Image via Complex Original
34.
Just 20 years ago, this topic would be moot. Sex scenes in TV consisted of Bill and Claire Huxtable winking at each other. But over the past few years, as TV has enjoyed a golden era the likes of which it's never seen before, many of its previous boundaries have fallen away as well (these two developments are probably not mutually exclusive). We've come a long way from Dennis Franz's bare ass on NYPD Blue making headlines—now season premieres feature a bare ass on the receiving end of some trendy foreplay, fam.
But it's deeper than pay-cable shows merely running wild without an FCC chaperone. TV across all sub-genres, from HBO all the way down to ABC, has gotten, well, hotter. And more importantly, equality is at an all-time high. Sex scenes from a woman's perspective, same-sex scenes, Transparent...the landscape (whether network, cable, or Internet) is extremely lit on some Kinsey shit.
It's a markedly less prude world we're living in these days, and the gods behind your favorite series have been quick to respond. Suddenly, watching TV with the family is now a cause for a lot more uncomfortably awkward moments. And while the angry letters from lame parents keep pouring in, the wave shows no signs of stopping. Series like dearly departed Californication or True Blood, and American Horror Story are gaining reputations for wild sex that they try to top (sorry) with each passing season. Meanwhile the rise of Internet original series has created an even more lawless approach to censorship chill. It's a great time to be an adult watching TV, bruh. These are some of the best sex scenes to grace the tube in recent years.
33.Josh gets extra close with his babysitter in Transparent
Episode: Pilot (Season 1, Episode 1)
Everyone younger than 40 on Transparent is having sex pretty much all the time, often with the wrong people. The younger Pfeffermans—Ali (Gaby Hoffmann), Josh (Jay Duplass), and Sarah (Amy Landecker)—love fucking around. Each of their affairs is filmed with an attention to detail, an innate sexiness meant to get us to identify with their (frequently non-relatable) problems, particularly when it involves something like Josh sleeping with his former babysitter Rita, a coupling that's at once deeply uncomfortable and oddly kind of sweet. In the show's pilot, we find Josh at Rita's apartment, practically a sexual supplicant to her. Though their long-term relationship began with a clear abuse of power, we don't know anything about that so early in the series. And showrunner Jill Soloway's direction of the pilot manages to make it enticing, mysterious, and intimate all at the same time. —Eric Thurm
32.Buffy and Angel achieve true happiness in Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Episode: "Surprise" (Season 2, Episode 13)
Buffy The Vampire Slayer was rarely afraid to make uncomfortable aspects of adolescence all too literal through its vampires, werewolves, and assorted demons, even when the result was almost impossible to watch. Case in point: Buffy (Sarah Michelle Gellar) losing her virginity to her vampiric beau Angel (a pre-Bones David Boreanaz) midway through the show's second season. Spoiler alert: "perfect happiness" makes Angel lose his soul and revert to being an evil vamp, setting up Buffy's ex to be the bad guy for half of season two. It's an effective treatment of a dude sleeping with a girl and never calling her again, but what makes it even sadder is that the sex scene is shot to be moving and sensual, like the least corny after-school special ever. Buffy and Angel are really in love, and it's a shame that for the Slayer that sex has consequences. —Eric Thurm
31.
30."Mutual oral" goes down in The Americans
Episode: "Comrades" (Season 2, Episode 1)
Philip (Matthew Rhys) and Elizabeth Jennings (Kerri Russell) have one of the strangest marriages on television; the couple are agents for the KGB, posing as a normal American couple. So their relationship is, in a sense, strictly professional before the beginning of the series sees Philip and Elizabeth growing closer and becoming increasingly more like a real couple, one that's arguably closer than similar pairs married for some years. By the beginning of the second season, Philip and Elizabeth are, more or less, invested in their marriage, something represented in the season premiere by Paige catching them engaged in "mutual oral sex." There are other scenes on The Americans with more explicit sex (especially between Philip's alter-ego Clark and his second wife, Martha), but this one is the most important. 69-ing is almost never shown on TV, and its depiction on The Americans is both a perfect way of capturing the state of the Jennings' marriage and some of the most realistic TV sex without descending into hackneyed tropes of awkwardness. Philip and Elizabeth aren't porn stars, but they're comfortable with their bodies, and that's pretty remarkable on its own. —Eric Thurm
29.Alison and Cole rev up on the hood of their car in The Affair
Episode: "1" (Season 1, Episode 1)
As Brian Williams knows all too well, our memories are unreliable. Sometimes what we remember is an exaggeration of the events that actually happened. Memories can be the manifestation of wishful thinking. The Affair is a show about the fragility of memory, and also the ways in which we consciously or subconsciously distort our memories to help us tell the stories that make us feel more comfortable about the past.
