Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Sex, Explained’ On Netflix, A New Season Of Vox’s Docuseries That’s All About Doin’ It

The Explained series, produced by the data-centric online magazine Vox, breaks down large topics into numbers-driven factoids, but does so with fun narration and snappy interviews. They’ve explained pop culture, consumerism, the brain and more topics. So a series about sex seemed to be inevitable. How do you make numbers sexy?

SEX, EXPLAINED: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: Shots of people kissing passionately, and Janelle Monáe’s voice saying, “If you have sex, what does it look like? And if you fantasize about sex, and we know most of you do, what does that look like?”

The Gist: Anyone familiar with the Netflix/Vox Explained series will know what their episodes are like: They generally use lots of stats and illustrations to make their points, buffeted by cheeky narration, interviews with everyday folks, experts and the occasional celebrity.

This time around, we get five episodes, varying from 17 to 26 minutes in length, about sex. With all of the Explained series, the subject is taken from a scientific and psychological perspective, with lots of studies cited and a minor amount of history discussed. The Sex series starts with a bang, so to speak, and talks about sexual fantasies. Surveys have shown that most of us have sexual fantasies, and when we’re asked about those fantasies, the word “threesome” comes up the most. The episode goes into why we have those fantasies, which are in general about group sex, novelty, and power/control.  Among the experts that are interviewed, we hear from comedian Margaret Cho, who discusses why she practices BDSM, and why it’s a healthy outlet for people who are anxious about their performance.

The second episode is about attraction, but it’s not about why a certain face or body part attracts us. It’s about how we get hard-wired with the preferences we have, whether the preference is around a gender, body type, or personality, or a combination of all of that. Is it genetics? Is it environment? The episode argues that it’s environment, starting from the womb, citing studies that identical twins have had different sexual orientations, among other differences.

Other episodes are about why birth control still doesn’t work the way it should, why people still struggle to get pregnant despite advances in fertility treatments, and why childbirth is so painful and how people are working to make it less traumatic.

Our Take: Like the rest of the Explained series, the Sex series packs a lot of information into a short period of time, much of it stuff you may not have already known about. For instance: Many people know the “sado” part of the term “sado-masochism” comes from the Marquis de Sade. But the show also goes briefly into where the term “masochist” comes from.

The entire sexual fantasies episode talks about what we dare not discuss in public in a way that’s matter-of-fact, and, given Monáe’s playfully sexy narration, even a bit fun. Her narration is a big part of why Sex, Explained is so enjoyable. And while the visuals in the fantasies episode are a bit titillating, the episode balances the playful with the factual.

While we think that all the episodes will play out just like the two we saw, we’re wondering why the series veers from what gets us in the mood to what happens with our reproductive systems. Considering the last three episodes all revolve around reproduction, it feels that they could have been lopped off into a season called Birth, Explained and then we could have had more of a deep dive into sexuality and why we as a species have sex for different reasons than the rest of the animal kingdom does.

Sex and Skin: In a series called Sex, Explained, there’s going to be lots of sex and skin. And the fantasies episode has a lot of it; the other episodes have less but it’s still there.

Parting Shot: Psychologist Lisa Diamond reassures the audience by saying that if you have sexual fantasies that worry or disturb you, don’t be concerned, because they don’t mean much in relation to your overall personality.

Sleeper Star: Diamond, who is in multiple episodes, sports an incredible pair of glasses that makes us want to go out and add them to our collection. Also: The series’ animators bring an impish quality that matches well with Monáe’s playful narration.

Most Pilot-y Line: Nothing we could see.

Our Call: STREAM IT. Sex, Explained isn’t going to give you encyclopedic knowledge of sex and attraction, but it’s entertaining enough and informative enough to watch when you can’t think of something scripted to turn on.

Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, VanityFair.com, Playboy.com, Fast Company.com, RollingStone.com, Billboard and elsewhere.

Stream Sex, Explained On Netflix