Summary
Maximum Pleasure Guaranteed has an underlying sense of danger in “Rosebuds” that has been missing from previous episodes. Things are heating up as we get deeper into the back half of the season.
There has been an element of mortal peril to Maximum Pleasure Guaranteed throughout Season 1, but the first time I really felt it was here in Episode 6. There’s a looming quality to “Rosebuds” that’s new; a canted viewpoint, a nervous heartbeat in the backdrop. A child’s scream in the other room might just as easily be a cockroach in the sink or a hired killer in the shower or a nosy PI across the street. The dangers are mounting, coming from all sides, and the essential texture of the show is shifting to accommodate them.
It’s still funny, granted. Rudy and Geri are a consistent source of laughs, and I’m glad we’ve contrived a way to keep them involved in the main plot, and a lot of what Paula does and says is amusing, though she’s admittedly finding less and less to laugh about as we go. At this point, the show’s comedy is becoming deliberately idiosyncratic, a way to cut through the burgeoning dread, like in an opening montage that finds Paula purchasing pizza party supplies and checking off a list that also includes “learn how to shoot”. Her battle for custody is intertwining with her battle for survival, and she can barely tell where one begins and the other ends.
The pizza party needs to go well. She needs to impress the soccer moms so that their character references are meaningful, since that’ll help in her case against Karl and Mallory, the latter of whom has hired a PI without the former’s knowledge to keep an eye on what Paula is up to. Early signs are promising. She doesn’t drink to excess or take drugs. She works, shops, and returns home. But there’s also a guy who seems to have a key to her apartment, presumed to be a new boyfriend, who is photographed lurking inside. I’m not sure it’d be better or worse if Karl knew that the man isn’t a secret boyfriend but a crazy killer.
It’s Dennis, obviously. Paula has no idea he nips in while she’s out. But when Karl later turns up at the pizza party to confront her, she gets an inclination. He doesn’t believe her, but you can sort of see why he wouldn’t. This ends up being a crucial tip-off. The pizza party goes quite well, but at some point during it, Paula retrieves the gun she had earlier hidden in the closet. When she nips out to a bodega to grab some antihistamines for one of the girls, Dennis takes his opportunity and jumps her. She manages to smack him with a broken bottle of Pepto-Bismol, but he’s still able to knock her out and bundle her into the trunk. He has no idea she’s armed. When he drives her to somewhere secluded and pops the trunk, she shoots him. Maximum Pleasure Guaranteed Episode 6 ends with his fate unknown. I suspect the wound was non-fatal, since we won’t have much of a plot left if it wasn’t, but you never know.
Dennis is pretty prolific in “Rosebuds”. After checking out Paula’s place, he threatens a couple in an elevator for no reason at all, then kills Frank, the PI that Mallory hired, by sliding a kitchen knife into the back of his head. After killing Sky with expanding foam in the previous episode, and killing Trev right at the start, his body count is mounting. That should give Gonzales and Baxter something to do, but they’re sidelined for most of this half-hour, poking around the dingy motel where Sky’s body was left. There’s pressure from above to get the case wrapped up as quickly as possible, which perhaps won’t bode well for Paula, but I’m tempted to believe that both cops will end up on her side eventually. It’ll be nice, as she’s short on allies.
She does have Rudy and Geri, though, who’re left to their own devices here to track Geri’s earbud while Paula is hosting the pizza party. It takes them to a parking lot where Ash has left the vehicle, along with seemingly all of her belongings, including a yappy dog. They’re able to swipe her phone and identify Dennis’s number, which should prove to be an important lead, or at the very least an important detail in the little memoir that Geri is writing, though that admittedly doesn’t get touched on in this episode.
Either way, it’s all kicking off, isn’t it? There are definitely some elements I’d like to see more of, such as Paula’s relationship with Steve, which gets a tiny bit of development here but not enough given how much chemistry Raymond Lee and Tatiana Maslany have. I’m also curious to see how Paula disappearing while leaving Hazel, her friend, and her friend’s mom in the apartment will go down with the soccer team, and thus how it’ll determine the custody battle. But at this point, custody is the last of Paula’s problems, since you can’t look after a kid if you’re dead (or in prison).