This scene is particularly sexy for that reason. Alison Bailey (Ruth Wilson) is bent over a car hood and fucked (there’s really no better word for it in this case) by her husband in a driveway. The two are still trying to repair their relationship after their son’s tragic death. The catch is that, depending on whose versions of events you believe, she either really, really wanted it, or she didn’t. If she did, it's sexy as hell. —Lauretta Charlton
28.Virgina takes control in Masters of Sex
Episode: "The Revolution Will Not be Televised" (Season 2, Episode 12)
Masters of Sex is about people who watch other people have sex for a living. Researchers Bill Masters (Michael Sheen) and Virginia Johnson (Lizzy Caplan) engage in revolutionary scientific work about sex and what happens to the human body before, during, and after. So much of the sex on the show is clinical, all tangled up in electrodes and lenses and various equipment that distances the participants' bodies from Masters' cold eye. But when Bill himself finally begins to let himself go, the sex gets a lot hotter. Bill and Virginia conduct an affair over the course of the second season that finds the pair trapped by a certain chemistry that neither of them is fully able to understand (or deny). The most exciting, emotionally-charged scene between the two actually barely involves sex at all. Masters, suffering from sexual dysfunction, lets Virginia control him. His submission produces a real vulnerability, and a real engagement with the sex beyond the simply scientific. —Eric Thurm
27.Mer and Der go to prom in Grey's Anatomy
Episode: "Losing My Religion" (Season 2, Episode 27)
Grey's Anatomy is washed now, sure, but at its peak? Even the most anti of ABC soap operas watched a handful of episodes, and Seattle Grace's prom episode is definitely one of the five or so you'll shamefully admit to having seen. There's a lot going on, as always with this show, but the highlight is Derek (Patrick Dempsey) and Meredith (Ellen Pompeo) calling quits on the fuckshit tension and literally running off the dance floor—away from their respective partners (his wife, her boyfriend) mind you—and to a closet to officially declare what they've spent the better part of a season running away from. The catharsis is palpable. —Frazier Tharpe
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25.Jax and Tara don't care who's watching in Sons of Anarchy
Episode: "The Pull" (Season 1, Episode 8)
It was obvious Jax (Charlie Hunnam) and Tara (Maggie Siff) would re-ignite their grand love before season one of the biker epic. But hat's off to you if you guessed it would get on and popping right after Jax shot her homicidal, stalker ex-boyfriend in the head and the passion was too all-consuming for them to, I don't know, at least move to a different room. And yet, the scene plays as anything but gross and uncomfortable. If they didn't care, who are we at home to, ya know? —Frazier Tharpe
24.Patrick and Kevin finally give into the tension in Looking
Episode: "Looking Glass" (Season 1, Episode 8)
There have been several decades of steamy sex scenes between men and women, but very, very few equivalent options for gay couples. So there's more to be done beyond Looking, which focuses on a trio of gay men making their way in San Francisco. The sex on the show is frequently less explicit than it could be, but it's also less awkward and more human, thanks in part to executive producer and Weekend director Andrew Haigh. The show is, at least in part, about the slow sexual awakening of Patrick (Jonathan Groff) who, after an entire season of workplace flirtatiousness, finally hooks up with his aggressive British boss Kevin (Russell Tovey), in a scene that finally sees Patrick starting to get over his anxiety about being a bottom. It's all the more dramatic given Patrick's recent breakup with his boyfriend Richie (Raul Castillo), establishing high emotional stakes for a moment of reckless passion. The culmination of eight episodes' worth of sexual tension isn't (just) gay—it's hot. —Eric Thurm
23.Eric falls into another win in Entourage
Episode: "Three's Company" (Season 3, Episode 6)
That lucky fucker Eric Murphy (Kevin Connolly). Dude's whole existence is the charmed life just because he happened to be BFFs with a future A-list prettyboy actor. Then he bags up the hottest girl in Hollywood. And because that's not enough, her friend played by the gorgeous Malin Akerman, comes to town and guess what? They're down for a threesome! Of course Vince, Turtle and Drama inundate E with tips and warnings all day, but like everything else for dude, it mostly goes off without a hitch. His biggest problem is that he wakes up the next morning snuggling Sloan's girl instead of her. Excuse me while I break out the world's tiniest violin. —Frazier Tharpe
