You know that scene in Pretty Woman where Julia Roberts goes into the fancy store that wouldn’t sell her clothes when she was dressed in her hooker clothes, and then when she goes back after her glamorous makeover she tells them, “You work on commission, right? Big mistake! Huge!” That’s how I feel about HBO Max refusing to renew Minx. Big mistake, HBO! Huge! Thank you, Starz, for being the cable network that took a chance on this desperate sex worker, er, I mean, show about a women’s magazine, and allowing it to flourish.
As the second season of Minx opens, Joyce Prigger (Ophelia Lovibond) faces the challenge of finding a new publisher for her now-mainstream feminist magazine, Minx. At the end of season one, her former partner, Doug Renetti (Jake Johnson), realizing that Minx had become bigger than his smutty Bottom Dollar publishing company could handle, cut her loose so she and Minx could flourish and become an empire. But after letting Minx go, Doug is unable to pay the bills with the crown jewel of his company now gone.
Joyce, meanwhile, has gone full Jerry Maguire, leaving her old office behind in search of a new publisher that’s more aligned with her vision. Assuming the roles of Renee Zellweger’s Dorothy in this metaphor are photographer Richie (Oscar Montoya) and former model Bambi (Jessica Lowe), who trust her to find a new home for Minx, but are struggling to pay the bills because Joyce is dragging her feet in the search for a new publisher, despite the fact that she’s being wooed by the biggest names in magazines. Hearst, Condé Nast, and Meredith, they all want a piece of Minx and are wooing her with the idea that she’ll become a feminist icon along the same lines as Marie Curie, Sojourner Truth and Jackie O., along with the promise of Vogue fashion closets, tickets to the Met, and portable phones housed in suitcases. But they’re all repeating the same schlocky pseudo-feminist propaganda that they think Joyce wants to hear in order to have her sign with them and she can’t decide which room of white men in suits she should go with. Among the many great lines in the episode are Bambi equating Joyce’s decision to choose a publisher to her “picking a dad for us,” and then telling Joyce, “Would it help if I chose? It wouldn’t be the first time I had to find a step-dad on short notice.”
Doug wakes up in a cold sweat after having a dream that Joyce has become a global success – without him – and she’s walking the red carpet. As the camera pans up to the marquis, it reads “Joyce Prigger, World’s First Billionaire Pornographer.” Hey, that should be Doug’s title! Doug is panicking that his business is going under, so he hits up all of his old friends in the porn business for help and soon realizes he’s stuck between a rock and a hard place. One fellow publisher, Chuck, tells him Doug has become a pariah now that he “got fancy,” selling out with Minx. “You was chit-chattin’ with Dick Cavett and then, oops, there goes the R.S.V.P. to my Christmas party!” Chuck says. Doug’s too fancy for his old friends, but not mainstream successful enough for anyone else, and he’s forced into making bad decisions, like buying a delivery truck to distribute his magazines himself in order to recover some of his financial losses. His girlfriend/office manager Tina (Idara Victor), who gave up going to business school for this, begs him to go back to Joyce and ask her to bring Minx back, but Doug is too stubborn to see that Tina is right.
Richie, meanwhile, is broke and taking a second job as a boudoir photographer for some rich lady who’s a fan of the magazine. Joyce joins the shoot as his assistant and is gobsmacked to learn that Richie’s client is Constance Papadopoulos (Elizabeth Perkins), the world’s first female CEO, the wealthy widow that the episode takes its title from, who inherited her husband’s shipping company, was later ousted, and is now spending her days taking life drawing classes. (“I’m sorry, are you going to be a problem?” Constance asks Joyce, who can’t help but fangirl over being in the presence of a woman she once studied in her Unsung Heroines of Capitalism class in college.) It turns out, Constance is a fan of Minx, she actually sought Richie out based on his work in the magazine. (The end result of the shoot includes some really wonderfully hilarious Pietá-inspired shots of Constance cradling Esteban, the nude model from her figure drawing class, on her lap.)
Meanwhile, Shelly (Lennon Parham) is trying to live her suburban mom life, married to Lenny (Rich Sommer) and trying to forget that she ever hooked up with Bambi last season. Alas, Bambi comes to visit her and despite Shelly’s best intentions, she realizes that Bambi has awakened something in her sexually that she can’t resist. The women have sex in Shelly’s pantry, finishing just in time for Lenny to come home.
Poor Lenny doesn’t realize that Bambi is the very reason his wife is open to exploring the Kama Sutra these days, and he’s none the wiser after he meets her after the romp in the pantry.
Doug, having learned of Joyce’s interaction with Constance, takes it upon himself to see if perhaps Constance would become a financial backer of Bottom Dollar, and he tells Joyce that Constance will only agree to it if Joyce brought Minx back there. Doug, shifty as ever, arranges an ambush at the Beverly Hills Kennel Club dog show, where he knows Constance will be showing Ferdinand and Isabella, her Afghan hounds. He borrows an Afghan named Abracadabra from his friend Mikey Two-Fingers (an excellent sentence if ever there was one) and sneaks himself in with Joyce to meet Constance. “This really is a happy accident, isn’t it?” Doug asks, before Constance shoos him away to speak with Joyce about the magazine. “I have always been tickled by the taboo,” Constance tells Joyce, agreeing to be the publisher, but telling Joyce they don’t need Doug. “He clearly stole that dog,” Constance says. “That kind of bravado is very risky.” It could have been an opportunity for Joyce to sell Doug down the river, but she doesn’t. Instead she tells Constance, “I would not be here if it weren’t for him. Minx is as much his success as it is mine. Can you please never ever tell him that?”
“A woman would never!” Constance says, and they close the deal then and there. Two women are now at the helm of Minx, but the Doug stays in the picture. Maybe he’ll end up walking the red carpet alongside Joyce one day, as co-billionaire pornographers.
This show has the best dialogue, and Richie is such a standout character. Among some of his best lines this episode:
Richie: “Baker’s hours are killing me! There should only be one three o’clock.”
Joyce: “Grathias!”
Richie: “Gracias. This ain’t Spain.”
Joyce: “If any of them had Constance’s perspicacity, a word so erudite I’ve never heard it in conversion – “
Richie: “Like erudite!”
Liz Kocan is a pop culture writer living in Massachusetts. Her biggest claim to fame is the time she won on the game show Chain Reaction.