Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Minx’ Season 2 On Starz, Where Joyce And Doug Deal With The Good And Bad Sides Of Their Magazine’s Success

As most TV fans know, Minx was almost all the way through filming of its second season when Warner Brothers Discovery cancelled the show and pulled it off of what was then known as HBO Max. Starz picked it up pretty quickly, and that made perfect sense; it fits into their ambitious slate of originals quite well. Does the show’s second season continue the fun that we saw in the first?

MINX SEASON 2: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: The hood ornament of a Rolls-Royce as the car glides down the road. The car stops at a red carpet premiere, and out steps Joyce Prigger (Ophelia Lovibond) in a fur coat. The marquee says “Joyce Prigger: World’s First Billionaire Pornographer”.

The Gist: It’s actually a dream that Doug Renetti (Jake Johnson) has been having ever since he gave Joyce complete ownership of Minx. When he tells Tina (Idara Victor) that it wasn’t a sex dream, she almost wishes it was. Bottom Dollar Publishing has been struggling since Doug gave up Minx; it can’t pay photographers or models, can’t get a new bank loan to cover the debts, and they haven’t even cleaned up the mess the dorky male rioters made of their office months prior.

Meanwhile, Minx has been on hold while Joyce finds a new publisher. Because of the attention the first two issues got, she’s fielding offers from the biggies, like Conde Nast, Meredith and Hearst. She even giddily calls her sister Shelly (Lennon Parham) from a portable phone one of the publishers offered her. Richie (Oscar Montoya) and Bambi (Jessica Lowe), who sided with Joyce in her ownership dispute with Doug, have been out of work while waiting for Joyce’s decision.

Richie, who’s working at his aunt’s bakery, gets a job for a private photo shoot, and asks Joyce and Bambi to come with him to assist. Bambi bails, but Joyce comes by and realizes that the woman who commissioned the shoot is Constance Papadopoulos (Elizabeth Perkins), a pioneering industrialist who was forced out of her CEO position by her late husband’s family. She also happens to be a fan of Minx.

Bambi goes to Shelly’s house to get her advice, even though she’s felt uncomfortable around Shelly since she decided to stay with her husband Lenny (Rich Sommer). In a coded way, Shelly says things won’t spark again, despite the attraction, but they end up having sex in the pantry, right before Lenny comes home unexpectedly. Somehow, they both manage to cover what they just did.

Desperate, Doug finally listens to Tina and goes to find Joyce; he sees Richie’s pics of Constance and her naked paramour, and before he finds Joyce almost signing with Conde Nast, he’s goes to Constance first. When he suggests Constance as the publisher, it makes complete sense to Joyce. All they need now is a borrowed dog.

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? Like we mentioned before Season 1, Minx is a cross between Mrs. America and GLOW.

Our Take: We’re happy that Minx — created by Ellen Rappaport, with Paul Feig as one of the other EPs — got picked up by Starz, because the show has really settled into a nice groove in its second season, with an ensemble that works well together, the welcome addition of Perkins, and a story that will show everyone dealing with Minx‘s success in their own way.

What we appreciated about the first season was how open it was about exploring the “female gaze” and how it related to the second-wave feminism of the early ’70s, while relating Joyce’s message to women’s current struggles with the patriarchy. It also was quite liberal with full-frontal male nudity, something most shows shy away from.

It was also one of the few shows where the ensemble was as strong as the chemistry between its two leads, and the second season continues this trend. Johnson and Lovibond bounce off each other well, and even though this season we’re going to see Doug try to parlay the magazine’s success into starting an Omni-style science magazine and Joyce struggling with accepting the magazine’s success and opening herself up to new experiences, there will still be plenty of chances to see their characters do their bickering dance.

We’re also going to see more of Parham and Sommer as Shelly and Lenny try to recharge their marriage, and the trio of Tina, Bambi and Richie are all going to grow and change as the magazine grows. It also seems that Rappaport and her staff have gone all in with making characters out of real-life early ’70s pop culture figures, and the results are mostly successful.

Sex and Skin: Uh, yes and yes.

Parting Shot: Constance joins Joyce, Doug, Tina, Bambi and Richie to celebrate the return of Minx by downing shots at a seedy bar.

Sleeper Star: We continue to love Idara Victor as Tina, who seems to sometimes be the only adult in the room at Bottom Dollar, who seems to have such a soft spot for Doug that she’ll stay with him as he makes one bad decision after another.

Most Pilot-y Line: When Lenny encourages Shelly to go back to Minx or get another job, he says to her, “I know you like getting into trouble outside the house.” Does “trouble” equal “working” to Lenny?

Our Call: STREAM IT. Minx improves on a fun first season with an even more fun and ambitious second season, with an ensemble that’s clicking and meaty (pun intended) storylines for everyone in that ensemble.

Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.