User Reviews

Season 1 was a well written, well acted character study of Christine Reade, who transforms from smart, "good girl", from a good family, who does well in law school, receives an internship at a prestigious firm but winds up a high priced call girl. Christine was not a particularly likeable character but her transformation from one world into another was spellbinding.

Season 2 consisted of two unrelated half hour weekly stories. It seems creators Kerrigan and Siemtz wanted to go in a very different direction but were stuck with the escort theme. Kerrigan did the "Erica and Anna" portion of GFE primarily about Erica, an unethical political operative involved in arranging illegal campaign contributions. Anna was the call-girl in the story. Erica uses Anna to blackmail a political opponent and inexplicably decides she must have a relationship with Anna. Anna appears somewhat unstable and the two of them alternate between pleasing and hurting one another. We learn nothing about either character. The series is essentially about the political intrigue and less about the characters, none of which have any redeeming value or are worth caring about.

Siemetz did the "Bria" portion of GFE. Bria is a former escort now in the witness protection program. We learn that she met a mob boss as an escort and married him, presumably to live a life of wealth. She was aware of his violent criminal activity and admitted to participating in some crimes. Now she feared he would find her and kill her before she could testify against him. Unhappy in her new, tedious life as well as afraid, she secretly finds a few wealthy men to escort as well as using sex to ensure the married marshal assigned to protect her remains interested. The only thing "Erica and Anna" and "Bria" have in common is that there is not a single character in either series worth caring about.

For starters, the plot for Season 3 sucked. As a stand alone premise, sure the story has some merit, but when your audience demands sex, nudity, sex, exotic tones and even more sex, the last thing you want to do is showcase something plastic and fake like season 3. Most of the season was an ongoing tease. While Season 1 and Season 2 dives right into the erotic overtones of the stories plot, Season 3 drags for multiple episodes until you start to get any shock or substance that resembles the first two seasons. Even worse, the entire season teases us with Julia Goldani Telles, who is unable to carry the show. Although beautiful, her performance is empty. Unlike Riley Keough and Louisa Krause, Telles does not make herself vulnerable to her character. Keough and Krause both took on this raw subject matter which is the reason why the Girlfriend Experience has an audience. Instead, Telles spends most of the storyline talking when the audience demands action. Yes, the sex element is the selling point but the meaningless sex that Season 3 showcased is only physical. The previous seasons captured a real, raw and vulnerable action that deserved its audience. Season 3 was as fake and the cyber story plot and equal with his performances. Everyone acts like mannequins with no real emotion. Besides some moments of eye candy, Season 3 has nothing to offer its audience.

I gave this series a 5 on the ratings list. The first season was a ten. It was everything that it could be. Riley Keough was a treat. The subject matter was what I expected. Season two I rated a three. Nothing there to hold my attention. The actors, AND acting was less than acceptable. Season three, through 6 episodes I've rated a two. It's no longer about a "girlfriend experience". It's about businesses interested in money, and artificial intelligence. The name no longer has any relevance to the story line. On top of that it is EXTREEMLY boring. If they had called it "AI and Pheromones In The Time of Sexual Ambiguity" and had better writers, it might have received a better reception. I added my ratings, and divided them by 3 for the three seasons, and the result was 5. It's a flawed ratings system. Each season should be separately rated.

I never saw the previous film nor read the book so I went into this series not knowing much about it, and being totally ignorant to it all. What I finally figured out about the Girlfriend Experience is that it was just that, a young woman pushing herself off as giving men that GF experience while trying to find out who she was and wrestling with her self with loving it beyond her advertised GF experience and conflicted by it.

The main character, who goes by as many different names as she would like them to be out of body personas, will come across as a cold, mechanical, bland; and that is the beauty of this. It is played to this type of perfection by Riley Keough. I expected the complete opposite type of acting from the subject matter, but this is so raw, so "everyday", that you have to take notice, and she is doing it very well with quiet enthusiasm - if you were to embrace such a thing - she has in this role.

Christine is an Ivy league trained smart woman, who does...this. Why? She does knows why. We're trying to understand why, and she is trying to understand and do at the same time; it is the psychological and moral battle she is going through which is producing a cold exterior as a calculating call girl emerges.

For those seeking a titillating romp through the woods type of thing, this is not what this is. This is cold. It can be unemotional. This is a 'nothing' is happening when 'everything' is happening around this character. She is trying to sell herself as a GF Experience when it is clear (at least to me) she's a paid call girl. That 'GF Experience' is all she has to justify to herself that she's be "above" that. Until reality hits.

The character cannot shut out the real world around her. And the real world around her is unflinching, judgmental, torrent and easily brands her as the thing she feels she is not. But she is. We are watching her struggle footing between both worlds as she is clearly drawn to one. She's comfortable with it, it pleasures her and she uses that as a reason to separate the two. The production is gray, sterile - not warm at all -- so you are to feel her and her world and her turmoil. The camera angles are deliberately designed not to excite because although the character says she likes this and you would assume to see her liking this, it's still mechanical, boring, lifeless. Just as she is.

This is also showing us how society doesn't buy into her GF Experience ideal. So, the character needs to retaliate by trying to use her ivy league brain against her obvious pleasures. Who knows if it will work or if it will just put a blanket over it while the character learns maybe there isn't a difference between her GF Experience and calling it as it is perceived.

This little series is done really well based on those items mentioned above. For those wanting more on the super-sexy side, this isn't the program for you. It is a program with a character trying to be what she wants and what society makes of it all. You leave this with the conclusion that her life is her own and whatever she decides to do, it is what she has to answer to whether it satisfies her pleasures or not. She is learning that it is not her own closed little world to manipulate, to live in without preconceptions and judgments by her clients, the social internet, by her peers -- and by us, the viewer.

Season One of GFE was an unexpected delight. Riley Keogh gave a brave uninhibited performance. Lodge Kerrigan and Amy Seimitz were the show runners and brought enough difference to the subject matter that the tension in the narrative benefited from it. In Season Two Kerrigan and Seimitz are each given their own story line over five episodes and it was an epic failure because each were now unrestrained in their vision and it did not work.

The series went dark for several years and a year ago it was announced that Julia Goldani Telles would star in Season Three. I watched her in The Affair playing the daughter. I thought she would bring a vulnerability to the part which would be exciting bringing something less than Keogh's assured badass approach. However, they decided that she could play an in control modern woman doing sexual research as a call girl to aid her professional career developing an AI program.

Telles performance is cringe-worthy especially in the two episode. She has a scene with a new client and does a horribly mannered attempt to look coy. Question by client, no answer, look to the right. Question by client, no answer, look down and to the right. The interaction ends with her crawling on the floor to deliver the worst simulated oral sex act I've seen in recent times. To be fair, the script does give her much to work with but we knew that from the over the top pretentious opening scene with the interviewer. As being disappointed by Season Two and waiting years for Season Three, I am leaving majorly disappointed.