SEXIFY 2. On a Journey to the 21st Century [REVIEW]
Honest conversations about intimacy, fetishes, needs in the sexual sphere are still topics in public discourse that we cannot touch. Sexify once again boldly breaks down the barriers built over decades in the Polish mentality and speaks with the voice of the young directly to the most sensitive defects of our poor knowledge of our own sexuality and sometimes considerable reluctance to change. The second season of the great Netflix hit is a kind of shock therapy for a society that clings to the rules that were guided by years back, while the world is moving forward, and teenagers entering adulthood need in entertainment at least a substitute of what in a slightly more favorable reality could meet at school. So what will the dream team of the creators of the groundbreaking sex app surprise us with this time? Will Sexify 2 electrify viewers as much as it did in 2021?
The starting point of the second season is the moment that Monika (Sandra Drzymalska), Natalia (Aleksandra Skraba) and Paulina (Maria Sobocinska) have been waiting for for many months spent in the heat of creating, combinatorics and fundraising – the revolutionary Sexify app finally is to hit the market. Like every start-up, young entrepreneurs encounter many obstacles on their way. The pompous premiere of an innovative product is interrupted by a sudden power outage, the launch ends with one big flop, and this is only the beginning of the end of their great dream. The girls quickly fall into exorbitant debts, for which they are forced to look for additional sources of financing for their original project. So the marketing ice queen, Malgorzata Debska (Izabela Kuna) enters the game – seemingly a feminist and a successful woman, in fact just waiting to buy Monica shares in the company and completely take over her “child”. In the background, we also have symbolic returns to the threads and characters from the previous season, such as the intrigue that Rafal (Kamil Wodka) commits as revenge on Natalia, and which ultimately becomes almost the key to the final sequence. The new season is a stage of trial and error for the main characters, both in professional life and, perhaps even more so, in private matters – apart from a whole lot of logs thrown at the feet of the business, Natalia is completely unable to bring herself to a sincere dialogue with her boyfriend Adam (Jan Wieteska), Monika maneuvers between feelings for former love and a chance for a new opening in the form of a handsome Malgorzata’s assistant Maks (Dobromir Dymecki), and Paula tries to heal the pain after parting with Mariusz (Piotr Pacek) with fleeting romances on Tinder. Each of them has its own separate life goal, but they have one thing in common – the desire to improve the sex life of Poles for the better thanks to Sexify and its new companion, Sexiguy. And regardless of the cost – this time they will do absolutely everything to finally achieve their goal.
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The quintessence of Sexify’s success is not its originality or visionary concept – already in the first season we got tired of counting references and inspirations from works such as Sex Education or Sex Life of College Girls. What brought the Polish title to the very top was its breakthrough on the domestic market, which has never seen such open talk about sex in any previous series. In that respect, the second season lives up to its predecessor – we had a copulatory before, sex in a church this time, and a male equivalent of Sexify. For the writers of the production, taboo topics simply do not exist, and each young audience is almost worth its weight in gold. This is the first series so directly aimed at the young adult audience, the continuation of which may not be so original and certainly does not match the quality of the first season, but it keeps class and constantly arouses interest, which, as we can guess, brought success to the creators of the series from the very beginning.
"Sexify" is imperfect, but still unbeatable
From the first episode, you can feel the difference between the humor, dialogues and acting of the first installment of the work, and a slightly more cheesy version of the original hit. There is a clear lack of a unified idea for the further fate of the girl trio, but this does not distract us from following their vicissitudes. The jokes may not be of the first freshness, in some situations the creators even follow the path of absurdity after absurdity, creating stories that are more and more crazy and going after the gang. However, it is impossible not to notice that it is the controversies that build the excitement. One could complain about many completely unrealistic or sensitive issues, such as the suspiciously luxurious headquarters of a company of young bankrupts, which from episode to episode becomes more and more grotesque and irritating character of Rafal or the senseless throwing of threads from the first season only for a familiar face to appear on the screen for a minute. Both the plot and the implementation of the second season are not inventive, but they are enough to have fun with a simple and zero-one humor. After all, we do not start a series like Sexify with the thought of a serious production studying a socially important topic, but with the need to relax, relax and have fun with a geek comedy that is extremely rare on the Polish market.
Taking into account such great expectations and pressure that hung on the first title of this type in Poland from the very beginning, Sexify still proves itself on the market as a scarce product and worth knowing. JIMEK’s addictive soundtrack, full of strong sound effects, cinematography vibrant with warm colors and expressive costumes are other elements that built the reputation of the work of Piotr Domalewski and Kalina Alabrudzinska and, not without reason, brought it international recognition. After all, not only Poles notice the social revolution in one of the most conservative countries in Europe, but the success of the creators of Sexify is appreciated by audiences and critics from around the world. Who knows, maybe the specific, sometimes infantile sense of humor and sometimes slightly crooked dialogues are just a minor side effect that is worth turning a blind eye to? Ultimately, Sexify is a series with potential, surprisingly not squandered, and as the plot develops, spreading its wings more and more, to take us far above the clouds again in the finale.
Despite minor stumbles, Sexify is a breakthrough and an undisputed winner among Polish proposals for young adults. Once again, it takes us to the reality that one day we would like to experience, to openness about the problems of both female and male (this season a bit more in-depth) sexuality. Although its simplicity, theatricality and square build of some characters can sometimes irritate, the second season is similarly attractive and hypnotic entertainment, which over time will defiantly force the public to dialogue about sex, which we are still afraid of.
It is not without reason that we still consider Sexify to be a kind of cultural shock and sexual awakening – after all, there is no valuable competition on the Polish market. And this is what we hope to change in anticipation of the third season of production.
Mary Kosiarz