Maximum Pleasure Guaranteed Recap: Femme Fatale

Maximum Pleasure Guaranteed
Flighting
Season 1 Episode 7
Editor’s Rating ★★★★
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I’m not too sure what the word flighting means in the context of this episode’s title. Maybe I missed it in the dialogue? Online dictionaries tell me it’s some sort of marketing term. But if I choose to look at it just in an aesthetic sense, Paula takes flight in a number of ways this week. She physically takes flight from a crime scene, and her mind is certainly in flight in a lot of ways. She’s also vacillating between incredibly low lows and super-high highs. The episode begins and ends with two of the lowest lows a human can experience, but in the middle, Paula is kind of starting to get her groove back.

Let’s start at the beginning. We experience the aftermath of the kidnapping as Paula creeps out of the trunk and surveys the damage she has done. Dennis is prone on the ground, blood streaming from his face. I’m not sure if this man is dead or just unconscious, but Paula doesn’t stick around long enough to find out. Instead, she operates in fight-or-flight mode, choosing flight after her brief moment of fight. (Did I crack the title?) Her lizard brain is in full operation, so instead of staying where she is and calling 911, she snatches Dennis’s cell phone and runs into the night. 

What follows is a bone-chilling sequence in which Paula’s instinct is to fight for normalcy at all costs despite the panic and danger churning through her body. She races back to the bodega for round two and panic purchases all her items yet again. She catches a glimpse of her bloodstained face in a pair of sunglasses at the register, wiping her face violently as if she could erase the actual altercation with Dennis if only she wiped hard enough. When she returns to her apartment, the party is winding down, but she takes a beat to call Geri and Rudy from the bathroom. They encourage her to call 911, and she eventually stammers out that she will. Thank goodness this woman has some people she can be honest with because, otherwise, I don’t know if I could bear the burden with her as a viewer. 

Hazel leaves with her friend, and Paula goes to do the right thing. As she rounds the corner, calling 911, both the car and Dennis’s body are gone without a trace. I know this is a rule from Zombieland, but always double-tap if you’re not sure, am I right?

In the aftermath of her assault, Paula tries to do a little sleuthing on Dennis’s phone. She immediately accesses his Amazon account using two-factor authentication — is this some Amazon shade from Apple? — and finds an address for a John Smith. Later, when Paula, Geri, and Rudy go to the house, they find a silver-haired wisp of a woman named Edith Randall who claims the packages are getting sent to her by accident. Rudy is the only one who believes her, proving he probably doesn’t have the instinct to be a lawyer because Edith is way complicit and, eerily, she already knows who Paula is. When the trio leaves, Edith immediately calls Brian, the man Dennis was taking orders from a few episodes ago, telling him “she” was at her house with “two dipshits.” It feels worthy of note that Brian is in a corporate office setting, indicating Paula has gotten herself mixed up in something big. 

Meanwhile, Paula is having a manic pixie nightmare of a day. Before heading to Edith’s, she attends some sort of exercise class that’s a fundraiser for the school, and Tatiana Maslany truly eats and leaves no crumbs in this scene. As she frantically flails her body to the music, her head flinging every which way as she tries to dance away the memory of her assault, it’s clear Paula’s mind and soul cannot withstand anything else. Too bad the universe is dead set on piling more onto her plate. Things are starting to spill over. Blood is starting to spill over. People are starting to notice. 

At work, Paula uses her newfound mania to confront her horrible boss, Suzie, in the bathroom. Honestly, Suzie has been a caricature of a demanding boss straight from some sort of rom-com situation, but Paula finally dresses her down here and the scene is delightful. Paula corners her in the bathroom, a feral look on her face as she asks about her promotion. “The reputation of this place relies on my job,” she begins, as she proceeds to give Suzie a lecture on the importance of both facts and the truth. Facts are pieces of “information with objective reality,” while the truth is the why behind that information. Suzie is moved enough to tell Paula they don’t have the money in the budget to give her the promotion, so Paula counters by saying she just needs the title … and she gets it. Our girl really needed a win, and it’s exciting to see her succeed here. 

