Summary
Paula’s lowest ebb yields some decent moments from Tatiana Maslany, but movement in the overarching plot is dangerously slow given how deep we are into the season.
Lawyers are like buses, apparently — you wait ages for one to turn up, and then two come along at once. This is the predicament that Paula finds herself in here in Episode 8 of Maximum Pleasure Guaranteed, which is just the latest in a long string of predicaments that include being arrested for a double-murder and locked up on Rikers Island. This is where Paula meets her “attorney”, Rebecca Halliday, not once but twice. After oversharing with the first one, she realises immediately that she has been duped.
Despite this compelling little hook, “Hallidays” doesn’t make a great deal of use of it — on the contrary, we don’t see either Rebecca again until the very end of the episode. Given how deep into Season 1 we are, there’s a noticeable lack of macro plot development and genuine suspense in this episode, which instead focuses more on a rift between Geri and Rudy and Paula reaching her lowest ebb, yielding some solid moments of despair from Tatiany Maslany but precious little else.
Somewhat improbably, Karl bails Paula out. As generally despicable as he has been throughout most of the season, he’s clearly not onside with Mallory’s plan to use every predicament Paula finds herself in as justification to strip Hazel away from her. He pushes for full-time custody in the interim, with Paula only allowed supervised visitation, but given everything that has happened lately, even Paula agrees with that. There’s a moment of tenderness between the two that is sweet enough, but it can’t just be me who wholly rejects the idea of any kind of romantic reconciliation here. It’d be cool if Karl started helping out, but Steve is right there.
Even at rock bottom, Paula’s not willing to let things go, which is understandable given that she has been falsely accused. But the real emotional stakes aren’t her freedom but her custody of Hazel, which is continually threatened by all the scandal. She persists, though, following the old lady who reroutes Dennis’s “John Smith” parcels to a seemingly empty residential address that, based on the discovery of a personal photo of Dennis and Trevor, is the former’s home. There’s another visitor, too, and after a brief scuffle involving a little potted cactus, it turns out to be Ash.
Ash is pleased to learn that Dennis is dead, but she, like the rest of Maximum Pleasure Guaranteed Episode 8, doesn’t tell us anything we didn’t already know. Dennis and Trev were dating. Trev was a client of Dennis’s, among many others, running elaborate scams on vulnerable people suckered in through tawdry webcam displays. Inspired, Trev decided to run his own scam behind Dennis’s back, enlisting Sky and Ash to help him do it. Paula was the obvious mark on account of being local and having some exploitable weaknesses — Hazel and what happened in Portland — and we know what happened next.
Ash’s key utility is that she overheard Dennis murdering Sky with expanding insulation, so she can exonerate Paula. She immediately calls Gonzalez, names Dennis as the real killer, and explains that she’s going to be bringing in a witness, despite Ash’s misgivings about cooperating with the authorities. At the police station, Ash takes her earliest opportunity to “go to the bathroom”, which Paula initially falls for, but in a nice little subversion, when Paula rushes to the bathroom, Ash is still there, genuinely using it. But in a nice little subversion of the subversion, while Paula is apologising, Ash bolts out of the window anyway, leaving behind a bag containing a gun and a flash drive, both of which Paula almost gets caught with.
Paula has a few choice words for Gonzalez, to whom she also mentions the two lawyers thing that was supposed to be the hook of “Hallidays”, but for once, Gonzalez is justified in mistrusting Paula, since it looks a lot like she’s giving everyone the runaround with the whole witness thing. Still, at least Paula has something to do now. With a pointed middle finger raised at Trev’s professional deception, she starts poring over the footage of his cam sessions on Ash’s flash drive, making notes.
The rest of the half-hour revolves around a widening rift between Rudy and Geri, which is a little unexpected. Geri is still committed to the story she’s writing at Paula’s expense, chasing up a lead by asking Joyce Tercek about her encounter with Dennis under the guise of an article about admission standards, and then pitching the full story to Suzie.
While this is going on, a suspicious Rudy breaks into Geri’s desk and discovers both Dennis’s phone — which he takes — and the first draft of the story. And to be fair to him, he’s genuinely appalled that Geri is willing to throw Paula under the bus for her own career advancement. What’s most surprising about this scene, though, is that Geri seems surprised by his reaction. It’s almost like she doesn’t know she’s stabbing someone in the back. Maybe that’s a symptom of being a journalist.
Rudy may have gotten himself in trouble, though. While he’s sulking in a diner, he replaces the battery of Dennis’s phone and turns it on, which pings a tracker monitored by one of the Rebecca Hallidays. The camera makes a point of letting us know that she has a gun, so it’s likely she’s going to be pointing it in Rudy’s direction sooner rather than later.
