Summary
Maximum Pleasure Guaranteed is developing a real sense of urgency and jeopardy, as Paula isn’t just getting herself in over her head — she’s now taking other people with her.
If we’re being honest, things haven’t been going especially well for Paula since the very beginning of Maximum Pleasure Guaranteed. But they’re definitely going worse for her than usual in Episode 5. Her custody battle is getting nasty, and as she gets closer to the truth of who murdered Trevor, she’s not only making herself look like more of a suspect, but also getting much closer to her and her colleagues being murdered. “Scamboy” is easily the most urgent episode of Season 1 thus far, and the one threaded with the most peril, at least in part because it feels like Paula has finally crossed some kind of invisible boundary that really is going to get people — possibly some of those closest to her — killed in a grisly way.
Which brings us, neatly, to Dennis. We still don’t know a great deal about this guy, but we’re getting drip-fed information that is allowing us to put the pieces together. Here, while he’s just about to go and kill Paula in the shower, which is where we left him, he gets a call from someone he calls “Bri”, which I’m assuming is short for Brian, telling him that Cecilia has a job for him. And Cecilia seems to be in charge. From what I can deduce, whatever organisation Dennis works for is in charge of the camboys like Trevor, since earlier in the season we saw his “tech support” monitoring a whole bunch of the streams at once. Dennis’s personal relationship with Trev caused him to turn a blind eye to Trev’s side hustles, which created attention around the operation that Dennis is currently in the process of dealing with. But the fact he’s on the back foot means he has to do as he’s told by his superiors.
Cecilia’s assignment involves leaning on a woman named Joyce, a Yale admissions officer who has been embezzling from the university, to admit some dude into a freshman class. Why? Who knows. But Dennis does it either way, since he can’t refuse. I’m sure we’ll pick this thread back up in subsequent episodes.
In the meantime, despite trying to destroy Paula’s parental life, Karl is pretty enthusiastically supportive of her as far as Gonzales and Baxter are concerned. Despite what happened in Portland, he doesn’t believe she’s capable of killing anyone, and while the latter stages of this episode would suggest she’s capable of more violence than she probably realised, in theory he’s likely right. But that doesn’t mean he isn’t trying to take Hazel to Idaho. On that front, at least, he’s pretty determined, and so is Mallory. After her close call with Dennis, she has decided to take things to another level. While Paula is trying to secure character references from the soccer moms, Mallory is bribing the security guard at the family court with a rare Magic: The Gathering card so she can get the most misogynistic judge possible assigned to their case. Whatever works.
This is assuming that Paula survives long enough to fight a custody battle. Maximum Pleasure Guaranteed finally lets her get in over her head in Episode 5, since she, Rudy, and Geri manage to track down Trevor’s friend and camboy colleague, Sky. Under the pretense of meeting to discuss the suspicious circumstances of Trev’s death, Sky invites Paula to a run-down motel which turns out to be the place that he and Trevor bought with the intention of turning it into student apartments (and, it’s implied, with investment from Dennis). Based on the dialogue between Paula, Sky, and eventually Ash, who is revealed to be watching the exchange through a peephole while brandishing a gun, Dennis’s investment in this whole shebang, which was being funded by the fake kidnapping operation, is what has got him into trouble with his bosses, and presumably led to him killing Trev.
Sky is, of course, Trev’s “kidnapper”, which Paula intuits pretty much immediately. And they both already suspect Dennis, who they’re openly terrified of. But they’re also broke, which scammers invariably tend to be, so Ash comes up with the bright idea of calling Dennis using the voice modulator, telling him that they have someone who witnessed him murder Trev, and asking him for a ransom. Ash suggests $30K, Dennis counters with $20K, and Ash agrees if he pays half up front. The plan is to take that ten grand and use it to get out of Dodge. They’ll leave Paula there, tied up, and whatever happens to her happens. It isn’t their problem.
Naturally, Paula isn’t keen on this plan, so using some pepper spray and a nailgun, she escapes, leaving Sky fastened to the floor. She jumps in the car with Rudy and Geri, whom she insisted came along, and leaves the other two to their fate, which turns out to be messy. While Ash is bringing the car around, Dennis arrives and kills Sky by spraying expanding foam down his throat, which is a pretty gnarly way of doing things. Ash is alive, for now, but Dennis knows she’s involved and will presumably keep pursuing her until she isn’t. She’s a potential ally for Paula, though, especially since Geri, in a forward-thinking moment, left one of her earbuds in Sky’s car so they could track it.
But even though Geri seems to be on-side, she has ulterior motives. She’s trying to kick-start her journalism career by writing a story about what Paula is going through, which seems like a bit of a betrayal. And Paula has additional concerns, including the fact she’s being watched by some dude in a car who takes a bunch of photos of her pawning Sky’s chain and using the proceeds to buy a gun. I’m sure she’ll be using it sooner rather than later.
