In the opening scene of Season 2 of Minx, Doug Renetti (Jake Johnson) is having a nightmare. He comes to on a small couch, passed out in his messy office. He’s fallen asleep in full ’70s regalia—a garishly patterned button-down worn wide open, revealing a gold chain tangled in his chest hair. The camera frames Doug’s face as he lights a cigarette, his forehead glistening with sweat. Our dirty boy is back.
The first season of Minx—which streamed on HBO Max before getting canceled last winter and then subsequently resuscitated by Starz—chronicles the rise of a new feminist magazine in the 1970s. When founder and editor Joyce Prigger (Ophelia Lovibond) struggles to find a publisher for her radical rag, pornographer Doug Renetti swoops in with an R-rated adjustment. Together, they come up with Minx, equal parts feminist theory and full-frontal nudity.
Doug, arguably the breakout character of the series, is equal parts screwup and problem-solver, winner and perpetual loser. In a 2022 interview, Jake Johnson told the Cut, “I’m a firm believer that characters can be two things at once.” In the case of this character, those two things are gross and hot. If The Idol’s Tedros Tedros made you doubt the power of scumbag sex appeal, let Doug Renetti lay your fears to rest.
Johnson has built a career around charismatic deadbeats. His most beloved character, New Girl’s Nick Miller, has some Renetti-esque red flags: a sweaty back, a heavy drinking problem, and a categorical fear of doctors, banks, and taxes. Despite all of these would-be dealbreakers, Nick Miller inspired a passionate following, as evidenced by an abundance of headlines like “Nick Miller Is Kind of Gross on New Girl, So Why Do I Think He’s SO Hot?” In a 2020 Bustle investigation into Miller’s lasting appeal, self-proclaimed “VP of the Nick Miller stan club” Alanna Bennett, who is interviewed for the piece, theorizes, “He’s what we wish those men who don’t own curtains or pillowcases would be like in real life but they never are.”
With Doug Renetti, Jake Johnson has taken that well-calibrated disgust-to-desire ratio and turned up the dirtbag dial. Nick Miller might have been messy, but Doug is downright dirty. He’s not just a fixer-upper—he’s the guy who bribes the building inspector to attest that everything’s up to code. His outfits are flammable, he’s always on the verge of bankruptcy, and you can practically smell him through the screen.
But once the haze of cigar smoke clears, Doug’s more attractive qualities start to come through. His sleaze is consistently offset by his competence—his methods might be unsavory, but Doug always gets the job done. Doug’s savvy is emphasized in Season 2 with a running gag about his long list of prescient ideas (a magazine about this new fad: running! A proto–Magic Mike all-male revue!), which are all vetoed by the nonbelievers around him. Competence is an underrated quality in a TV boyfriend, elevating men who really just need therapy—from Nick Miller to Dr. House to The Bear’s Carmy—to crush-worthy status.
Doug’s brand of masculinity is also surprisingly evolved, even by 2023 standards. He’s a sex-positive pornographer who makes content for anyone who’s buying, whether they’re straight, queer, men, women, or just really into feet. He’s confident in his sexuality; he never feels the need to qualify or joke when he’s giving a male model penis notes, or rubbing down his abs with baby oil. And when it comes to his business, Doug hires the best people he can find, regardless of race or gender—Minx’s CFO is a Black woman, and its artistic director is a gay Latinx man. Even though Doug is just being pragmatic, the diversity of his office sets him apart from the rest of the 1970s publishing ecosystem, which Minx accurately depicts as stale, male, and white. And while Doug has an ego, he also knows when it’s time to step aside and let the women work. At the end of Season 1, he even goes so far as to surrender Minx over to Joyce, essentially admitting that she’s the best woman for the job.
By the beginning of Season 2, which premieres on July 21, it’s clear that the once-fledgling magazine has gone mainstream. An old friend and fellow pornographer tells Doug that Minx’s success has changed him, accusing Doug of getting fancy. While it’s true that Joyce and Doug are now moving in more rarefied spaces, we’re quickly reassured that Doug is still a greasy scammer at heart. He cements his first major business deal of the season by slipping a man named Mikey Two-Fingers a wad of cash in return for a purebred Afghan hound, then sneaking into a high-end dog show to schmooze an investor.
This new, “fancy” Doug is clearly just an elevated version of his former self: an unscrupulous capitalist who’s all about his business. (He literally named his company Bottom Dollar.) At a Minx-sponsored screening of Deep Throat, Doug arrives on the red carpet in a blue velvet tuxedo with tails, wielding a rhinestone-encrusted walking stick. He’s wearing orange-tinted aviators indoors and smoking a giant cigar, an entire pawn shop’s worth of gold rings on every finger. But it doesn’t take long for the night to lose its luster, and for Doug to revert to his true form. First, the movie reels are missing, forcing Doug to have it out with the mob distributor. Then the cops show up, and he has to persuade them not to shut the whole thing down. Meanwhile, Joyce is off trying to convince Joan Didion to write a Minx column. A few more crises later, Doug’s night ends with him limping, disheveled, and cleaning dishes at the afterparty. He has pissed off his girlfriend and ruined his outfit, but also, against all odds, pulled off an impossible event.
This depiction of a leather pants–wearing pornographer and equal-opportunity employer may not be totally realistic, but who cares? After all, Minx—both the fictional magazine and the television series—is in the business of fantasy. A Minx magazine photo shoot always presents the reader with a dream scenario that she can insert herself into, whether that’s a female vigilante coming across two denuded cowboys or a rock star giving his girlfriend a tender massage. With Doug Renetti, Minx the show has conjured up its own centerfold: a sleazy-sexy businessman who consistently defers to the smart, powerful women around him. Minx says that we can have it all: Joan Didion, dick, and Jake Johnson with his shirt open to his bellybutton, supporting female voices and doing the dishes.
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