Christopher Schroeder

Tag: streaming series review

  • The Only Guarantee

    The Only Guarantee

    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.

  • Needs a North Star

    Needs a North Star

    I’m surprised that I didn’t like Northern Lights (2023) more than I did.

    This streaming series, which is an adaptation of a play by Stephen Jones, tells the story of two grieving strangers Áine (Elva Trill) and Lloyd (Jones) who connect through their tragedies. Áine is standing in the rain on a bridge outside Lloyd’s apartment after his estranged girlfriend Denise (Jennifer Heylen) asked him to leave their home in the emotional aftermath of their newborn’s sudden death.

    This bridge is where Áine’s boyfriend Seán (Jay Duffy) jumped to his death. It’s also where Lloyd had spoken to him just before he jumped and where Denise previously had been talking to him, and where Lloyd saw them from his window when Denise lied about why she was late to dinner he had prepared.

    I typically like adapted plays perhaps because these stories seem more substantial. However, I thought this story, which might have worked as a two-hander tragicomic play, had been stretched too far across six episodes and almost 300 minutes, and past the point of ripping and tearing.

    I also was skeptical about the coincidences, especially in the Dublin setting. Greater Dublin, which is visually appealing, reportedly includes two million people across 2,500 miles. That though doesn’t prevent these characters from meeting on the same bridge at similar times.

    I additionally couldn’t overlook the representation of The Catcher in the Rye. This 1951 novel by J. D. Salinger, which also features a grieving narrator, gets its title from its narrator’s misunderstanding of a poem, which reinforces his inability to manage, or even recognize, the grief that alienates him from everyone, contributes to his emotional breakdown, and explains its mental health setting.

    In contrast, Áine and Lloyd and even Denise ostensibly confront their grief and reconnect with their loved ones. This contrast however is never acknowledged, and seems unclear, even though it could have contributed in more than one way to this story.

    These prevented me from connecting with this story, which might work on a stage somewhere but doesn’t do so on a smaller screen across six episodes for five hours.