‘Maximum Pleasure Guaranteed’ Review: Tatiana Maslany Apple Thriller

It would be difficult, if not impossible, to answer the obvious question raised by the title of Maximum Pleasure Guaranteed — namely, whether the Apple series delivers as promised — without getting all philosophical about it.

Are we talking about the maximum pleasure a product is capable of offering, or that its user is capable of feeling? If the latter, how could you ever know for certain that what you’re feeling isn’t just pleasurable, but maximally so? Amid such uncertainty, how could anyone presume to guarantee it?

So, no, I could not say with absolute confidence whether it lives up to the name. What I can tell you, however, is that while Maximum Pleasure Guaranteed might not be the most enjoyment I’ve ever derived from a TV show, its addictive combination of light comedy, unpredictable twists and sharp character work — all anchored by Tatiana Maslany’s fearless-as-usual lead performance — add up to one hell of a good time.

Well — a good time for us, that is. It’s far less of one for Maslany’s Paula, a Queens fact-checker mired in a tense custody battle with an ex-husband, Karl (Jake Johnson), who intends to move with their eight-year-old daughter (Nola Wallace’s Hazel) and his new wife (Jessy Hodges’ Mallory) to Idaho. Under such tense circumstances, it’s hard to blame Paula for wanting to blow off some steam with Trevor (Brandon Flynn), a sweet-faced camboy who provides her with a sympathetic ear as much as he does sexual release.  

But a Margo’s Got Money Troubles-esque celebration of sex work’s more humanistic side, this is not. During one of her usual sessions with Trevor, Paula is horrified to see him violently attacked. The cops she turns to are dismissive, sure Trevor’s just scamming her. Paula is not so certain — and anyway, she’s painfully aware of how damaging this situation could be for her custody case if word were to get out. She takes matters into her own hands, and before she’s aware of what’s hit her, finds herself in the middle of a dangerous scheme that sprawls further than she could ever have imagined.

Within the ever-expanding spectrum of glossy dramas about ordinary women who get caught up in extraordinary criminal plots, creator David Rosen positions Maximum Pleasure Guaranteed closer to the giddy thrills of HBO Max’s The Flight Attendant than the po-faced melodramatics of fellow Apple offering The Last Thing He Told Me. Even as Paula pushed to the absolute brink of sanity — as expressed by premiere director David Gordon Green through quick cuts, tightening close shots and unbearable cacophonies of phone notifications and voices — the series never takes itself so seriously that it can’t detour into a cutesy cat video, or revel in the satisfaction of “CSI enhance”-ing one’s way through an amateur investigation.  

The emphasis on narrative pleasures over thematic or psychological depth has what I suppose some might consider drawbacks. The show’s emotions never hit as hard as one might expect, even as the body count (the death kind, not the sex kind, since title notwithstanding, this is not an especially steamy series) escalates and the stakes ramp up. Nor are there any larger lessons to be gleaned from Paula’s ordeal, unless you count “the internet is not as anonymous as you might hope.” But the upside is a breeziness that keeps the ten 40-ish minute chapters flying by, buoyed by sharp jokes and propelled by clever twists.

Besides, for a story so reliant on crazy plot swings, Maximum Pleasure Guaranteed demonstrates an impressive knack for world- and character-building. Maslany leads the charge, effortlessly embodying Paula in all her contradictions — she’s a genuinely good mom and one who desperately needs (in Karl’s exasperated words) to “tighten [her] fucking shit up,” a sympathetic victim in over her head and someone who can’t seem to stop running headfirst into bad ideas. Without going out of her way to make Paula seem “likable” or even necessarily “relatable,” Maslany’s naturalistic performance keeps her endlessly fascinating.

The ensemble around her is similarly rich, stuffed with characters who even in their comparatively limited screen time come across as vivid enough to be protagonists in their own right.

I particularly loved Kiarra Hamagami Goldberg and Charlie Hall as Paula’s younger coworkers Geri and Rudy, who are just as hilarious to watch bickering over the correct bread-to-filling sandwich ratio as they are joining Paula on her ill-advised investigation; and Dolly de Leon as detective Gonzalez, whose salty deadpan (“I don’t want to be rude but that’s the name of a cat who died a virgin” she quips about a colleague’s new pet) belies a sincere commitment to finding the truth. I’d also be remiss not to mention Murray Bartlett, who gets to play a full range of energies — from warm to icy, charismatic to slightly pathetic — as a mysterious associate of Trevor’s.

Combined with the smart choice to set the story in a mundanely residential area of Queens, as opposed to the city’s more glamorous or recognizable enclaves, these vivid characters help ground Maximum Pleasure Guaranteed in, if not quite the real world, something that plausibly resembles it in texture — even as the conspiracy grows more convoluted, the reveals more shocking, the scope more expansive.

It’s a place you can imagine continuing to exist after the credits have rolled on the finale. Which is good, since the ending leaves just enough loose ends dangling to set up some promising potential avenues for a season two. In that sense, I can’t say that Maximum Pleasure Guaranteed fully satisfies — but it’s not because it can’t or doesn’t want to. It’s because it understands that the secret to luring a loyal follower back again and again, is to always keep us wanting a little bit more.