22.Dexter gives into chemistry in Dexter
Episode: "Do the Wrong Thing" (Season 7, Episode 6)
Dexter (Michael C. Hall) isn't supposed to feel...feelings. He may have loved his wife Rita in some way, but it was more facade than anything else. But Hannah McKay (Yvonne Strahovski)? That intense attraction was palpable from her first scene early on in the show's seventh and last good season, and the heat went through the roof when Dexter unleashed his sexual tension in the most clever play off of his usual kill method. She's on his table, naked, covered in plastic, as is his ritual. After some verbal foreplay he brings the knife down...and instead rips the plastic sheet-wrap off and gets it going right there on his kill table. Who says homicidal sociopaths are incapable of passion? Fuck a "Dark Passenger"—when the chemistry is lit, a different urge takes over. —Frazier Tharpe
21.
20.Brian and Justin hook up in Queer as Folk
Episode: Pilot (Season 1, Episode 1)
Much like its Showtime counterpart The L Word, Queer as Folk was a game-changer in same-sex representation on television. Fitting then, that the best sex scene across its entire run is Brian (Gale Harold) and Justin's (Randy Harrison) first hookup in the pilot, i.e. the first guy-on-guy sex scene ever televised. Not that it actually needs a bonus point bump for history. —Frazier Tharpe
19.
18.Marty and his mistress in True Detective
Episode: "Seeing Things" (Season 1, Episode 2)
First let's state the obvious: This scene from the second episode of True Detective's first season isn't sexy because of Woody Harrelson. Alexandra Daddario, playing Marty Hart's unfairly hot mistress, does the heavy lifting here. Hell, she does all the lifting—literally, because Harrelson's got his hands cuffed behind his head for most of the scene. The scene is pure fantasy, for the viewer and I suspect, for True Detective creator/writer NicPizzolatto. You've got Daddario playing the perfect "cool girl," down to be a mistress (for now), down to toy with some light BDSM, down to let her older man swill whiskey before and after she does him—from a male perspective, what could be hotter?
Later in the season, after Marty's marriage has fallen apart because of the "cool girl," the ever-wise Rust Cohle asks Marty, "With all the dick swagger you roll, you can't spot crazy pussy?" Which isn't really fair because honestly, can you blame Marty for buying into fantasy?—Andrew Gruttadaro
17.Samantha and her fireman in Sex and the City
Episode: "Where There's Smoke..." (Season 3, Episode 1)
Don’t be fooled by the candles and satin sheets. This is a sexy scene, but only if you’re a thot like Samantha (Kim Cattrall). She basically wrote the rulebook on the subject and displays peak thot behavior in this episode. She’s so thirsty for this fireman’ D that she loses her ability to think straight and gets caught butt naked in public. And you know what? It was worth it. Look at the way he’s riding! Enough said. —Lauretta Charlton
16.Jon Snow shows Ygritte he actually does know some things in Game of Thrones
Episode: "Kissed by Fire" (Season 3, Episode 5)
It could've been lightweight corny, when upon Jon Snow (Kit Harington) going south on his northern star-crossed lover, she flips her trademark derisive catchphrase to acquiesce that he does indeed know a "thing" or two. But the scene's sizzle is so on point, even the most obvious of jokes are able to safely land. Convenient that in the middle of the arctic north Jon and Ygritte (Rose Leslie) find a hot spring in which to consummate their Montague/Capulet-style affair, but nevertheless it's the perfect escape, a quiet break from the realities of their doomed situation that they can reflect on later when it all goes to shit. And it goes to shit, very quickly. But they'll always have that sweltering hot cave, the one they sent up a few degrees higher for a day. —Frazier Tharpe
15.Kate and Sawyer's caged heat in Lost
Episode: "I Do" (Season 3, Episode 6)
Nothing gets you hot and bothered like captivity, huh? If there's one good thing to come out of season three's tedious cage arc, at least it presents forward movement on the Great Island Love Triangle (right before it morphed into a rhombus, hi Juliet!). With Sawyer's (Josh Holloway) imminent death looming, Kate (Evangeline Lilly) sneaks over to his cell to give him a proper last night on Earth. Right there in the hot, tropical jungle in clothes they've been breaking rocks in for days and who knows when they last bathed and out in the open where any Other captor can see and—OH, Jack picked the perfect time to walk by Ben's surveillance feed that he has trained on them, didn't he? —Frazier Tharpe
14.
