For quite a while, Tiresias was the only being who'd experienced sex both as a man and a woman. If you recall, for killing two copulating snakes, he was transformed into a female for seven years by the goddess Hera. (Having a vagina was a punishment back then.) Not satisfied, Hera later blinded the gent, which seemed rather harsh, although it did gain him a major speaking part in Oedipus Rex.
Now, 2449 years later, Revry, the self-proclaimed "queer virtual cable TV network," is showcasing a New-Zealand-based situation comedy, Life is Easy, that explores what it’s like to suddenly have a non-surgically transformed crotch. Although we're not quite sure where J.K. Rowling stands on this concept, we've found the end result, while not quite on the same laugh level as Schitt$ Creek and Little Britain, often quite amusing with a genuine knee-slapper now and then.
The first 15-minute episode begins in 2006, the year Google purchased YouTube, Pluto lost its planet status, and a whale swam up the River Thames.
Far away from all of that activity is Curtis (Cole Jenkins), an awkwardly closeted Aukland teen, who's standing on a school bench to peep into the boy's shower room while pleasuring himself. Suddenly, Jamie-Li (Chye-Ling Huang), a rather loud young lass with purple hair and a garbage bag full of used tampons, catches him in the act. Peeping in herself, she finds the sight before her rather amusing.
However, the showering lads suddenly appear so to avoid the wrath of the queer-bashing bullies, the pair fake the act of cunnilingus. Afterwards, they discover they have the same birthday. What a basis for a long-lasting friendship!
Jump head 13 years to their 25th birthday. On that early morning, Jamie-Li phones her pal.
Curtis: Can I help you?
Jami-Lie: Hi! I want to report a crime. My pussy got murdered last night.
Curtis: Sorry for your loss.
Jaimie-Li: I'm not.
Curtis: That good, was he?
Jamie-Li: All right.
This lively, self-centered couple are a pair who neither watch their words -- nor the words of others.
Jamie-Li, who now works for an advertising company, has grown up to be a lively, caustic, serial fornicator with a loving, hard-working mom and a "dead" Asian father.
Curtis, a lux furniture salesman with a very fem, touchy-feely boss, is finally out of the closet himself. Saddled with a sexy, sane, perfect boyfriend, our hero, still a bit uptight, really wants to queen it up and possibly not be as monogamous as he is.
[Please note that if you put the two lead characters' names together you get the star of Halloween.]
Well, due to a metaphysical occurrence on their B-day night and some drugs and alcohol, they wake up in each other's body the next morning in a swimming pool. You can imagine how unsettling it is to open your eyes and see yourself gesticulating at yourself.
After the initial shock and fruitlessly trying to find out if there's any info on the internet for folks whose bodies have just been swapped, Jamie-Li and Curtis start exploring their new physicalities.
Curtis (in Jamie-Li's body): Will you stop touching my penis?
Jamie-Li (in Curtis's): It's so squishy. Where do you put it?
Curtis: Keep your legs apart. . . . Stop touching my penis.
Jamie-Li: Well, you can touch my vag.
Soon the two are respectively reaching their first female and male orgasm. After that, of course, the complexities mount, the couplings compound, and eventually each changes the other's life from haircuts, to jobs, to parental interactions.
What the show especially gets right is the inclusion of numerous Asian characters in major roles, the delineating of what it is to be a woman or queer man in modern Kiwi society, and the slow realization of how we are leading our lives, a perception that can only be perceived by stepping outside of ourselves and viewing what've we've been doing through others' eyes.
There is, of course, an over-the-topness to the whole series that is co-written by its two affable stars, who apparently know they own strengths. Maybe a little bit too much. There's a whole lot of mugging that might have bore more fruit if restrained an iota. However, balancing the scenes that are too loud, too busy, and somewhat obvious are the many on-the-up-and-up moving moments that argue quite persuasively that "life is not all that easy."
(Life is Easy can be found on Revry Queer TV (https://revry.tv/), which is free, unless you want a connection to all of the channel's content. Then you have to shell out a little bit.)