Mom. Mom! Mom!! Mom!!! Mom!!!!
Maximum Pleasure Guaranteed
The first two episodes are now streaming exclusively on Apple TV. Subsequent episodes in the 10-episode series will debut every Wednesday. I've seen the first four episodes.
As tempting as it is to link David E. Kelley's delightful Margo's Got Money Troubles, starring Elle Fanning as a desperate young mother who joins OnlyFans as a creator to make money for all her new expenses, with David J. Rosen's Maximum Pleasure Guaranteed, starring Tatiana Maslany as a desperate, somewhat older, newly divorced mother who gets tangled up in blackmail plot that leads to murder and a serial killer, all because she let off steam by paying a pretty boy/man to chat online with her, that description may tell you all you need to know about the differences between the two shows.
Quite a bit more desperate, and even more ambitious thematically in its uneasy careening between intimate drama, murder mystery, and workplace comedy, Maximum Pleasure Guaranteed is far less successful in settling on a tone that rings true and somewhat consistent as it bounces from one scenario and multiple combinations of partners to the next. Creator David J. Rosen, whose previous credits include three shows I actively disliked -- Hunters, Invasion, and Citadel -- also served as associate producer on Sugar, an entertaining detective show with a wild twist.
His new show initially revolves entirely around Paula Sanders (Tatiana Maslany), but succeeding episodes subsequently introduce more characters than are needed to support the primary narrative, suggesting that Rosen has multiple seasons in mind, rather than a limited series. Which is fine, of course, and more power to him if the show proves to be popular.
What happens, though, is that Paula Sanders, a copyeditor, is constantly torn away from her job in order to deal with a series of melodramatic situations that are intended to amp up the tension, but any tension is artificially induced by episode 1 director David Gordon Green, who has kept quite busy over the past few years. In that very first episode, for example, Paula is deeply embarrassed when her activity with a cam-boy is revealed by the duplicitous pretty boy to Paula's ex-husband, Karl (Jake Johnson), who begins screaming at her on the street in an outrageous manner.
For reasons that are not disclosed until several episodes later, Paula remains silent, declining to defend herself in the moment, which is extremely frustrating to the viewer. Much later, her conduct becomes somewhat more understandable, though by that point a number of other frustrating, inexplicable situations add to the anxiety that Paula must endure.
On the comic side, Kiarra Hamagami Goldberg and Charlie Hall play two of Paula's co-workers, displaying sparkling chemistry that feels like it was air-lifted in from another show altogether. On the drama side, Dolly De Leon is a NYC police detective with an inscrutable air who intimidates Paula with her mere presence, even when she is ostensibly being merely an investigator.
Perhaps it all works out over the entire run of 10 episodes. Tatiana Maslany is such a talented performer that one can only hope that she is playing a character who is worthy of her talents, that the vastly imperfect, wildly empathetic Paula will show her true colors and be the hero that she is meant to be, and not someone who is constantly stymied by hyperactive editing and writing that runs in circles, hinting without revealing any true depth.
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