Culture

The Scariest Part Of ‘Sex/Life’ Isn’t The Monster Dick, It’s Billie’s Creepy Kid

Hudson haunts my dreams.

by Michelle Rennex  9 July 2021
Sex/Life Hudson creepy kid son

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As expected, Sex/Life is still trending on Netflix at number one.

While it’s not surprising that a show with a sex scene every few minutes is getting a lot of eyes, everyone’s way too busy being distracted by that shower scene that no one is talking about what’s truly the most terrifying part of the horny Netflix show: Billie’s very creepy son, Hudson.

Sure, there are many weird things that happen throughout Sex/Life that are probably worth their own articles. Like, the entire plot of the eight-part series revolving around a grown woman keeping a sex diary about her long-dicked ex that her husband keeps using as a sex guide. Or the fact that Brad literally takes Billie down onto the train tracks to fuck for their first date. How romantic!

Oh, and how can anyone forget Cooper paying $600 for a gym membership just to peep at another man’s dick? Or Billie getting off in her daughter’s nursery while secretly watching her best friend and ex-boyfriend fuck on FaceTime?

There are so many unsettling moments in Sex/Life that I could probably go on all day, to be honest. But there’s just something about Hudson, in particular, that just doesn’t sit right in my soul.

And before you attack me for dragging a child, I am not coming for Phoenix Reich, who plays Hudson. I am sure Phoenix is a very normal child who isn’t creepy at all. I am here to talk about the horror that is the character Hudson — Billie and Cooper’s strange, clingy little four-year-old who spits out the most random, pointless lines at the worst times imaginable.

We first meet Hudson while his mum, Billie, is dreaming about her titties getting sucked by her bad boy ex-boyfriend, Brad. Totally normal stuff. When Billie jolts out of her sleep, we learn that she was busy fantasising about Brad because her baby was just trying to get some milk out of those very same nipples. Less normal stuff.

For some reason, the producers of Sex/Life genuinely thought that introducing Hudson at this very moment, right after the sex scene, was the perfect way to set up the plot of the show. Not normal at all.

“Mommy, you said you were feeding her,” Hudson randomly blurts out, as if he can’t literally see his sister getting fed right in front of him yet still decides to reject what his eyes can see. “No, you’re sleeping.”

Then comes the most terrifying Hudson scene of all, when he tells Billie he wants to show her something and it turns out to be a butterfly in a jar for reasons that are never explained and just work to paint the child out to be a psychopath.

“I want to show you something. Come on, mommy,” he tells Billie, who finds Hudson outside swinging alone staring at his trapped butterfly. “Look, mariposa. It’s a girl. And she’s mine, I love her.”

I guess, if we really stretch to find a link, the butterfly probably represented Billie who needed to be “let free” from Cooper to allow her to “choose” which way to go. But honestly, there could’ve been another way to draw this link without making Hudson this creepy.

Sex/Life Hudson

Hudson, I swear to God if you don’t let that damn butterfly go free, you demon.

In fact, every scene that Hudson is in adds no purpose to the plot of the show.

We could’ve easily done without the unbelievably unnerving and monotonous “you look like a princess, mommy” line or Hudson asking what a divorce was. Really, the Sex/Life story would’ve run the exact same way without any of the children having speaking parts — and I wish they had none because the weirdest part about Hudson was the way Billie reacted any time the kid said anything.

I’ve genuinely never seen a mother be so shocked and amazed that their perfectly capable four-year-old child could put three words together to form a sentence. Is Billie seriously that removed from her real life that she’s that excited that Hudson is unable to communicate using words?

Maybe it’s the fact that everyone’s acting on the show just wasn’t that great, or perhaps that’s just how the scripts were written, but I just don’t get the choices made in this show.

If I’m honest, Sex/Life probably could’ve gone ahead without Hudson being a character in the show at all.

Seriously, what was the point of the storyline about Hudson being afraid to go to school? And why did Ms. Brenda make Billie stay for the entire class when there was no explanation as to why she really had to? Sadly for Hudson, all this scene really did was paint him out to be even clingier and more of mummy’s boy than he already was.

But with a mother like Billie, it’s no surprise that Hudson was written to be this clingy and needy. Billie is the messiest and most selfish character I’ve ever seen. After all, she did “lose” her son while she was busy daydreaming about having sex with Brad, and she valued meeting up with her ex over the possibility of losing her husband and kids.

Regardless of how creepy Hudson may be and how much he scares me, I think we can all agree that Billie has made some pretty shitty moves as a mum and that Sex/Life wasn’t a very good show.

And, at this point, the only way to redeem the story in any way is to make a second season and have it be all about Hudson, his trapped butterfly, and his revenge on the classmates who wouldn’t eat his brie.

You can stream every episode of ‘Sex/Life’ on Netflix now. 

Michelle Rennex is a senior writer at Junkee. She tweets at @michellerennex.