Maniac – Pharmaceutical Experiments and Elves

Through the Idiot Glass Disclaimer: There will be spoilers. If you’re even remotely interested in this show and you haven’t yet seen it, or if you’ll be mad if you accidentally read any possible spoilers about it, I’m going to chalk it up to “not my fucking problem”. You have been warned.
Discussion Subject: Maniac, Miniseries (2018) (Netflix)

Maniac
Just like Mr. Robot, Maniac is a series that blipped its way onto my radar due to my extreme love of Severance and my desire to find anything and everything that is similar.

I purposely avoiding reading anything about the show before diving in. Did it work for me? Find out by reading on, or you can just as well click that X in the top right of your screen. That’ll work too.


The Premise

Robot poop cleaners milling about the sidewalks, people paid to be walking advertisements, tiny apartments with Star Trek-like desk consoles. Jonah Hill as the schizophrenic and depressed Owen, the black sheep of a very wealthy family. His brother is on trial for sexual misconduct. Emma Stone as a down and out lowkey junkie, Annie, with borderline personality disorder. Both, for their own reasons, decide to participate in an experimental pharmaceutical study that claims it can cure all mental disorders with a series of three pills: ‘A’, ‘B’, and ‘C’. They’re grouped with other similar sad sacks and get strapped up to these machines that cause them to confront their demons through alternate personas. A mishap in the lab causes Owen and Annie to be bonded together in every dream scenario, creating an unusual friendship via an accidental connection.

Maniac

Owen… I hated you in Superbad. I liked ME better in Superbad.

The B-plot involves Justin Theroux as Dr. James K. Mantleray, a complete basket case of a scientist with crippling mommy issues who oversees the experiment. His mother, Dr. Greta Mantleray (Sally Field), is a world-renowned psychologist who is tasked with treating GRTA, the super-computer modeled after Greta’s intelligence and personality, who reacts strongly to the death of the original scientist overseeing the experiment. It gets a bit convoluted.

The series ends with Owen testifying truthfully in court about his brother’s crimes and Annie patching up a touchy relationship with a grief-stricken father, both fulfilling the “confrontation” part of their experiment. Annie busts Owen out of a mental health facility and the two travel to Salt Lake City together. Nothing about the series or the ending suggests a sexual relationship, but these two are totally going to bone in Mormon Land. The end.

Maniac

It’s like 2001: A Spacy Odyssey except fuckin’ Justin Theroux is in the way.


My Half-Baked Thoughts

To say the least, this was a disappointment. The first two episodes were great! The worldbuilding was pretty cool, with this retro-futuristic setting that reminded me of Back to the Future Part II‘s idea of a not-quite-so far off future. I liked seeing these miserable characters meander a little bit through their lives before submitting themselves to the psychological pharmaceutical study, with the details behind Owen’s family’s predicament and his desire to escape his life, and Annie’s dysfunctional family situation and her desire to escape her life. I liked the setup of the study environment, where the participants are all assigned little sleeping cubbies and white pajamas and the rooms were filled with retro computer equipment and scientists with really shitty outdated glasses. I liked the whole backstory with Annie’s sister’s death after she takes the “A” pill. This was all fantastic stuff.

Maniac

Bankrupt business in the front, really shitty party in the back.

I thought that I was going to get more of the same throughout: character studies of these two young hot messes and the past events that shaped them to be who they are today and why they are compatible with each other based on reality. The show lost me completely on Episode 4, the first shared fantasy episode. Owen plays mulleted Bruce. Annie plays non-mulleted Lin (but still mulleted in her heart). They are a married couple who engage in a nutso sitcom-caliber plot about a stolen lemur that Lin needs to recover for a hospice patient before it’s made into a hat. It was not only wholly uninteresting, but I felt like I was cheated out of some real character development.

Episode 5 had these two become the personas of Ollie and Arlie, two debonair con artists from the 1940s who join an occult party in order to find some sort of magical Don Quixote book pages. It felt like yet another disposable story from an episode of, say, Psych. Again, Ollie and Arlie are alternate reality personas with alternate reality characterizations that do nothing to forward the plot nor their engaging characters. And it happens again and again. Owen becomes the son of a mafia family, then an Icelandic UN agent who accidentally kills an alien. Annie becomes an elf in a fantasy epic, then a CIA sleeper agent. I’m bored, I’m bored, I’m bored.

Maniac

I think Bobby Hill read this series once.

The side plot with Justin Theroux’s character was marginally more interesting, but there was a certain element of creepiness with his relationship with Sally Field that I found too off-putting to become invested in. I didn’t like that he built the computer to resemble his mother. I didn’t like how weird and sweaty and stressed he got around her. I didn’t like his relationship with fellow colleague, the stick-up-her-butt Dr. Azumi Fujita. It all served to remind me that I was getting cheated out of two characters I found appealing.

I did understand, and therefore appreciate, the meaning behind the alternate reality dreams. Owen’s theme was family turmoil. Annie’s theme was dead sister guilt. This was meant to be their brains’ way of working through and confronting their issues head on and, due to an accident with the wiring, they both happened to be sharing their experiences. That’s cool on paper, and could’ve been cool on screen, but the narrative didn’t land. It was instead presented as an episodic anthology. Even THAT is cool on paper! Jonah Hill and Emma Stone have good acting range! They can play different characters! But no, it was instead dull and meandering and inessential. Much like my blog posts.

Maniac

Maniac may cause cerebral hemorrhaging and excessive nosebleeds.

Thankfully, the experiment was over at the beginning of Episode 10 and everyone could get back to their lives. Needless to say, it picked up again for these final 37 minutes. Owen testified in court and threw his sexual predator brother under the sexual predator bus. Annie confronted her father, who was a totally cool and easygoing Hank Azaria, by the way, and they both discussed Annie’s sister and mother. In the end, Annie decides that it was worth keeping hers and Owen’s relationship going, and she convinces him to bust out of the loony bin. I liked all that stuff. THAT’S character development! That’s what I wanted the whole time!

I suppose, in the end, I was looking for something eerie like Severance. Maniac had the potential to be eerie, but they went in a completely different direction with it instead. And it just wasn’t my thing.


Worth the Watch?

Most of the reviews and opinions are overwhelmingly positive, so don’t let my pissy wet blanket ruin your good time. Odds are wonderful in your favor that YOU, yourself, the dipshit reading this, are going to like it tremendously! Action romance thrills suspense mental disorders intrigue and mullets! Go nuts.


Hey, I wrote other posts like this! Check out this shit too please:


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