Main cast: Perry King (Doug Warren), Guylaine St-Onge (Alexandra), Liliane Clune (Cynthia), and Page Fletcher (The Hitchhiker)
Director: Ryszard Bugajski
Since a pornographer is involved in the story of Studio 3X, I’d imagine the 3X is a way to bypass folks on TV that may balk at the sight of “XXX”.
Perry King, older but still hot, is Doug Warren, a TV talk show host that specializes in sensational news. He wants to do an expose on “violent sex videos” and how it drives viewers to commit “violent sex acts”—his words, not mine; I’m not the one VHS-shaming here, so don’t come at me, people—so he approaches posh pornographer Alexandra to, er, solicit some materials for his show.
This episode is truly bizarre. It tries to make fun of religious fundamentalists that picket about anything sexual that is on TV, but it also has Doug haunted by nightmares of him handcuffing his lovers to the bed stand while having sex, because yes, that is the epitome of horror in the bedroom. Are these people really Hollywood types?
In the end, our protagonist is driven loony by his exposure to deviant sex acts, like the use of crops and handcuffs, that he goes all homicidal and forgets to shave.
So, sex outside of the missionary position is bad, I guess? Since protesting about sex on TV is also bad, what exactly is this episode trying to tell me again?
Still, there is one scene of Perry King walking slowly with his crotch facing the camera, and I don’t think he’s wearing anything underneath those dress pants. I’m just saying. There’s also a scene of him in the ugliest pair of briefs ever, and yet only Mr King can make that scene so damn fine to look at.
It’s a shame that this episode isn’t in the early two seasons, because then they would have had all the flesh one can expose on HBO as humanly possible, given the plot. Alas, as it is, one gets mostly PG-13 stuff here—nothing that comes close to the raunch and sleaze of those early seasons. Damn it, Perry King had no qualms about showing everything in the past, so his pretty man flesh is wasted all covered up here, ugh.
Yes, this is another episode that gets one oogie more than it deserves, because the leading man is hot. Well, can you blame me? I need all the good things I can get out of an episode of this damned show, and there are so few good things to be had in the first place.