13.Marnie gets rimmed in Girls
Episode: "Iowa" (Season 4, Episode 1)
Just when you thought Girls was borderline washed, here's Lena Dunham stealing all of the Golden Globes' Sunday shine via Allison Williams engaging in some very timely, trendy foreplay with her new boyfriend. Four seasons in, and one impossibly hot (and needless to say, NSFW) GIF later, Girls beat the odds. —Frazier Tharpe
12.Henry and Anne Boleyn get it poppin in The Tudors
Episode: "Tears of Blood" (Season 2, Episode 2)
No lie, I'm pretty sure The Tudors was responsible for me being temporarily good with women. I was studying abroad in Ireland and decided to stream this series (we didn't have cable in my apartment, or Netflix, so, you get it) because I had already seen Entourage and Mad Men like two times over. Now, I'm a pretty shy dude and am therefore VERY awkward around girls. I'm like Michael Cera in Superbad, only I weigh slightly more. But right around the time I saw Henry VIII (Aside: Henry VIII was so dope when he looked like Jonathan Rhys Meyers as opposed to this) finally lock things down with Anne Boleyn (pre-Game of Thrones Natalie Dormer alert!) at the beginning of season two of The Tudors, I turned into a different guy. I was confident, decisive, intuitive and suave, and the results were instant and obvious. I no longer fumbled with conversation starters—I was the cool guy who said the right things and made shit happen. It felt like how I imagine Leonardo DiCaprio feels every day.
So yeah, this was a pretty awesome sex scene.—Andrew Gruttadaro
11.Claire forgets the future and lives in the present in Outlander
Episode: "The Wedding" (Season 1, Episode 7)
It's deeper than just same-sex relationships. There's also been a stark deficiency in female protagonists across prestige television. The efforts to right that wrong took another step with last year's Outlander, the sci-fi romantic drama that made everyone suddenly have to pay attention to Starz original programming. Our heroine is Claire (Catriona Balfe), a WWII nurse who finds herself transported to 1743 Scotland. She's a sharp, worthy protagonist and most importantly, maintains her own agency. So when she finally gives into her feelings for the hunky past Scot Jamie (Sam Heughan), it's crushing to think of the husband she's been trying to stay faithful to. But it's also too hot to really care about poor, present-day Frank. There's gotta be a time travel clause, right? —Frazier Tharpe
10.
9.Jason and Amy sex on V in True Blood
Episode: "Plaisir d'Amour" (Season 1, Episode 9)
No shots at Sookie (Anna Paquin) and her twentysomething suitors, but, the hands down hottest scene on the show goes to her dimwit brother and his drug-enabling girlfriend in the show's debut and best (Yea, I said it) season. Of course Amy was bad news, but it's easy to forget that when she's played by an actress as alluring as the great Lizzy Caplan, and their affair officially became one to 'ship over when they did V (basically vampire molly) and had the trippiest, hottest session. Seven seasons later there were tons more disturbing, graphic scenes, yes, but this one transcends shock value. —Frazier Tharpe
8.Fitz hits it from the back in Scandal
Episode: "Whiskey Tango Foxtrot" (Season 2, Episode 14)
You have to give Shonda Rhimes credit. The various sex scenes between Olivia Pope (Kerry Washington) and President Fitzgerald Grant (Tony Goldwyn) run the gamut from tastefully romantic to downright smutty. This scene, in which Fitz grabs Olivia by the arm and throws her into an electrical closet so that they can have angry sex standing up, is closer to the latter.
