Maximum Pleasure Guaranteed Recap: A Mom She Can Rely On

Maximum Pleasure Guaranteed
Chunnel
Season 1 Episode 3
Editor’s Rating ★★★★

The thing that hooked me on Maximum Pleasure Guaranteed was the tuna can. If you’ve watched the first three episodes, you know it well. When people jump into dumpsters in any other show, they’re met with a soft and welcoming landing on garbage bags that are presumably full of cotton balls and pillows. This is not how garbage works; most dumpster falls are a lie. When desperate Paula (Tatiana Maslany) leaps into a dumpster to catch her fall as she races from a murder scene, she immediately finds a tuna can embedded in her upper arm. It’s gruesome, it’s a little hilarious, and it’s oh-so real. Welcome to Apple TV’s newest thriller, a show that maximizes everything fun about the thriller genre and all but guarantees a good time.

We’re jumping in on the third episode, but let’s just back up for a hot second and do a meta recap-within-a-recap. Paula (the mesmerizing Tatiana Maslany) is a magnetic mess. She’s in the middle of a contentious custody battle with an ex named Karl (Jake Johnson, doomed to always be in TV shows with terrible titles), who has significantly more money and resources than she does. To her daughter, 8-year-old Hazel (Nola Wallace), Paula is the fun parent, a mom who encourages ice cream for dinner, embraces cursing, enthusiastically participates in TikTok dances, and even coaches her daughter’s youth soccer team. 

But, on the inside, Paula is screaming. So, she lets off some steam by prescheduling no-strings-attached booty calls/therapy sessions with a cam boy named Trevor (Brandon Flynn). Trevor is very hot, very understanding, and very complimentary, basically the ideal boyfriend for a newly single lady with a mountain of responsibilities. One day, Trevor gets physically attacked and appears to be kidnapped during a session with Paula, and he pleads for her help. Enter Detective Sofia Gonzalez (Dolly de Leon, sharp as a tuna can lid), a cop on the case who tells her it’s probably a scam. When Trevor escalates his con and starts contacting Karl and calling her at work, Paula flips. She uses her fact-checking skills and tracks him down in order to confront him. What she finds is a dead body in a bathtub and a whole mess of trouble. 

When the third episode opens, Paula is still being harassed by the blackmailer, even though Trevor is dead. She’s also basically being harassed by Karl and his new wife, Mallory (Jessy Hodges), who extend a sneaky offer to basically bankroll her entire existence … if she moves to Boise with them, uprooting Hazel’s life so that Mallory can have a chance at her dream job. Mallory is totally giving evil stepmother here, and so far, she’s kind of a one-note character, so what happens to her later in the episode doesn’t exactly read as a tragedy, but it’s still pretty chilling. 

Oh! Have we not gotten to the Murray Bartlett of it all yet? Silly me. Here we go: Murray. Bartlett. Hot. Scary. Yum. This man can canoodle with a pretty young thing he’s about to murder, go deep on some fake crying, or casually drop off a pair of evil cleats, and it’s all compelling stuff. Bartlett plays Dennis, Trevor’s boyfriend, who also totally murdered him, and maybe chopped him up into little pieces, too. We’re not 100 percent sure why Dennis killed his boy toy, but he seems to be a pro at this killing and tracking stuff, as evidenced by the fact that Detective Gonzalez tells her partner, Detective Baxter (Jon Michael Hill), that Trevor’s apartment “was tossed and cleaned by a pro.” She says this only seconds before they decide who’s going to call “the boyfriend” without a moment’s consideration for the fact that it’s always the boyfriend or the husband, am I right?

Dennis’s status as a pro is also evident in what he does when he finds a bag with Hazel’s pink cleats inside. In the interest of finding Paula, he takes the shoes of a tiny child and turns them into a sinister tracking device. From a napkin with a wadded-up piece of gum, he finds their local pizza joint, and from there he searches “elementary schools nearby,” which somehow feels like it should be illegal? He buys several pairs of the pink cleats, expertly copies Hazel’s handwriting, which says “Hazel YABA,” places a tracker in each one, then drops a pair off at all of the nearby schools. Yikes. This man is not to be messed with. Too bad for Mallory that she’s the one who picks up Hazel from school that day. 

