’s shows. (I also thought of HBO’s “High Maintenance,” which shares a Brooklyn setting with “Dying for Sex” and, in its later seasons, channeled co-creator Katja Blichfeld’s journey of sexual self-discovery.) Of course, “Dying for Sex” bears the distinctive stamp of its own creators as well. Liz Meriwether and Kim Rosenstock began their careers as playwrights before working together on Meriwether’s “New Girl,” and bring both elements of their shared CV to bear on “Dying for Sex”: a sitcom scribe’s ear for humor, even in dire situations, and a theater veteran’s eye for intimate human experience. Also taken from the pair’s time in TV comedy is concision. “Dying for Sex” piles a lot onto its plate, then digests it all in half-hour blocks that move at a brisk and giddy pace.

When Molly first sets out on her spirit quest, she has a destination in mind, if not a route to get there. Molly has never climaxed with a partner, a condition she attributes to being sexually abused as a child by a boyfriend of her mother’s. But while Molly is open about what happened to her, she hasn’t worked through it so that it doesn’t affect her life in tangible ways. Molly’s sexual repression is such that when one of her new rotation of partners, a younger man played by Marcello Hernandez of “Saturday Night Live,” asks what she wants, she can only answer by asking what he wants. (It’s for her to clasp his balls.)

What Molly wants, she discovers after a marathon session with her vibrator, getting extorted by a shady porn site, a chance encounter with an obnoxious neighbor played by comedian Rob Delaney and many sessions with a kink-positive social worker (Esco Jouléy), is to dominate the men she sleeps with. That BDSM comes with an entire sexual vocabulary outside the bounds of penetrative intercourse happens to complement Molly’s physical deterioration. As the series progresses, Molly increasingly isn’t up to what most people understand sex to be — so she, and we, must expand our understanding of the term. “Sex is a mindset,” Jouley’s Sonya argues.

“Dying for Sex” is a show of big, messy, reflexively uncomfortable feelings, the kind that require a mastery of tone and a uniformly game cast to keep the viewer from flinching away. “Molly achieves an emotional breakthrough via interpretive dance” and “Molly pees on a guy in a dog costume in an act of mutual empowerment” are scenes for which a heroically vulnerable performance from Williams, also an executive producer, is necessary but not sufficient. Williams may be the captain of this ship; for her lieutenants, she still needs performers of uncommon warmth and emotional intelligence. Delaney, who has been public about his own experience with death in losing his toddler-aged son to a brain tumor, and Slate, a comedian with the soul of a poet, are each at their bests here.

It’s Slate, rather than Delaney, Duplass or any of Williams’ other fictional flings, who serves as the series’ true co-lead. When Molly breaks out of her marriage and into an era of free-wheeling experimentation, Slate’s Nikki assumes the emotional, logistical and financial burden of managing Molly’s care. The women’s friendship was already at a casual-boob-fondling level of closeness; after Molly’s diagnosis, the boundaries dissolve even further, to the point where Nikki puts her personal and professional life on hold so she can accompany Molly to support groups and sex parties alike. In Slate’s capable hands, we watch Nikki simultaneously rise to the occasion and crack under the burden. When her character says she’s glad to have Molly’s blood on most of her clothes because the stains will be a lasting memento when she’s gone, we believe her.

As nakedly emotional (pun somewhat intended) as “Dying for Sex” is unafraid to be, both podcast and show are borne from the real Molly’s adamant rejection of typical narratives around terminal illness. Molly actively rebuffs others’ pity, going so far as to summon a lover to her hospital bed while her family looks on in horror so she can puncture their bubble of sentimental moping. “Dying for Sex” honors this wish in both content and form. As Molly strains to shrug off the shackles of her trauma, both deep-rooted and more recent, “Dying for Sex” refuses to settle for the neutered, morose mood most expect from a cancer story. It’s quite something to behold.

All eight episodes of “Dying for Sex” are now streaming on Hulu.