The Girlfriend Experience or Nah?

Or Nah? is a feature where we watch and review the first episode of a new TV show. We’ll let you know if it’s worth checking out. As always, these reviews are the opinion of the reviewer, but we’ll try to adequately explain why you should or shouldn’t give the show a chance and provide shows for comparison.

The Girlfriend Experience | S1E1 - Entry | Starring: Riley Keogh, Paul Sparks, Briony Glassco, Andy McQueen, Kate Lyn Sheil

Whats It About?

A law school student decides to use her intelligence and sexuality in order to pay of her debts and make money.

What Happens

Christine is a big-city law student with not enough money in the bank. The series wastes no time in showing that Christine is very comfortable with her sexuality. In the first scene, she makes her lover watch as she pleasures herself, then promptly prepares to leave. His heartfelt, “I like you,” is met with a short “Thank you,” as she walks out the door. I hope most women experience this at least once, because there is a lot of power in the ownership of your own sexuality. However, Christine’s confidence comes with its own dangers when dealing with powerful men.

As she navigates through her daily life, we learn she has a variety of different personalities and the friends to fit them. She can be cold, dismissive, intelligent, and sometimes witty, but the one thing we never witness is fear.

The subtlety of Christine’s sexuality is evident; she looks like the girl next door, but when she meets with her Johns we see a shrewd negotiator.  She’s their priest, their girlfriend, and their buddy with a side of ass that comes with no emotion.

Verdict

Although some scenes could be considered predictable, somehow the show does not flounder under the weight of that. I will continue to watch The Girlfriend Experience just because it has a female protagonist who is self aware and I like her. She’s trying to monetize herself in a world that is dominated by an extreme sense of patriarchy.  Seeing how Christine ends up disrupting that is going to be interesting to watch.