Looking to get a feminist magazine off the ground, a young woman pitches her idea to a cavalcade of uninterested men. Only one gives her the time of day, and he happens to be a purveyor of porn in the San Fernando Valley. Why not serve up some male nudity along with those serious-minded articles, he suggests? A spoonful of sugar and all that. She hates the idea. Hates it. But having no other options, she agrees. That’s the premise of “Minx” on HBO Max, a snappy workplace dramedy drenched in the sunny glare of early 1970s Southern California.
Beefcakes alongside meaty ideas may sound like an unlikely pairing, but that’s true of the show’s central duo as well. Joyce (Ophelia Lovibond) is earnest, uptight and inexperienced, but she’s also clear about the value of a magazine that takes women’s agency as its raison d’etre. Doug (Jake Johnson) is the confident, louche, easygoing publisher who wears his shirts generously unbuttoned and understands the kind of hustle that keeps his scrappy company afloat, with magazines such as Feet Feet Feet and Bodacious Butts.
She’s the iron nightingale, he’s the swashbuckling sleaze: Can they make magazine magic together? To start, Joyce’s proposed title, The Matriarchy Awakens, is tossed overboard for the far catchier Minx. But actually getting the magazine going is a complicated stop-start process that kicks up all kinds of dust along the way — a good amount from Joyce herself, who sees this venture as an X-rated Faustian bargain. Only gradually does she come around to the idea that in order to lead the liberated charge, the pages of her magazine will also need to be a spectacle of schlongs. A plethora of peni. A delirium of … you get the idea.
I like all the business practicalities in play. Minx intends to offer readers “female emancipation with mature but thematically appropriate material,” Joyce says, sticking to euphemisms in their pitch to advertisers, whereas her partner is more blunt, with an eye on the bottom line: “Women’s liberation, what does it mean? Well, I’ll tell you what it means to me: It means liberating women from the $400 million in disposable income they spend every year.”
With Doug, what you see is what you get. And Johnson goes all in, oozing dirtbag, pinky-ringed charisma: A smut peddler who apparently isn’t exploiting those around him. It’s a performance at once smarmy and jaunty and it goes down like candy (not unlike John C. Reilly’s portrayal of Lakers owner Jerry Buss in HBO’s “Winning Time”). You’re rooting for Doug to succeed, which is why it feels like such a setup to make Joyce a wide-eyed scold by comparison. Feminists can be fun! I mean, not here obviously, but just generally! Series creator Ellen Rapoport has cast the role well, because Lovibond finds all kinds of ways to tap into the humanity behind the character’s exhausting facade — it’s unclear if Joyce is even a good writer or editor; all signs point to no — and I’m not saying she has to be likable. Far from it. But she becomes increasingly wearisome screen company, in part, because it takes her so long to meet people where they’re at, even people who are already on her side: “I am in business with a man who doesn’t respect or value me.” But he does. At least that’s how Johnson is playing him. She just thinks respect should look … more respectable. Joyce is not as progressive as she thinks, which is a canny in-show critique of the character.
But it’s also worth thinking about how “Minx” is constructed and why it prioritizes the point of view of a feminist who appears to have no community of women in her life, outside of her new female colleagues at the magazine and her unshockable older sister (the very funny Lennon Parham as a suburban mom who, upon meeting Doug’s crew, notes: “Your lives are so fun, all I do with my mouth is yell”). Does Joyce seek out any women to commune with about these issues she claims to be so passionate about? Who knows! Well, there’s that one time when she’s shuttled off into a kitchen with the wives of the mobbed-up truck drivers who are responsible for distributing the magazine, which proves to be a legitimately enlightening experience, but for the most part it’s as if she were grown in a petri dish labeled “feminist” and then sent out into the world with a placard around her neck announcing: “I am woman, hear me roar.” We don’t know how this Pasadena-raised country club princess came to her worldview or why, and that feels like an important piece that’s missing. But look at me, being the buzzkill (I’m the show’s conception of Joyce!) when “Minx” just wants you to have a good time.
The thing is, Joyce can’t read a room to save her life and it’s an annoying trait. But also, I get it: Sometimes you spend so much time fighting a world that wants to deny you even a crumb of equality or validation that you become single-minded and can’t recognize another way of doing things — or admit when your principles ring hollow.
So much of the show is focused on Joyce’s learning curve, course-correcting bit by bit, and yet she’s neither the smartest nor the most interesting person in the room. That would be Doug’s assistant, Tina, who is brought to life in a wry performance from Idara Victor. She’s savvy and skeptical and she’s the closest thing Doug has to a confidant at work. A font of information about how the business actually functions, she’s also the lone Black woman in the office. What’s her story? Would love to know. (At a bar after work, Doug orders drinks for the two of them: A Maker’s and a banana daiquiri — the daiquiri is for him. Love this detail.)
Visually, “Minx” is a hoot — filled with polyester as far as the eye can see — and I was especially taken with the purple-and-green madras plaid maxi dress Joyce wears, going full Breck girl, to mingle among a more conservative set on their hunt for potential advertisers.
There are other visual elements worth mentioning. “Minx” is not coy about nudity when it comes to any gender, but it’s primarily focused on the abundance of male centerfold models who parade through the magazine’s offices to drop trou. The show is downright cheerful about the glories of the male appendage, but only in its relaxed state. It’s a decision you notice precisely because of the modesty exhibited later on, in an entirely different context; during a prelude to sex, the camera suddenly averts its gaze, conspicuously framing things just above the guy’s pelvis. It becomes clear where the show’s comfort level with full-frontal male nudity stops, and it’s at the bedroom door.
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'MINX'
2.5 stars (out of 4)
Rating: TV-MA
Where to watch: Premiered Thursday on HBO Max
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