“Maximum Pleasure Guaranteed” Lives Up to its Name
There are few actors like Tatiana Maslany. She broke into the mainstream with her performance in Orphan Black, where she played at least three clone characters in the span of one episode and seventeen over the course of the series. When she won the Emmy for her performances, her list of characters was longer than the rest of the nominees and their characters combined. Maslany was more recently the lead in She-Hulk (2022) and the Osgood Perkins double feature films of The Monkey and Keeper. Now she’s back on the small screen with the Apple TV+ series Maximum Pleasure Guaranteed, and what a joy that is.
Maximum Pleasure Guaranteed opens a bit like Alfred Hitchcock’s Rear Window. The camera slowly pans over the windows of an apartment building, giving the viewer a brief look into the personal lives of its inhabitants. Eventually, we enter the apartment of Paula (Maslany). All of her things are in boxes and there’s a younger guy on an open laptop screen. While at first it seems like they’re genuine friends, it becomes clear that the guy, Trevor (Brandon Flynn), is a camboy. While video chatting, someone breaks into Trevor’s house and attacks him. Paula takes it upon herself to save Trevor, but when it appears that this might be a scam, Paula finds herself tangled in a dangerous web of lies.
Apple TV+
Apple TV+ has released the first two episodes of Maximum Pleasure Guaranteed, with the subsequent eight episodes being released on a weekly basis through July 15. Episode one gives the audience a full look into Paula’s life. Not just the part that leads her down this path of potential kidnapping, but also Paula as a mother. She’s divorced from Karl (Jake Johnson) and they share custody of their daughter, Hazel (Nola Wallace). The divorce is anything but amicable, with Karl throwing money at lawyers to make everything worse. Karl doesn’t believe Paula is a fit mother, and getting wrapped up in a crime certainly wouldn’t look good.
The second episode shifts to Trevor and gives the viewer a perspective of his life that Paula doesn’t have. She only knows him within the confines of the computer screen, but episode two sees him out in the real world living life beyond his job as a camboy. With this episode, Maximum Pleasure Guaranteed begins to weave a deeper mystery. Not everything about Trevor is what it seems, and his “kidnapping” might just be the start.
Maximum Pleasure Guaranteed is yet another display of Maslany’s prowess. She commands this series, even when her character is utterly flailing. She’s making some questionable choices, but Maslany wholly owns it. As Orphan Black proved, there’s not much she can’t do. Maximum Pleasure Guaranteed is demanding in a different sense, not a multitude of different roles, but one role that is flawed, messy, and compelling to watch.
Apple TV+
Maslany’s Paula is a fact checker, a role that’s sadly losing importance in our world. It’s a clever means of lightly poking fun at the fact that Paula’s entire job is to find the facts, but nothing about Trevor adds up. Of course, it’s likely that her fact-checking ability will be the key to solving this unfolding mystery, but only time will tell.
“Good people, they’re like magnets. And sometimes they attract troublesome things,” says Detective Gonzalez (Dolly de Leon) when investigating Paula’s initial kidnapping claim. Is Paula a good person? Her ex-husband makes a reference to something they did in their past that he’s livid she shared with someone else. Could that cryptic tidbit speak to something more ominous? The first two episodes of Maximum Pleasure Guaranteed are a darkly comedic return to the small screen for Maslany, with the addictive beginnings of a great murder mystery.
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