The Best Sex Scenes Of 2017

10. “Blade Runner 2049” – K & Joi & Mariette
For sheer memorability, perhaps this technologically startling scene should rank higher on our list, but as striking as it is to look at, it is also an encapsulation of the film’s undeniably iffy stance on its female characters, and given that it actually takes place between three non-humans (Mackenzie Davis‘ prostitute is also a replicant) it’s a strangely frictionless affair, physically and thematically. It does however, look amazing, as Replicant K (Ryan Gosling) gets to sort of consummate his sort of love for his holographic sort of lover Joi (Ana de Armas) as she maps herself, in fizzing, ghostly pixels, over a physically manifested woman (Davis’ Mariette), albeit also a synthetic one.

9. “Game of Thrones” – Grey Worm & Missandei
“Game of Thrones” giveth and “Game of Thrones” taketh away — often in the same scene. So while last season #Jonerys fans got the sex scene they’d long been waiting for, out of sheer devilment it seems, the fact that Daenerys is actually Jon’s aunt is confirmed at the very same time. And quite aside from incest, nothing quells the hotness like having it cross-cut with Jon’s creepy sorta-kid-brother-turned-Three-Eyed-Raven scooting psychically about and spying. I mean he’s not actually watching them getting it on, but the way it’s all cut together he might as well be. So for us, this season’s sexiest high point actually came earlier (calm down, we don’t always make the obvious joke around here) when perhaps the shows best developed and most touching love suplot — between the castrated soldier Grey Worm (Jacob Anderson) and Daenerys’ translator and advisor Missandei (Nathalie Emmanuel) came to extremely sexy fruition. Her unflinchingly loving glance at his nethers seals the deal in a moment of maximum vulnerability for the great Unsullied leader, and she is rewarded with what looks like compound interest.

8. “The Deuce” – Candy & her hand
For a show about pimps, prostitutes and pornography in 1970s New York City, David Simon and George Pelecanos‘ “The Deuce” is laudably non-gratuitous in its sex scenes. This is because the focus of their interest most of the time is on the women, and how the often degrading sexual situations they find themselves in affect them and how they respond rather than what it does for the men involved. It’s not about empowerment, exactly — there’s no way around the exploitative nature of what most of the women do — but it is at least about them owning their own experience, however unpleasant, abusive or simply unsatisfying it may be. It’s exemplified in a terrific scene in which the show’s most self-possessed character — entrepreneurial hooker Candy, played by Maggie Gyllenhaal — goes on a regular date and they end up in bed, but after the man is done Candy rolls onto her side and unabashedly, erm finishes herself off, much to his confusion and dismay.

7. “The Handmaid’s Tale” – June & Nick
It’s a show all about sexual power dynamics, raised to nth degree of a whole dystopian future society, so of course sex plays a big role in “The Handmaids Tale.” But it really takes over in episode 5, where not only does the Commander (Joseph Fiennes) break the rules by looking directly at June (Elisabeth Moss) during their “ritual,” his (apparently rightly) paranoid wife (Yvonne Strahovski) maneuvers June and Nick (Max Minghella) into a potentially baby-making encounter and we get a flashback to June’s first shag with her husband Luke (who is himself married to someone else at the time). But the show’s sexiest scene is at the very end where, in contrast to the controlled sterility of their first overseen tryst, June voluntarily goes back to Nick’s under cover of night and climbs onto him, having an orgasm as a result of a rare event in Gilead: a mutually desired sexual encounter. Consent is hot, yo!

6. “The Disaster Artist” – Tommy & Juliette
So maybe this is not exactly the best sex scene, but it certainly is the best recreation of the worst sex scene, as such deserves a slot on our list of superlative getting-it-on moments. And in a way, having James Franco and Ari Graynor reenact the scene in which Tommy Wiseau and Juliette Danielle play Johnny and Lisa having extraordinarily improbable sex, puts it at such a far remove, and includes so many supplemental details not in the original masterwork, that we’re able to uncomplicatedly laugh at it without the accompanying cringing embarrassment that the people we’re watching aren’t at all in on the joke.