It’s Battle of the Sexes time on this week’s Minx, and we’re not just referring to the historic tennis match between Billie Jean King and Bobby Riggs that we get a glimpse at in this episode. There’s also the “Future of Women’s Publishing†panel that Joyce is off to Vegas to participate in, which ends up being a little more dude-centric than that subject might suggest.
But I’m moving too fast. Let me start at the beginning, with Doug and Joyce packed into the back of a leatherette limousine bound for Vegas, where there’s some sort of publishing conference. That’s where Doug’s going to negotiate the international rights to Minx, which he’s apprehensive about given his recent run of professional failures. He’s really taking Joyce’s dislike of Club Minx personally, and rightfully so. He put his whole heart and soul into it, and in hindsight, I do think he put out a show that he thought was feminist and progressive. Maybe Joyce could have worked with him on the script before fully shutting it down, but what’s done is done, and now Doug’s left to ponder whether he’s still got any Bottom Dollar mojo left.
Meanwhile, back in the Valley, Bambi, Shelly, Richie, and Tina are hot off a shoot involving two well-hung dudes playing tennis when talk of that day’s Riggs-King match arises. Bambi is supposed to head off and watch it somewhere, but Tina and Shelly intervene, saying they’d rather watch it at BDP, and a whole tennis party ensues. Naturally, things take a very Minx-y turn when one of the models scoffs at King’s prowess, saying he could return her serve with his hands tied behind his back. Shelly — who had several run-ins with King on the junior-tennis circuit, including one where the icon complemented her skirt — takes him up on the offer. The model emerges with his dick jammed into the tennis racquet’s handle, and the match that ensues is odd, hostile, and even a little painful-looking. Shelly isn’t all that impressed, saying, “You think this is the first time I’ve seen a penis stuffed somewhere it doesn’t belong? C’mon, I’ve got two boys.†She ably wins the volleys, but the model claims an overall victory since the bet was just that he could return the serve.
Unfortunately for that model, though, all that dick tennis has gotten his johnson firmly lodged in the racquet’s handle. I don’t know if that’s possible or how that would even happen, but I liked it all the same, especially once the second model joins him after Richie throws a test his way.
When Doug and Joyce arrive in Vegas, there’s a stack of international offers waiting for them at the reception desk, and Doug tells Joyce that, if he can get the deals done by the end of the night, he’ll head back on the Greyhound to L.A. He’s tired, he says, and Joyce admits she’s been undervaluing his contributions. Minx is going international and it’s all his doing. Minx — and Joyce — need Doug, even if they don’t always realize it.
When Joyce heads for her publishing panel, she’s greeted by a raft of men, including her former boss from (hey, hey!) New York Magazine. He’s gone off and started his own women’s magazine, Gal!, which he says “combines the personal and political, while making it fun.†Joyce smells his copycat antics, to be sure, but is absolutely positive something’s up when her friend turned nemesis Maggie rolls in. She’s the editor of Gal!, it seems, and she’s on the panel alongside Joyce and three old white men.
Speaking of that panel, when we catch a glimpse, it’s already in process and the issue of taking ads from diet-pill manufacturers is up for debate. Joyce says that at Minx they try and meet women where they are and remind them that nothing’s wrong with their bodies or their minds. The old men disagree, saying that women just want to be thin and that diet pills will help them accomplish that. Maggie hops on board with them as well, saying, “Like it or not, women are interested in losing weight.†Joyce jabs back with a quip about how Minx just crossed 3 million subscribers and one of the guys chimes in with a hackish, “Uh-oh, the claws are coming out!†The men are clearly trying to pit them against each other, and it’s gross.
Maggie and Joyce are having none of it, though, and turn on the men, calling them out for being old, having too many men on their mastheads, and even questioning their prowess in the bedroom. They leave the panel feeling victorious, but as Maggie slinks away, Doug creeps in, telling Joyce that because of that back-and-forth, Gal! suddenly has momentum, leaving international buyers thinking that there’s a lower cost alternative to Minx that’s just about as good. As Joyce goes to talk to Maggie about the whole thing she runs into one of the guys from the panel, who alludes to the fact that Maggie told him to churn up some anger and implies that Joyce was in on the whole charade.
Maggie, it seems, played Joyce once again, but season-two Joyce is a new woman and refuses to let her get away with any shit. She sets Doug in motion while she keeps Maggie busy at the poker tables, and, though Joyce ends up going bust, she comes out ahead, with Bottom Dollar acquiring Gal in a catch-and-kill maneuver. Maggie’s out of a job, Minx is going global, and Constance is frothing at the mouth over both Joyce’s and Doug’s business acumen.
She’s also into Tina’s know-how, which we find out when she shows up at the end of the Billie Jean King soirée. Lenny is there too — ostensibly to pick up a very, very drunk Shelly, but he ends up saving the day with his on-the-go dental supplies and portable pharmacy. He gives the guys a couple shots in their dick, and after a good solid berating from Tina, those racquets drop right off. Hallelujah! God, were those guys stupid.
Reflections of Desire
• The poem that inspired the episode’s name and that Joyce quotes when entering the casino is Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s “Kubla Khan,â€Â which also mentions Xanadu.
• The other magazines featured on Joyce’s panel included Healthy Lady and Good Woman, Better Kitchen. Barf.
• Richie’s subplot this episode was that he was covertly shooting spec photos for General Mills’s novelty cereal line. Tina caught wise, though, and informed him that he was in breach of contract, even if he’s in desperate need of a real creative outlet. And spec? Really? Has he learned nothing?
• Shelly, who’s convinced there’ll be a female president in the ’70s, brags to her friends about how they give Lenny’s drugs out to friends at dinner parties. I love those freewheeling swingers!
• Lastly, an apology for last week: I did think about “Graham†being Graham Nash when I was watching the episode, but I thought, Oh, but Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young is an American band, so that doesn’t fit.†Of course, as I now know, Graham Nash is a Brit who just happened to join said American band, ipso facto Joyce’s bedmate last week was meant to be Graham Nash. You go, Joyce!