Season 2 of Minx kicked off with Doug Renetti (Jake Johnson) having a nightmare: after he cut Joyce Prigger (Ophelia Lovibond) loose – essentially cutting himself loose from the Minx brand – he had this terrible dream where Joyce stepped out of a Rolls Royce as T.Rex’s 1972 anthem “Children of the Revolution” plays, and she walks a red carpet beneath a marquis that touted her as the world’s first billionaire pornographer. Doug is a man with big dreams, and it was clear that this scenario was a nightmare because, you know, he should be the world’s first billionaire pornographer.
But by the time Minx Season 2 Episode 1 (“The Perils of Being A Wealthy Widow”) ended, Doug was back in the Minx universe, working alongside Joyce and their new angel investor, Constance Papadopoulos (Elizabeth Perkins). So, in a scene mirroring episode one, episode two kicks off with Doug stepping out of a Rolls Royce and onto a red carpet. “Children of the Revolution” is still playing, This is no dream, though: Doug and his Bottom Dollar brand are offering a public showing of Deep Throat and it’s a media spectacle. Flashbulbs go off, and one by one, we see all of the Minx employees chatting it up with the press: Constance describes the spectacle as a “cultural happening” while Bambi (Jessica Lowe) introduces herself to an interviewer as the company’s CFO: “Chief Fun Officer.”
Richie (Oscar Montoya) and Tina (Idara Victor) are there, too. Everyone is there but Joyce, who’s running late because she’s writing this month’s editor’s letter. When she finally arrives, Joyce expresses her hesitations about sponsoring this showing of Deep Throat, scoffing that the film might not make the right statement for their brand.
“It’s a really feminist tale, it’s about a woman searching for an orgasm,” Doug tells her.
“Yeah, which she finds via a clitoris which she finds conveniently inside of her mouth?” Joyce scoffs.
“It’s always the last place you look,” Tina says. Tina is at Doug’s side as both lover and business associate, and it’s at this moment that he assures her that because she’s “management,” she gets to enjoy the night. “You’re not lifting a finger,” he tells her. This will prove to be false.
A moment later, Timmy, the projectionist, frantically tells Doug, “Deep Throat is missing!” Even though the theater is in possession of the canisters that hold all six reels of Deep Throat, Doug’s mob movie distributor mislabeled them. Instead, what they have is the children’s movie Bedknobs and Broomstick which stars a young, definitely not 70-years-old Angela Lansbury. (Cut to a young girl’s birthday party, where she and her friends are watching the missing reels of Deep Throat and wondering when the bed’s gonna fly.)
Seems the only other person in L.A. with a copy of Deep Throat is producer Robert Evans, so Doug sends Richie and Tina to Evans’ house in hopes of retrieving the reels and getting them back to the theater before the crowd revolts. So much for not lifting a finger. While Tina and Richie wait for Bob’s assistant to bring them the reels, Richie gets real with Tina: “You’re not running Minx, you’re running errands,” he tells her. She gave up going to business school because Doug promised her opportunity, independence. And here she is driving a bunch of film reels around town, still Doug’s lackey despite his promises.
To buy some time at the theater while Tina and Richie retrieve the reels, Doug invites a very surprised Joyce to the stage where she conducts what appears to be a raucous Q and A of female anatomy, where audience member Warren Beatty appears to have dominated the audience responses. (This episode is a real homage to several pillars of 1970s ubiquity, from Beatty to Robert Evans and Ernest Borgnine to Joan Didion. The blending of real personalities in this fictional world can be slightly distracting, but also fun to see who from the California diaspora they’ll mention next.)
At the theater, Doug is pulled aside by the local police who explain that if he does actually show Deep Throat to the audience, he’ll be arrested. Doug lets the cops think they’ve won by handing over the canisters of Bedknobs and Broomsticks, and just in time: Tina has arrived back with the first three reels of Deep Throat so that they can start watching the movie, with the hope that Richie will make it back in time with the last three reels that Robert Evans is giving one last look to.
Among the revelers at the screening are Shelly (Lennon Parham) and Lenny (Rich Sommer), but Shelly is uncomfortable being in Bambi’s presence; Shelly is desperately trying to suppress whatever sexual awakening that Bambi brings out of her. But they’re there because Lenny is clearly thrilled to be invited to something so taboo, and he plans to share the details of his being there with anyone who will listen. “This film is the talk of the dental community,” Shelly says. (“He’s in there workshopping a Deep Throat joke he’ll be telling for years,” she correctly predicts later.) While Joyce and Shelly are in the bathroom at the theater, they run into one of Joyce’s idol’s Joan Didion (Samantha Sloyan), and as Joan takes a whiz, Joyce has a lightbulb moment: Maybe Joan can pen something for Minx about the cultural significance of Deep Throat. Joyce invites her to the after-party that doesn’t exist to discuss it.
As Richie sprints into the theater holding the three remaining canisters that hold the rest of the film, he literally runs into Joyce and the film flies everywhere, with only moments to go before they need to swap in the next reel. Doug, watching this from the top of the stairs in the lobby, yells “Oh God, no!” and proceeds to fall down the stairs. It’s chaos. Once they locate the Coke dildo scene which kicks off reel four, a sense of calm washes over them, as Coke dildos will do.
At the impromptu after-party, thrown at the Bottom Dollar offices, Constance tells Doug she’s impressed by his handling of the film reel debacle and the cops, but explains that she’s well connected and rich and he should have used her as a resource instead. Thus far, Constance has proven to be a genuine fan of the Bottom Dollar family and she sees both Doug and Joyce for their strengths.
Bambi, who desires to be more than just the Chief Fun Officer, finds herself as nothing more than a glorified cocktail waitress taking everyone’s drink (and pill) orders, and Tina… well, Tina lets Doug have it. She’s spent the whole night racing around in search of Deep Throat and she is fuming. “I just walked into a big-ass party that I wasn’t invited to for a movie I didn’t get to see,” she yells at Doug, explaining that she’s the managing editor, not his secretary, and hands him a stack of resumes for her replacement as Doug’s assistant.
Then she tells him she’s going to have a drink in Joyce’s office, which happens to now be the biggest office in the place. Of all the changes at Bottom Dollar, relinquishing the big office is the bitterest of pills for Doug to swallow.
After Lenny finishes workshopping his Deep Throat jokes to an audience of porn stars at the party, Shelly, still uncomfortable being there, tries to get him to leave. Lenny explains that the only reason he’s there is not for his own good, it’s for Shelly’s. Lenny’s no fool, he sees a change in Shelly and he wants to help his wife figure out what will make her happy. “Something is going on with you. I don’t know what and I don’t know why,” he says, but he just wants to have fun with her. Shelly, knowing the ins and outs of the Bottom Dollar office, drags him to the dark room for some hanky panky.
Joan Didion does show up at the party, and Joyce pitches her on the idea of writing about Deep Throat for Minx, but Joan, it turns out, has nothing novel to say about the film. Instead, she explains that it sounds like Joyce is the one with the strong opinions about it. And so, as everyone leaves the party, Joyce does what she does best, she gets to work writing out everything she wished Joan would have written, except the words flow out of Joyce instead.
On its surface, Deep Throat is just a porn movie. But it has a lot of cultural significance, and for the people in in the film, it redefined them. On its surface, this episode of Minx, which is about a screening of Deep Throat, is simply that. But for everyone in and out of the Minx office, it marks a turning point in their lives, and it’s about to redefine all of them in one way or another.
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.