While he’s stalking Mallory, Dennis gets the call from Detective Gonzalez that Trevor has died. This man puts on a performance that sounds almost genuine on the phone, but visually reads as Dwight Schrute as we watch his face contort itself into fake anguish while carefully maneuvering his car through city traffic. Dennis waits until Mallory leaves to go on a bike ride, and then attacks her on the path. Women are truly not safe anywhere. In a chilling sequence, Dennis ties a garbage bag over Mallory’s head and drags her into the woods. He quickly realizes that she doesn’t have the bird tattoo that he saw on the witness at Trevor’s house (a.k.a. Paula), so he strips her of her valuables and leaves her for dead. Will she survive? Do we care?! Tune in next week to find out!

While Paula might be physically safe from Dennis for now, she’s mentally losing it. The blackmailer continues to call her, demanding money in exchange for keeping her cam-boy secrets. Paula isn’t so sure of what to do when the blackmailer demands a wire of fifteen thousand dollars, so she heads to the internet. Apparently, when you wire someone money, you get all this information in exchange, including the company that you’re wiring money to. Makes sense, but when Paula wires a dollar, the voice on the other end of the phone tells her that Trevor is going to die. Huh? This person doesn’t know that Trevor is dead. And this person is a twitchy young woman with a gorgeous mop of hair. We still don’t know what is going on, but the plot is definitely thickening. 

Paula’s delightful coworkers, Geri (Kiarra Hamagami Goldberg) and Rudy (Charlie Hall), aren’t completely aware of what’s going on with her, but they’re certainly curious. So curious, in fact, that Paula lets them in on the fact that she got scammed by a cam boy either because she knows they’ll find out anyway, or because she needs to let it all out. It’s probably both. And the hug that the two work friends give her after her confession is one of the sweetest things to happen on the show so far. I want more of these characters! I want more chatting about poor bread-to-filling ratio and Scooby Doo masturbatory fantasies! The mundane chatter between acts of gruesome violence feels very Tarantino to me, and I’m here for Geri and Rudy getting their hands dirty at some point. Please, TV gods, never let them die. If we have to sacrifice Mallory, I’m okay with it. 

After a day of learning about blackmail wire and unwittingly dodging Dennis the menace, Paula heads to soccer practice and faces yet another obstacle. Karl is there to hassle her about taking the Boise deal, and Paula stands firm. “What kind of mom would I be if I pulled her out of this life?” she objects. She puts her foot down, saying that Hazel needs “a mom she can rely on.” And not only is she right, but we (and she) also know that she’s a mom who will be there for her daughter, no matter what. I mean, the woman showed up at soccer practice after dealing with a horrifying blackmailer! Paula is the mom I want to hang out with at all the PTA meetings. Good thing we have a whole season to bask in her cool mom presence. 

Only … Paula might not be who she seems to be. The real cliffhanger of this episode isn’t really whether or not evil stepmom Mallory survives; it’s the body count that Paula has in her past. As Paula finally reaches Detective Gonzalez and excitedly chatters about her wire transfer ruse, the wry officer isn’t amused. She asks, “This wasn’t your first dead body, now was it, Paula? I don’t like it when people keep secrets.” Guys, what did Paula do? 

Red Pencil Marks

• In the interest of catching up on the first two episodes, please note your favorite moments in the comments! Me? We’ve established that I loved the tuna can moment because it anchored the show in a reality where nothing is safe, but I also adored the YABA (“you are a badass”) moment between Hazel and Paula in episode two. This scene grounded Paula as a good mom, the type of mom that any kid needs, because it illustrated that she’s helping her child harness and internalize her own strengths. Instead of telling her how she should feel, she’s elevating her child by carefully mirroring how she sees her in her eyes. As a parent, I can tell you that this is no small feat, and that the YABA reveal almost killed me dead. 

• Speaking of moms, I think Tatiana Maslany is doing an excellent job playing a mother even though she does not have any kids of her own. Again, this is no small feat, but great actors can truly do anything. Maslany is one of the greats, and her inspired performance at the center of this show is what makes the series so irresistible. 

• Apple TV is getting very good at creating characters and series we want to spend more time with. Is Apple TV the new HBO? Discuss!