If you ignore the infantile symbolism that Scandal writers insist on littering each sex scene with—this one is so…electrifying—this particular scene is actually pretty hot. After O.P. smacks the POTUS in the face for being a two-timing philanderer, she attacks him a different kind of weapon—her wet mouth. The two commence to have the kind of raw, passionate sex that’s reserved for people who have nothing left to lose and everything to gain if they just give in to their lust and desire. The result is a frenetic, shadowy, and yes, electrifying moment of sexual energy. —Lauretta Charlton
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6.Alice and Dana consummate in the most R-rated way possible in The L Word
Episode: "Labyrinth" (Season 2, Episode 5)
Say what you will about Showtime versus HBO, but the former definitely put on for same sex-themed series early in the game. The L Word, naturally, has several dozen impossibly hot scenes to choose from, but Alice (Leisha Hailey) and Dana (Erin Daniels) consummating their relationship with a nod to 9 1/2 Weeks has to take the cake. —Frazier Tharpe
5.The shower scene in Orange Is the New Black
Episode: "I Wasn't Ready" (Season 1, Episode 1)
OITNB didn't make us wait long for some girl-on-girl action. In the very first episode, we're treated to flashbacks of Alex (Laura Prepon) and Piper's (Taylor Schilling) relationship, including this infamous scene. Unlike the usual hurried prison hookups on the show, this one is slow, sensual, and pretty much straight out of a straight man's fantasy. Lesbian shower sex better than it's been in any porno. —Claire Wright
4.Hank makes the biggest mistake of his life in Californication
Episode: Pilot (Season 1, Episode 1)
I'm going to cop the same plea Hank Moody (David Duchovny) did, literally, when called in front of a jury of his peers three and a half seasons after the fateful events of this pilot episode: he didn't know. How could anyone peg a woman so sexually assured as Mia (Madeline Zima) is here for a mere sixteen year old? Of course, something has to be off, which is why their one night together is just as hot as it is off-putting. And that's before she hits him with a mean haymaker in the face. Fucking and Punching, as Mia would later title her stolen memoir, is one surefire way to start a new series built around sex. —Frazier Tharpe
3.Megan does some house-cleaning in her lingerie in Mad Men
Episode: "A Little Kiss" (Season 5, Episode 1)
What to make of the new Mrs. Draper? That's the question season five's premiere was tasked with solving after four ended with Don's (Jon Hamm) impulsive second engagement to his former secretary. And by the end of the two-hour premiere, we sure got a good look at her, pun intended. After her fantastic misread (of course Don Draper would loathe a birthday party where his co-workers are the invited guests, in his own home no less) sends Don into a bratty spiral, she fires back in one of the most erotically charged scenes in a series that trafficks in them. Not sold on Don's new marriage? Surely you changed your mind when her lingerie-maid stunt resulted in some forceful, hot make-up(?) sex right there in the brand new Chateau Draper. Welcome to the main cast, Megan. —Frazier Tharpe
2.
1.Jimmy and Gretchen have the opposite of a meet-cute in You're the Worst
Episode: Pilot (Season 1, Episode 1)
Everything that's great about You're the Worst is on display during Gretchen (Aya Cash) and Jimmy's (Chris Geere) first sexual encounter in the pilot episode. The marathon the two characters go on after ditching a wedding is hot (thanks to Cash and Geere's unparalleled chemistry), honest, adventurous (Jimmy drops some ziti on his crotch, Gretchen goes down and grabs it) and charming. All to the tune of Santigold's "Disparate Youth."
The breaks they take in between orgasms serve as the get-to-know-you chats most people would have before fucking, which is a nice change of pace that only adds to sexiness of the scene.
But aside from all-night boning, this scene is really about two people being drawn together like magnets. Jimmy and Gretchen's characteristic trivial bickering, in this case over the use of spit during cunnilingus, is present to lighten the mood, but at the same time both characters are subtly vulnerable, and even though they keep professing that this is a one-night thing, you can see both of them start to consider making it more than that.—Andrew Gruttadaro