Starz’s new sci-fi Millennial comedy Now Apocalypse premiered on Sunday and it had me thinking the title of the first episode “This Is the Beginning of the End” is too true. In just 30 minutes, pretty much every kind of sex and sexuality is shown: solo and mutual masturbation, heterosexual and homosexual sex, and even a form of bestiality. It’s not full frontal - yet - but we see all the women’s breasts and a whole lot of butts in 3 explicit sex scenes that qualify as at least softcore porn, all within the first 7 minutes.
We meet each of the major characters naked, having sex. In the first two minutes of the series, there’s a graphic gay sex scene between the main character, Ulysses "Uly" Zane (Avan Jogia), and a man cheating on his “husband.” Shortly thereafter Ulysses walks in on his roommate Ford Halstead (Beau Mirchoff) having sex with Severine Bordeaux (Roxanne Mesquida) in their living room. The naked couple pauses to have a brief conversation with him, then gets back to it. The next day, his friend (Kelli Berglund) recounts a sexual experience with her boyfriend from the night before that is shown.
Uly fantasizes about Ford making out with him and asking for sex. Apparently they “kind of drunk messed around once freshman year.” Uly explains, “I love him unconditionally and if he had even one sexually ambiguous molecule in his body, we'd probably be married, but Ford's that truly rare Kinsey zero in contrast to my ever oscillating four, which means I'm not so totally queer that I haven't rubbed out a few fantasizing about Severine.”
As for Ford and Severine’s relationship, well, he wants to be exclusive but she believes that monogamy is “a form of social control” and “contrary to our nature. “
Ford: We've been seeing each other a while now and I was wondering if... it was cool that I called you my girlfriend.
Severine: You can call me whatever you want. I'm not precious about the terminology.
Ford: Okay, so uh, we're like, exclusive, then?
Severine: Ford, we've discussed this. You know I believe that monogamy is a form of social control, which is contrary to our nature.
Ford: What?
Severine: For centuries, humans migrated in egalitarian hunter-gatherer groups and shared everything, food, childcare, sexual partners. They were very promiscuous and it strengthened their relationships, but then agriculture came along and people became obsessed with ownership and private property.
Ford: Oh, when was that?Severine: About 10,000 years ago.
Ford: Oh. Is this uh... is this about me not being smart enough for you? I know you're a rocket scientist and—
Severine: Astrobiological theorist. And no, Ford, I actually think you're extraordinary. Plus, you have the world's most magnificent cock.
Ford: Thanks.
Severine: It's so magnificent, in fact, I'd feel guilty keeping it all to myself. Modern relationships don't last because we expect too much of our partners. They need to fulfill us emotionally, satisfy us sexually. That's a lot to ask of one person. Besides, future holds so much chaos and uncertainty. We must relish our freedom while it lasts.
Carly, we learn, is a struggling actress by day and a cam girl by night – she offers to take her top off if a guy will help her practice her lines, others she talks dirty to and orders around. While she’s doing this one night, Uly goes out to meet a guy he matched online with and they end up going outside to hook up. I can only assume the reason for creating the montage of 3 simultaneous male orgasms, between two men giving each other handjobs in the alley and another pleasuring himself to Carly’s feet, is because they were going for a Best Editing Emmy.
Oh, and to top it all off, the first episodes ends with Uly discovering a man being raped by a human-sized lizard.
The only thing worse than this garbage is how proud they are of it. “The idea of a show like this that is so feminist, so sex positive, and queer representative can be a beacon of hope at this time,” Creator Gregg Araki told LGBT channel Logo’s blog:
“We’ve definitely made so much progress in the 20-25 years and thats[sic] why it’s so important for the show to come out right now. There are so many horrible, terrible people out there right now that are trying to drag people back into the dark ages,” Araki says, referring to the current administration.
Because of the “horrible political situation that we’re in,” Araki told Collider, “I’m so proud of the show, and I’m so proud to put it out there, because I do think the world really needs a show like this now…There’s always been that dark David Lynch-ian element in the show, but that dark cloud of foreboding, ominous doom became a little bit darker after 2016.”
Contributing to their own sense of self-importance, co-writer Karley Sciortino enthused to Collider, “What I’m really proud of about the show is that I feel like we’ve created characters who I don’t feel like exist in television and who I wish I could have seen on TV, when I was younger.”
Sciortino must have been living under a rock since the for the last 15 years because she thinks “we’ve never had another… slutty icon” since Samantha from Sex and the City and called that “sad.” She also bemoaned the lack of “real nuanced, positive portrayals of people in the sex industry on TV.” Yup, that is exactly what’s been missing!
This show makes #SMOD (Sweet Meteor of Death) sound pretty good right about now...
