"Slip" says you're one orgasm away from your truest self
File Under: slept on pop culture
See Mae.
Mae was bored.
Bored Mae made a mistake.
Bored Mae made a mistake that launched her into a multiverse of love, sex, and relationships, all so she could find her way back to herself and the true love she may have lost.
Slip stars my imaginary mentor Zoe Lister-Jones (who also wrote and directed the show), and was a Roku original series where we meet Mae, a museum curator, who we learn sees her life as dull and repetitive. Where some folks would see a career on the rise, a quiet marriage, and an overall vibey life, Mae just wants a change.
Instead of addressing all the things, she…slips into cheating on her husband after an event one night with a musician who has a high bun and can probably touch every ceiling he comes across.
The night kicks off a series of hella unfortunate events for Mae.
She wakes up the next morning and she’s married to the high bun! She’s rich, he’s famous, and they have the most gorgeous Brooklyn apartment I think I’ve seen, but she’s still unhappy. This is the first one of at least five parallel universes she ends up in.
In every universe, she is the only one who remembers her previous life; everything is different—her homes, her partners, her style, and her jobs or lack thereof. The only constant is Gina (Tymika Tafari, who let’s fucking face it is a GOTDAMN STAR OKAY?!), who has been her best friend since she was a child and remains so in every one of these new lives she leads.
Then here’s the kicker—she discovers the only way to launch into a new universe is to orgasm. She has to keep coming to find her way back.
I love Zoe as an actress. Fawn Moscato in New Girl is one of the greatest characters of all time.
I also really, REALLY enjoy Zoe as a writer (minus The Craft), she has a thing with time and memories, and so do I.
Bits of my memories are foggy, and I have lost time both trying to erase and chase them, and in Slip I feel like Mae is doing a lot of the same. Listers’ 2021 film How It Ends, is so underrated and maybe in my top ten films of all time.
It also hits on time and memories. Losing them, finding them, figuring out how to move through them, and all of that is also present in Slip.
Mae is trying her best to comb through the memories of the life and love she thought she didn’t want to figure out how to not just get it back, but to hold onto it.
Time is such a thing; you never know how much of it we have left. And memories have the power to control your feelings—throwing you forward in smiles or backward in tears. Mae uses the power of time and memory and grabs bits from each life in every universe to finally figure out what she needed and wanted in her original one.
Also, it gets gay, and not just like for a smidge of a second but for a whole episode! Emily Hampshire (Schitt’s Creek) plays her wife, Sandy, in one universe, and it’s pretty dope. Without spoiling it, I really like how they capture that queer relationships are full of love, passion, friendship, and flirtation—but that they also have their not-so-perfect moments too.
I just dig how their connection isn’t fraught with trauma, and we see such an expanded world for them that we don’t often see when it comes to lesbian couples on TV.
In each of Mae’s relationships in these worlds, each one isn’t just teaching her a lesson, but it’s trying to force her to reckon with all the feelings that launched her into this whole thing in the first place.
It’s sort of letting her live in the world of “The grass is greener on the other side”, making her look at the issue of comparing her life to others and realizing it may be good for them, but it ain’t for her.
All in all, I feel like Slip is the age-old story of not knowing what you have until it’s gone but told in a really unique and layered way.
It’s about making sure you know you and that you dig you, and wow, I never thought I’d quote RuPaul ever again, but…if you can’t love yourself, how in the hell you gon’ love somebody else?
Where To Watch
so….I don’t think you can without a VPN of some sort (we use this one) BUT when you do get that all situated, you can watch AppleTV (with an itvX add-on) OR on itvX.
It was originally on The Roku Channel but it’s not there anymore! Maybe send Zoe a DM with a link to this post and ask for a copy, it’s actually not uncommon for folks with series no longer available to send links—Dan Perlman of Flatbush Misdemeanors used to do it all the time.
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