In the new Apple TV dark comedy Maximum Pleasure Guaranteed, Tatiana Maslany plays a single mother who not only has to deal with single mother stuff — coaching the youth soccer team, custody battles with her ex, etc. — but also has to navigate down a path that includes blackmail, murder and a killer chasing her.
Opening Shot: The camera pans down from the Manhattan skyline at night to a series of apartment building windows, until we see one where a woman says she’s going to kill someone.
The Gist: Paula Sanders (Tatiana Maslany) is speaking metaphorically, talking to a young friend named Trevor (Brandon Flynn) on her laptop while trying to unpack her new apartment. She’s recently divorced from her ex, Karl (Jake Johnson) and is intent on getting the apartment together so her daughter Hazel (Nola Wallace) has a place to sleep on the nights when she’s with Paula.
When Trevor tells her to have a beer with him, she replies “I’m old and broken.” He insists she isn’t either. Then again, he isn’t just someone she talks about her life with; he’s a cam boy, and they use the last six minutes of their paid session to knock out some mutual pleasure.
Paula is a fact checker at a magazine (what year is this?) and she’s angling for a promotion to lead the department, despite wavering support from her younger teammates Rudy (Charlie Hall) and Geri (Kiarra Hamagami Goldberg). A promotion will go a long way to help her in her custody battle with Karl, who wants to move with Hazel and his current wife to Boise. The two of them have a friendly but tense relationship as co-parents, and whenever the custody issues are brought up, the tension ratchets up.
She makes a “date” with Trevor for that evening, but their session is interrupted when he’s attacked in his living room. She films the attack on her phone, and when she calls the NYPD, Detective Sofia Gonzalez (Dolly de Leon) tells her that this is likely a scam, and at the very least she should change her phone number.
Of course, the phone calls start, with Trevor crying that he’ll get killed if she doesn’t give him $15,000. Paula holds firm with him, though it’s really hard. But when he calls her work phone she confronts him; he tells her about Hazel and other aspects of her life that she swore she never mentioned. Then she realizes that he got all of the info from the details on bulletin boards behind her as they had their sessions. She uses that knowledge to do some forensics on the video of the attack, but takes matters into her own hands when Gonzalez doesn’t take action.
What Shows Will It Remind You Of? Created by David J. Rosen, Maximum Pleasure Guaranteed is supposed to be a dark comedy along the lines of The Flight Attendant, with a lot of murder and blackmail rubbing shoulders with everyday life.
Our Take: Like we said above, Maximum Pleasure Guaranteed is supposed to be a dark comedy. But besides Maslany doing a good job of being the flustered, self-deprecating Paula, there didn’t seem to be much going on in the first episode that was all that funny. It was pretty much all the “dark” part: The attack on Trevor and his blackmail threats, Karl being a smiling dickehead when it comes to their custody battle, and the eventual discovery Paula makes when she tries to find Trevor.
There’s somewhat of an attempt to make things funny outside of Paula’s personality, namely the silly banter of Gerri and Rudy. But once Paula starts getting the scam calls from Trevor, the show quickly becomes more of a psychological thriller than a dark comedy.
That being said, the thriller part of this is actually interesting, especially once we find out along with Paula about what really happened to Trevor. The second episode sorts this out a bit more without giving reasons why it happened, and we’re introduced to an unnamed character played by Murray Bartlett whom Paula will have to contend with. In that respect, it’s a complex thriller that can go in a lot of interesting directions.
But where will the funny start happening? When Paula coaches youth soccer? When Karl keeps trying to move to Idaho with Hazel? Hazel and Paula doing more “banana dance” routines? We’re just not sure if the show has much room for the comedic part of its story; it feels more like garnish than part of the main course.
Performance Worth Watching: Tatiana Maslany does a good job of Paula’s “just trying to make it through the day” outlook, even as she goes badass when she needs to in order to track down Trevor.
Sex And Skin: Yes, there’s sex, as we describe above, but less skin than you might think.
Parting Shot: After a horrific discovery, Paula is trapped when someone enters Trevor’s house after she does.
Sleeper Star: We do like Hall and Hamagami Goldberg as Paula’s co-workers Rudy and Gerri, mainly because they’re going to end up being the show’s Greek chorus, reflecting back to Paula whatever is going on with her in this complex story.
Most Pilot-y Line: “Love isn’t about getting yelled at all weekend,” Det. Gonzalez tells Paula when they both say that they’re divorced.
Our Call: STREAM IT. If you go into Maximum Pleasure Guaranteed with the right mindset, and not look for it to be a true dark comedy, then Maslany’s performance and the complex psychological thriller plot is satisfying. If you want it to be funnier, you might not get what you wish for.
Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.