The winning isn’t over yet, though, as Paula’s soccer-mom persona coaches her team to its first victory. Paula’s brain is working overtime as she scans the field for threats, spotting a man in a Yankees sweatshirt who looks suspicious. In the next moment, though, the girls win the game and they all crowd around her in a group hug. The moment is captured with an overhead shot of Paula in the middle of a scrum of screaming girls; she’s surrounded by cheer, but she’s on high alert for catastrophe to occur at any moment. 

So when Steve taps Paula’s shoulder as they leave the game, she immediately jumps. This sweet man asks her out on a date, and she agrees. Steve is adorable as he jokes about winning $6 million on the soccer game and insists that he’s paying. Paula giddily says “yes” and goes home to prepare. Little does she know the cops have other plans for her tonight. 

After finding Sky’s body and Paula’s fingerprints on the nail gun, Baxter is ready to make an arrest. Gonzales is far and away the better detective here as she argues that Paula’s prints aren’t on the spray-foam can that was actually used to murder Sky. Bingo! She also calls Paula “just a little piece of chicken.” Yup. Following the logical evidence feels like Detective 101, but their boss is gunning for an arrest so Gonzales gives in to Baxter’s impulse. 

Paula plays so many roles in this episode, and it’s fun to think about how many different people we become in a day. Throughout, we see her as a frantic kidnappee, a fundraiser mom, a ruthless employee, an investigator, a soccer coach, a flirt, and a woman getting ready for a first date, all in the span of a single day. Even though all of us wear many hats, it makes sense that the show would cast Maslany, an actress known for her uncanny ability to flawlessly play multiple disparate characters on Orphan Black, to portray Paula. These character changes might not be believable with anyone else, but Maslany capably steers the ship even within the wildest of persona swings, making Paula hang together as a single person even when she’s falling apart.

As the episode begins to draw to a close, Paula starts to get her groove back. It’s a little weird that she’s so fully brushing off how her would-be killer is still potentially at large, but the woman has her first date with an in-the-flesh man since her divorce. And he’s hot! And funny! Paula waves off a call from Geri about next steps and settles in to make guacamole. She clicks on “Good 2 Yourself,” by Life in Sweatpants, and starts to get loose. Sure, today was the day after she shot a man in the face, but it was also the day she got a promotion, her daughter won her first soccer game, and she got asked out on a date. Paula is tiptoeing toward rebuilding her life and her postdivorce self, but the universe has other plans. 

Just as she finishes making the guac, there’s a knock at her door. It’s the inept detective brigade, arriving to arrest her for the murders of Jeffrey Thorwald and Samuel Frazier. Huh? Oh, Trevor and Sky. As they cuff her and drive her away, a haunting cover of “Femme Fatale” scores the proceedings. The cops have the facts but not the truth, and we can only hope the truth comes to light before it’s too late. 

Red Pencil Marks

• Total Shawshank vibes from the buried lunch box Ashley finds in Trevor’s yard. She unearths a treasure trove including a loaded gun, a bunch of cash, and a baggie full of flash drives. When she peruses the content, she sees Trevor mackin’ it with a bunch of different clients, then a different drive has a video of the three friends prepping to con Paula. In this clip, Trevor says Dennis can never find out, but it’s still unclear why. He says it conflicts with what he and Dennis do, which seems like it may be connected to the other flash drives, but I guess only time will tell. Hope is a good thing, maybe the best of things, and Ashley just got a whole lot of hope.

• Brian contacts a woman named Jennifer in response to Edith’s call. Is she another violent fixer to replace Dennis? Or something else entirely? Also, is Dennis really dead? 

• Geri brings the cell phone to Drew, a head writer at the paper, who we find out is also casually sleeping with her. I love this whole interaction for Geri. Nope, she doesn’t want to sleep with him today, but yes, she wants a favor from him. And he does it. His guy cracks the phone, but all he finds is a number for a J. Tercek, the Yale admissions lady Dennis blackmailed in an elevator a few episodes ago. 

• Also, I know we’re probably all raising an eyebrow at Geri because of her article, but if you actually pause and read the short draft (and get through her clunky prose), it’s clear that she believes Paula and that she isn’t looking to demonize her. Sure, it’s still shady that she’s writing about her friend, but I’m holding out hope for her.