I am surprised by how much credible critics like Primetime, the new movie directed by Lance Oppenheim that I saw this week.
This movie, which is a 2007 Esquire article adaptation by Ajon Singh, is the story of a reality TV series about potential child sex predator stings. At its center are its host Chris Hansen (Robert Pattinson) and its producer Andie Bender (Merritt Weaver) and their collaboration with a vigilante justice group and the most recent decoy actor (Skylar Gisando).
Hansen and Bender want to compete with other primetime programs — Hansen is also hiding an affair from his estranged wife and confused kids — and the decoy wants a credit for his acting card. In their pursuit of these ends, they destroy the people around them and themselves.
Their choices and experiences are explored by Oppenheim, who brings his trademark blend of nonfiction, storytelling, and cinematic conventions to his first narrative feature film. This movie recreates a reality television experience, and also focuses on the wall between the screen and the audience, as it blurs lines between experience and narrative.
Critics cite his direction as well as powerful performances and even the cinematic experience as noteworthy elements of this movie, which I can understand. I however couldn’t get past the tensions between form and content, which masks underdeveloped characters and plot.
As a result, I couldn’t care about this story or these people no matter how interested in the larger questions I am.
I am intrigued by the way that narrative, and drama, shape experience and generate significance and meaning, and often asked first-year college students and English majors to consider these. I can easily imagine ways that these issues could be considered in this movie, and also ways it could ask more conventional content questions , such as one about ambition and ethics or culture and commodification.
It instead seems content with friction or flashes from crossing conventional craft and content boundaries that illuminate little if anything about this situation, its setting, these characters, or the world where we all live.
I was quickly consumed by the new comedy crime thriller Maximum Pleasure Guaranteed but ultimately couldn’t find any significance substance behind the flash, which only confirmed my larger concerns.
Divorced fact-checker Paula (Tatiana Maslany), who is fighting her remarried ex-husband Karl (Jake Johnson) from moving their young daughter Hazel (Nola Wallace) to a different state, is blackmailed by a cam-boy and later witnesses this cam-boy’s murder by his boyfriend. She becomes a suspect after NYPD detectives process the crime scene — she had gone to her blackmailer’s home to confront him — and uncovers in exonerating herself with her co-workers’ help a larger blackmailing scheme.
This streaming series, which is well liked by credible critics, cleverly incorporates contemporary technology and its cultural effects, which is part of its appeal. It also features tech-savvy characters and multiple plot twists, like a Möbius strip, across ten episodes that never exceed forty minutes, which maintains its fast pace.
None of that though prevents its creator David J. Rosen from developing both primary and secondary characters. For example, the often-abrasive ex-husband Karl, who remarried apparently after an affair, plans to relocate to a rural state, and is fighting for custody of their kid, offers to rent an apartment near their new home for his ex-wife Paula, which he believes is compassionate and not as Paula suggests controlling.
Paula as protagonist is clearly complicated, and as convincingly portrayed by Maslany reestablishes some credibility only to reveal herself as manipulative or dishonest or just something other than she seems. This fact-checker offers intriguing and insightful philosophical pretzels, such as the difference between facts and truth in a bathroom conversation with her boss, for nibbling.
These clearly converge in Paula’s courtroom custody hearing testimony. She has been ruthlessly interrogated by the opposing counsel about her online sexual activity for example around her daughter when she reminds that she is the only mother in the courtroom, which contrasts her with Karl’s new wife Mallory (Jessy Hodges), and that she as Hazel’s mother best knows what her daughter needs.
Paula wins, which surprises Karl and quite possibly the rest of us, and she quickly reassembles her life only to have it upended as expected by yet another revelation that fittingly comes in the conclusion, which reinforces the reality that this master manipulator, and not the blackmailing corporation, is the actual, or at least the emotional, center of this story.
This cast of appealing characters does everything it can to cover up for the underdeveloped plot. Its premise — a fact-checking divorcee investigates blackmail better than the NYPD, and a shadowy corporation that offers blackmail as a service — might be satisfying but is ultimately implausible.
Why would this flailing and frenetic single mother be less credible to experienced detectives than the cam-boy’s blubbering boyfriend who is being interviewed by them in an interrogation room, and who is the actual murderer? Why would these off-book employees be inspired by this criminal corporation to establish their own blackmailing schemes?
The combined effect at least for me is a shove from the story into other observations, such as the product placement pattern of Apple devices for Paula and her co-workers and non-Apple devices for others. That made me recognize the ways that digital devices both facilitated and complicated the lives of these characters and by extensions our own, and even the reflection of their affordances in the aesthetic of this streaming series, which was co-produced by Apple Studio and premiered on Apple TV, and other stories.
The extreme pleasure promised in the title comes from its flash that after fading seems superficial and shallow. Perhaps it’s intended to be ironic, and as such illustrates the limits of lives that suspend delayed gratification and seek pleasure at all costs.
If so, then this streaming series could be a commentary about master manipulators that exert control and avoid consequences while everyone else chases the next dopamine hit, which makes us the actual victims. That in the digitally maximal world of today might have death and taxes as our only guarantee.
Suskind, who is also a University of Chicago surgery and pediatrics professor, encourages parents to foreground the irreplaceable human connection, own their parenting imperfections, protect their kids’ early years, and limit AI to enhancing adult-child interactions, or HOPE. She also describes ways that AI can support parents and newborns with language learning or sleep habits as well as reduce demands on both busy parents and overburdened teachers.
Suskind’s expertise and experience establish a compelling context for this project, and her voice is immediately noticeable. She integrates research and experience, both professional and personal, with an engaging personality in ways that will appeal to, and engage, her intended audience.
The effect is an established authority that commands attention yet remains accessible and compassionate. As a result, her perspective and approach, which consistently position parents at the center, are compelling and convincing. In these, AI functions as a powerful tool that serves human ends rather than dictates or worse determines these.
Suskind repeatedly encourages parents to retain their instincts, and refuses to relinquish these to not just AI agents but also pediatricians. She also models her perspective in the ways that she owns her own parenting imperfections, which she incorporates into her argument for doing so.
Artificial intelligence Suskind acknowledges encourages users to expect perfection. Parents however should understand that their failures, and what follows, are ways that their children develop crucial life skills, such as individual resilience and relationship repair.
This argument can reassure new parents, who can use it to calibrate their own criteria, and even older ones, including those who have grown children as I do. I’ve suggested to my spouse that we were good enough parents, which was more than enough, but Suskind offers an even more compelling argument for such parenting as even more.
This example suggests the larger appeal of this book. It caught my attention because I have been searching for first, or foundational, AI principles, and wondered if despite its intended audience it would suggest some. From it, I learned a way of thinking about both my parenting and my AI approach, which is even more than I hoped.
AI according to Suskind should never substitute for human connection, imperfection can trump efficacy and efficiency, certain parts of human experience must be protected, and our efforts can be usefully enhanced with smart strategies.
These insights are useful for raising kids, and living, in a world of artificial intelligence.
