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The Girlfriend Experience S2 |OT| Soderbergh, Friel, Ejogo, Korine - Sundays 9/8c

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- Guardian: The Girlfriend Experience: a welcome return for TV's most audacious drama
With Kerrigan taking charge of DC, Seimetz takes on New Mexico and while a similar insidious tone persists, there's an opposing style at play. The score is more traditional yet still puts us on edge while we're afforded a richer color palette away from the unsettlingly gray uniformity of the city. It's rather like watching two artful indie thrillers in chapters, each with similar themes but strikingly different.

It's rare to see a show filled with such mysterious complexity, stridently defying the conventions that would traditionally make a show seem initially binge-worthy. It's a cliffhanger-free zone. We're not desperate to see more because of button-pushing plot machinations but instead we want to see how far the characters will go and whether, through action rather then exposition, we can uncover more about their fractured psychology. The Girlfriend Experience burrows itself under the skin and stays there, a tantalizing example of less being more, and with its dark, daring second season, the show reclaims its place as the most compelling drama on TV.
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- Slant: The Girlfriend Experience: Season Two
Altogether, the second season of The Girlfriend Experience is knottier and more surprising, though somewhat less satisfying, than the first. But this is the sort of experimentation and inconsistency that push television beyond the dictates of delivering narrative by the yard. Like Joe Swanberg's Easy and David Lynch's Twin Peaks: The Return, The Girlfriend Experience approaches television less as a serialized novel than as a baroque concept album, allowing for riffs that celebrate harmony as well as disharmony.
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- Indiewire:'The Girlfriend Experience': Reinvented Season 2 Is Exquisitely Captivating
Friel and Krause have fewer lifelines to lean on than Ejogo; good as they are, as sovereign and as gripping as they are, she's spellbinding. We can't take our eyes off of her. Maybe that's partly the effect of Seimetz's approach to her side of "The Girlfriend Experience," which differs so radically from Riley Keough's plot in season one that at times we feel like we're watching another show. This might not sound complimentary, but in fact the ways in which Kerrigan and Seimetz have not only expanded on but reinvented "The Girlfriend Experience" are what make this season so exquisitely captivating. It's the same show on a molecular level, right down to its escorts, but its bones have changed and its surface is altogether new. [A]
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- Collider: 'The Girlfriend Experience' Season 2 Review: Starz's Dark Political Drama Returns Better Than Ever
What makes the second season of the series so much more knottier and riveting is that the struggle to maintain both an inner life and the outward image of a unique, trustworthy personality is more on the surface, not nearly as elusive as it was when Riley Keough's lawyer-escort was at the center. By separating their creative goals, Kerrigan and Seimetz seem to more clearly communicate their ideas in their episodes and storylines but also bounce off of each other in concert between their halves. As a result, they have molded one of the greatest seasons of television that 2017 has produced thus far.

5 out of 5
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- Variety: 'The Girlfriend Experience' Season 2: Lodge Kerrigan and Amy Seimetz on Pushing the Boundaries of TV Even Further
 
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- Variety:TV Review: 'The Girlfriend Experience,' Season 2
This is not to say that "The Girlfriend Experience" has lost its magic entirely. The series is still directed and produced beautifully, with a soundscape so precise and intimate that it is haunting and immersive in a way little else on television can even approach. (See also: "Twin Peaks: The Return.") The two halves have wildly different strengths. "Bria" is cinematically stunning, with a few sequences that are going to be hard to forget anytime soon. "Erica & Anna" is a much more straightforward story, with a chilly aesthetic that makes "House of Cards" look upbeat. But the relative opacity of "Bria's" story beats — and the oddly pat metaphors of "Erica & Anna" — left me with the wish that these two well-matched directors might, you know, collaborate.
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It does not escape notice that in attempting this bifurcated season, Kerrigan and Seimetz have essentially created two episodic films, about three hours long each, under the guise of television. When I spoke to them, they both affirmed to me how much they wanted to push past the expected definitions of television with this format. That's fine, of course. But the takeaway of Season 2 suggests that perhaps Seimetz and Kerrigan would have rather made films about the topics that really interest them, without the constraints of being tied to sex work. TV does require some continuity. That's not always the most creative option, but as "The Girlfriend Experience's" many clients remind us, it doesn't have to be particularly creative to be satisfying.
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- Indiewire:'The Girlfriend Experience' Review: Season 2 Tells Two Separate Stories with One Exceptional Punch
The latter story is certainly the stronger of the two, but "The Girlfriend Experience" does exactly what it sets out to do: Chronicling these women either as aggressively as the world around them, like Kerrigan does, or with an open mind and unpredictable destination, in Seimetz's section, makes for compelling and oh-so-provocative mini-seasons. Bolstered by more strong turns, especially from Friel, this remains a moving, bold experience worth sharing.

