April Binges: Dying for Sex & Dope Thief

If you're looking to settle in on the couch for a spell, I have two very different shows you could watch. A comedy about sex and death or a drama about drugs and corruption. Pick your poison.

Dying for Sex: Created by Kim Rosenstock and Elizabeth Merriwether, this show is loosely based on the podcast of the same name by Molly Kochan and Nikki Boyer, who here are played by Michelle Williams and Jenny Slate. The show kicks off when Molly receives her terminal diagnosis of Stage 4 breast cancer that has metastasized to her bones. Faced with this knowledge and the realization that she has never had an orgasm, she decides to leave her husband, Steve (Jay Duplass), and finally explore her sexuality. Which is complicated, for many reasons, as you can imagine.

While this is a show about a woman who is trying to live out some sexual fantasies, that plot is entirely secondary to the true story here, which is that of the depth of her friendship with Nikki. Molly is dying, and rather than relying on a husband or romantic partner, the person who she is depending on in her final days is her best friend. I was entirely ambivalent about the sexcapades on this show (though the introduction of Rob Delaney as Molly's neighbor and potentially something more thrilled me to no end), but what will truly make you weep is the relationship between these two women and the deep familial bond they share.

This is just a miniseries, because, spoiler alert, Molly will in fact die at the end of the eight episodes. But you will go on a stunningly moving journey that is equally funny as it is sad and embraces a very positive and wholesome view of death that more Americans need to consider. The final episode involves a character played by the magnificent Paula Pell, who is absolutely the person I want at my deathbed, explaining why death is a normal, natural bodily process, all with a big, excited smile on her face. I'm sure most people will avoid this show like the plague because of their own neuroses about the subject matter, but for those of you brave enough to wade into these waters, I promise you will be amply rewarded.

Dope Thief: Created by Peter Craig, based on the novel by Dennis Tafoya, this show stars Bryan Tyree Henry and Wagner Moura as Ray and Manny, two small-time crooks in Philadelphia who have hit upon the brilliant scheme of dressing up as DEA agents and breaking into the houses of drug dealers, pretending it's a raid. Once there, they "confiscate" all the drugs and money, which of course makes for a nice haul for them. But things quickly go south when they decide to raid a meth house that undercover DEA agents were already working in. People are killed, a lot of money goes missing, and now Ray and Manny must go on the run.

That premise sounds exciting, and the cast is excellent, but I could NOT get into this show at all. I begrudgingly binged my way through all eight episodes, sort of hoping that maybe something would happen that would hook me, but that moment of revelation never came. This is a dark, gritty, serious affair, occasionally lightened up with the Henry's deadpan comic timing or Moura's frantic confusion, but this felt like the kind of involved plot about drugs, prisons, and vengeance that makes for a fantastic read, but a thoroughly dull TV show. If each episode was a tight half hour, maybe I would have resented it less, but I got really tired of sitting down for 45 minutes to an hour each week. Perhaps others who love crime shows would enjoy it, but this show was emphatically not made for me. It easily slots into the category of Apple TV+ shows that have great actors, high budgets, and are thoroughly forgettable. You are welcome to convince me otherwise, but for now, I am not planning on tuning into Season 2; I have suffered enough.