American Gigolo
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Well, why do people have sex?
In our final episode ofAmerican Gigolo, we get closer to an answer that remains just out of touch.
We have sex for passion, nostalgia, pleasure, aggression, and distraction.
We have sex for money.
We have sex to feel something different than whatever were feeling now.
And that, of course, can get us into a lot of trouble.
Sometimes the trouble is even why we do it, too.
Its not the sex that got him here, though.
Thats really just a symptom of a problem that, like our original question, still feels distant.
The finale addresses many of the major dramas of the season.
Colin comes home, having been rescued by Isabelle and retrieved from her by Julian.
It barely seems to matter.
With all that out of the way, more resolution is found elsewhere.
Instead, all weve seen is how deeply entitled the two are as a couple.
However, their reasoning for having sex is largely to get it out of their systems, apparently.
Nevertheless, we all just want Sunday to be happy and maybe stop being a cop.
The messiest and most intriguing bits remain in the hands of Lorenzo and Isabelle.
It seems unlikely hed manage to safely operate a vehicle, then suddenly become unconscious.
The latter seems more likely, but the tone is still slightly sympathetic toward Isabelle.
Julian, however, knows none of this.
Its disappointing, really, that we saw so little of this throughout the show.
The show had so much potential to lean into this eroticism, even only superficially.
Why do people have sex?
Why do people hire gigolos?
What does sex mean to a gigolo?
The show ends as though Julian could have picked any illicit profession.
Sex almost had nothing to do with it.
Hustlin
A second season strikes me as unlikely, but there is plenty of room for it.
They made it seem more like a romance than a predatory relationship.
We could have done with a lot more Blondie.
And a lot more nudity.
I spent a lot ofmy first recapthinking about how the show differed from the original Paul Schrader film.
By the second episode, however, it became apparent that comparing the two would be fruitless.
They are entirely different things, despite sharing a name and some similar characters.
It remained best to approach them as separate.
