Tatiana Maslany is a Canadian treasure, rising to fame in the series Orphan Black where she plays 17 different clones, five of whom are main characters. In Maximum Pleasure Guaranteed, you’re reminded of what a fantastic actor she is as she takes on the not quite as tall task of playing a woman in turmoil who goes down a dangerous rabbit hole of crime and deceit after believing she witnessed a murder. The dark comedy is equal parts ominous and funny with a fantastic cast and a gripping story that keeps you invested right through to the end.
The Plot Digs Deeper and Deeper Down a Rabbit Hole
Paula (Maslany) is a newly single mom navigating a divorce with Karl (Jake Johnson), her ex-husband who has since taken up with another woman Mallory (Jessy Hodges). While trying desperately to tiptoe around a custody agreement and getting her own life in order, Paula comes upon a dangerous situation that threatens to upend everything she’s working for to start her life anew.
She’s instantly likable but you also can’t help but want to smack her back into reality and tell her to let things be. As the plot progresses, it’s as though she has the worst luck ever, her own bad decisions and mix-ups making her look horrible. But even though she’s not exactly a model person, she’s a great mom just trying to get her shit together.
The story takes shocking turns as Paula dives down a rabbit hole, underestimating just how deeply she keeps falling into it with less of a chance of being able to crawl out. Underpinning this situation is a story about the complications of divorce and custody, an ex-husband you sympathize with given Paula’s recklessness at times, yet also who you can’t help but dislike (let’s not even go there with Mallory).
Comedy and Crime Thriller in One
Maximum Pleasure Guaranteed wonderfully blends comedy with crime thriller, an otherwise disturbing plot lightened by characters who bring comic relief, like Paula’s co-workers Geri (Kiarra Hamagami Goldberg) and Rudy (Charlie Hall) and the sharp-tongued detective Sofia Gonzalez (Dolly de Leon) and her partner Detective Baxter (Jon Michael Hill). They too heavily depict typical comedy TV tropes in their dialogue and exchanges such that you sometimes feel they’re miscast or mere window dressing to the larger, more intense plot. Do Geri and Rudy actually do any work at the office? But there’s something endearing about each of them. There are also scarier characters like Murray Bartlett’s mysterious figure, and he unsurprisingly nails the role.
Maslany and Bartlett, in fact, are the most interesting to watch, providing two sides of a complicated coin. Maslany is weirdly relatable: despite her quirks and chaotic personality, she’s like the girl next door you never really got to know, a deeply lonely woman trying to start over. She seems nice enough, but you can’t shake the feeling that something is off about her. She yearns for normalcy yet seems to drag herself into trouble despite knowing that the situation can’t possibly turn out well for her.
With every step she takes, Paula further complicates her already busy life, her desire to move up at her job, be a present coach for her daughter’s soccer team, and show she is capable of joint custody and providing a stable life for Hazel (Nola Wallace). Between mom group chat threads, birthday parties, and a dismissive boss, Paula must somehow keep her extracurricular activities from impacting her regular life.
The story is both emotional and funny, the protagonist as reckless as she is sympathetic. While the plot is one you’ve seen time and time again, Maximum Pleasure Guaranteed adds a modern spin with the theme of the dangers of online activity. It’s a nice twist to this classic “girl gets caught up in a mess and is in over her head” narrative.
At times, the plot moves in unbelievable directions, and layers of Paula reveal that she has secrets of her own. It’s not a totally neat story with a few plot holes and ridiculous decisions that leave you shaking your head. But the performances and the shocking twists and turns are enough for you to let those go and slink into this addictive crime thriller.
Beyond its crime thriller theme, the show is also powerful commentary on divorce, custody, finding your identity, and starting over. Sure, Paula is dealing with atypical drama while trying to do this. But it becomes clear by the end that everything that has happened is part of her trying to rebuild, figure out who she is, and who she isn’t.
Did it take Paula getting caught up in a potential crime, starting her own pseudo investigation, and putting herself in harm’s way in the process to find out? Probably not. But justice matters. No matter the cost, Paula can’t let it go if she thinks someone was murdered and a killer got away with it. The distraction, as traumatizing as it may be, has helped her come to terms with a few things about herself.
A Solid Watch for Crime Show Fans
Maximum Pleasure Guaranteed is a solid new entry for Apple TV. It isn’t so much that the show is so captivating, the story so riveting that you are drawn into it. It’s more that it’s addictively corny at times, darkly disturbing at others. You’ll be anticipating the next episode by the end of each one, eager to see where the plot is going to go next and how much more trouble Paula can manage to get herself into. There are some doozy cliffhanger endings, with a week between episodic releases to give you time to theorize. But the first two episodes are the perfect set-up to get you started and whet your appetite for the chaos to come.
Since they are short 30-minute episodes, you might want to wait until the entire series is streaming to binge: it’s entirely possible to get through the whole 10 episodes over a single weekend, and you’ll probably want to. But if you love the anticipation of waiting for the next episode to drop, this show delivers.
Maslany was deserving of the Emmy she won for Orphan Black, and her performance in Maximum Pleasure Guaranteed will inspire you to watch that show all over again (if you haven’t yet, now’s a good time to check it out, streaming on Crave in Canada and Netflix in the U.S.) While the story in Maximum Pleasure Guaranteed wraps up by the end, it also leaves the door open for a continuation. There are questions left unanswered and a new can of worms for Paula, not to mention others in her orbit, to potentially navigate.
I’d be surprised if Maximum Pleasure Guaranteed wasn’t renewed, and I’ll be tuning in for Season 2 if it is.