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Season premiere today:
Season 2: episode 1 "Leverage" (Kerrigan)

Erica Myles, a finance director at a super PAC, enlists an escort, Anna Garner, in an attempt to gain a secret. Bria Jones, a former GFE, enters the witness protection program in order to escape an abusive relationship.

Season 2: episode 2 "Admitting" (Seimetz)

Bria Jones, a former GFE, enters the witness protection program in order to escape an abusive relationship. When she is relocated to a small town in New Mexico, she finds the GFE world beckoning her once again.
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- Promo for this week's episodes
 
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New episodes today:
Season 2: episode 3 "The List"

Anna delivers a piece of incriminating evidence against Novak, while her relationship with Erica becomes personal. Erica is contacted by a powerful financier.

Season 2: episode 4 "Eggshells"

Despite orders to lay low, Bria meets a new client, triggering Ian's suspicions.
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- Promo for this week's episodes
 
KingKong

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Oct 27, 2017
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I'm finding the Kerrigan episodes to be flat out bad, just a copy of the first season with a worse storyline but the Seimetz are very good
 
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New episodes today:
Season 2: episode 7 "Moral Inventory"

Still miserable that she had to be stuck in a drab house with a menial job, Bria was given a light at the end of the tunnel through her recent pre-trial testimony.

Season 2: episode 8 "Donors"

Erica weighs an illicit deal that would bring Right To Act an enormous donation, while Anna agrees to sexually subjugate herself to Erica not knowing that Erica has emotionally re-engaged with Darya and Novak uses the compromising information found about Sandra to his advantage.
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- Promo for this week's episodes
 
RatskyWatsky

RatskyWatsky

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Oct 25, 2017
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Just finished the Erica/Anna storyline, which is the only one I've been following because I wanted to focus on one storyline at a time (I'll binge the Bria episodes soon). I thought it was just okay -started out fairly strong but got progressively worse. I liked how Erica initially appeared to have her shit together but turned out to be a complete disaster who had no idea what she was doing. I think they were aiming for the opposite arc for Anna, but her becoming super clingy to the point of trying to trap Erica into a relationship with a baby she tricked one of her clients into putting inside of her, and then stalking her after being rejected, kind of ruined it for me. And then there was Erica's cruel, bizarrely cartoonish ex, who added a whole other layer of wtfness to the mix that I wasn't a fan of.

Also, I get that it was like a metaphor or something, but it bugged me that literally every room in every building was almost completely empty. I think Kerrigan could have achieved the same effect with a more realistic, yet still minimalist and sterile, set design.
 
RatskyWatsky

RatskyWatsky

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Oct 25, 2017
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Renewed for season 3!

Written and directed by Anja Marquardt (She's Lost Control), season 3 is set amidst the London tech scene where a young female neuroscientist begins to explore the transactional world of The Girlfriend Experience, only to find herself deep inside the Uncanny Valley with the relationships she creates.
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Chance Hale

Chance Hale

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Oct 26, 2017
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Season 3 is pretty odd and seems to take the cold protagonist to the extreme.

Shame this show never picked up at all here or elsewhere really? Glad it got a 3rd season in the first place
 
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