Original Coverage & Source Attribution: collider.com
The Sex Lives of College Girls is the spiritual successor to Sex and the City, bringing its themes of female friendship, sexual exploration, and self discovery to a younger generation. HBO Max traded in a group of 30-somethings living in New York City for a suite of college freshmen attending the fictional Essex College in Vermont. The show was inspired by the east coast collegiate experience of its co-creators Mindy Kaling and Justin Noble.
Premiering in 2021, The Sex Lives of College Girls ran for three seasons before its unexpected cancellation and failed attempt at finding a new home. Still, the unintended series finale ended without any major cliffhangers and finally left its leading ladies in a good spot. The comedy was recently added to Netflix, introducing the series to a new audience. And with its short run, roughly 30-minute episodes, and fairly tied-up ending, The Sex Lives of College Girls is the perfect weekend binge.
What Is ‘The Sex Lives of College Girls’ About?
Set at a fictional private college, The Sex Lives of College Girls centers on four suitemates who are randomly paired together for their freshmen year. The comedy follows the on-campus lives of Leighton Murray (Reneé Rapp), a wealthy legacy student struggling with her own sexuality, Bela Malhotra (Amrit Kaur), a sexually-charged aspiring comedian, Whitney Chase (Alyah Chanelle Scott), the athletic daughter of a politician, and Kimberly Finkle (Pauline Chalamet), the naive scholarship recipient. In Season 3, Gracie Lawrence joins the cast as Kacey Baker, a sexually inexperienced transfer student who followed her boyfriend to Essex College.
A rich and diverse cast of characters rounds out The Sex Lives of College Girls, including One Piece’s Ilia Isorelýs Paulino, St. Denis Medical’s Mekki Leeper, The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina’s Gavin Leatherwood, and Grey’s Anatomy’s Midori Francis. What starts as disparate groups of co-workers, teammates, and dormmates integrate into a larger social circle as Leighton, Bela, Whitney, and Kimberly grow closer.
But perhaps its biggest flaw was its rotating cast, losing at least one major character between each season. Rapp’s Leighton was the worst of these losses, ridding the show of its most compelling character and altering the dynamics at its foundation. Still, the show maintained its quippy writing and emotional depth.
‘The Sex Lives of College Girls’ Is ‘Sex and the City’ for a Younger Generation
The Sex Lives of College Girls and Sex and the City share more than just a penchant for provocative titles. There’s a through line of complex but fully developed female characters. Both shows center around a core group of four friends who are all incredibly distinct. “One thing that they’ve nailed was just like these authentic friendships between women,” Kaling explained to Entertainment Tonight of the comparison. “In that show, they came in as friends already. You know, in our show, we wanted to do four people who would have never been friends with each other and see how they warm up to each other and learn to really depend and rely on them emotionally.”
The Mindy Project alum pointed out that while the show was a fashionable romp on the surface, it dove into more serious topics like cancer, divorce and fertility. And The Sex Lives of College Girls similarly uses humor as a device to dive into more realistic struggles, albeit more relevant to a college student’s stage of life. It delves into topics of sexual harassment and assault, sexual orientation and identity, mental health, financial insecurity, fertility, and breakups. With Sex and the City premiering in 1998, the approach to these topics has evolved.
Setting the dramedy in college made some of their more reckless decisions palatable, spurred by their newfound freedom and responsibility. It featured many classic tropes of college, with a rotating door of love interests, a full schedule of themed parties, extracurricular activities, and changing majors. But while Carrie Bradshaw (Sarah Jessica Parker) prioritized shoes over rent, viewers instead saw Kimberly put herself in a position where she struggles to afford tuition. There’s no Mr. Big (Chris Noth), but there are plenty of taboo relationships throughout the series. And friendships on both shows are put to the test, held together by longevity in Sex and the City and proximity on The Sex Lives of College Girls.
The Sex Lives of College Girls retreads territory already paved by Sex and the City, but it does so in a fresh and engaging way. It finds its core group of friends at an earlier stage in life, building their relationships rather than long-settled into them. While the cast may experience some flux, other side characters get more fully fleshed out and new additions help fill the empty space — a process not dissimilar from an actual collegiate experience. And at its center, four women who initially struggle to relate find inroads and become each other’s support systems, all against a backdrop of a sexy comedy centered on the female experience. Now on Netflix, it’s the perfect weekend watch.
- Release Date
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2021 – 2025-00-00
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Pauline Chalamet
Kimberly Finkle
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Alyah Chanelle Scott
Whitney Chase
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