Maximum Pleasure Guaranteed Series Premiere Gives Tatiana Maslany Her Most Chaotic Character Yet — and I’m Hooked

Critic’s Rating: 4.5 / 5.0

4.5

Maximum Pleasure Guaranteed has been on my radar ever since it was announced, and after watching the two-episode premiere, I can honestly say I’m hooked.

Tatiana Maslany has played a wealth of interesting characters during her time in the industry, but none of the characters measure up to Paula.

Paula’s life is in flux: she’s newly divorced and trying to navigate a tricky co-parenting dynamic with her ex-husband, Karl.

The last thing Paula needed was to be caught up in the murder of her cam boy, confidante, whatever you want to call him, but his name is Trevor.

If you’ve gone through the breakdown of a relationship, you know that there’s that weird stage in the aftermath where nothing feels right, and nothing you do feels like the correct thing.

You lose friends because each party in the relationship has things they want to get off their chest to those in their respective circles.

Sadly for Paula, it looks like she got the raw end of the deal because she doesn’t seem to have any legitimate friends or people she can really turn to, aside from Trevor.

I can’t even begin to imagine her thought process when he was attacked while on camera and her worry that something terrible had happened to him.

The good news is that Maximum Pleasure Guaranteed Season 1 Episode 1 wastes no time in explaining that Trevor wasn’t an innocent bystander and had been putting on an act of openness with Paula, while scanning her surroundings and taking in everything she said to use against her.

Maximum Pleasure Guaranteed Shines a Light on Online Dating Scams

In hindsight, Paula had to know that something was amiss with this man because she was paying for their meetings.

His disrespect, scamming her, calling her place of work, and calling her ex-husband, is quite frankly, maddening.

That’s why Paula got in her car and used everything she knew about him against Trevor to find out where he lived, and she was prepared to give him a beatdown.

Honestly, the intensity as she navigated his home felt like a thick cloud I couldn’t shake because I had no clue how their meeting would play out.

I figured Paula would pull back the shower curtain and they’d both scream at each other. The last thing I expected was Trevor to have been killed, and his corpse just in the tub, waiting to be dismembered.

Maximum Pleasure Guaranteed did a remarkable job of making me feel connected to Paula at that point, and her need to escape the residence.

Then there’s the Dennis of it all. I was genuinely gobsmacked that Dennis was the one to kill Trevor, since they seemed like a cute enough couple.

The way Dennis killed Trevor was calculated, indicating that he’d been thinking about this deed for a long time and struck when he thought he could pull it off without being caught.

But this raises questions about the motive. Trevor scamming people means he’s probably pissed a lot of people off over the years.

Dennis is a Terrifying Villain

Could Dennis have a connection to someone that Trevor has scammed? That’s the more likely theory right now, but it doesn’t clear up whether Dennis helped stage Trevor’s attack. Killing Trevor off kicked off a compelling mystery, but I was enamored of the show’s confidence in resolving the killer so quickly.

I thought we’d spend the entire season trying to process what went down, but it seems that the rest of the show will be about Dennis coming after Paula and what effect that has on Paula’s life. As an aside, Murray Bartlett plays a great villain.

It’s no surprise that things are so strained between Paula and Karl when you look at Paula’s actions throughout the two-episode premiere.

She witnessed a murder, and her first thought wasn’t to call 911. That tells you something about the kind of person she is.

She doesn’t look at the bigger picture and the optics of her being at Trevor’s before his demise.

You could tell that the detective, Sofia, was sizing Paula up and coming to the conclusion that nothing about her adds up, setting up a rivalry of sorts for the rest of Maximum Pleasure Guaranteed Season 1.

I’m not quite sure what to make of Paula’s dynamic with Mallory. There’s clearly resentment on both sides.

Paula believes Mallory is to blame for this big move with Hazel, but the reality is that Karl is making this decision as well.

I believe Paula thought she could manipulate Mallory, and then, when she realized it wasn’t working, she went on the offensive.

Mallory seems to be genuine about having a decent relationship with Paula for both Hazel and Karl’s sakes, but she strikes me as the type of person who will put her foot down before long.

Given Paula’s actions and Karl’s calm, I get the impression that he’s spent years trying to make sense of his ex-wife and is officially over it.

Knowing that she’s been getting close to Trevor, and that he’s been getting phone calls about her owing him money, has opened a can of worms that don’t paint Paula in the best light.

I hope that Paula and Karl can reach some form of understanding in which Paula holds her hands up and tells her ex-husband everything that’s happened.

At the end of the day, they shared a life at one point and should be more open and honest, especially since whatever Dennis has planned could cause problems for their daughter.

That’s all I got, Maximum Pleasure Guaranteed Fanatics! What are your thoughts on the mystery ending being so abrupt?

Are you on board, or would you have preferred Trevor’s death to be the big mystery for the season?

What’s your take on Paula? Do you think she could have avoided all of the drama if she had kept herself to herself?

And were you as floored as I was when Dennis was revealed as the killer on this Apple TV comedy?

Let’s keep the conversation going — it’s the only way the good stuff survives.
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