Maniac - Netflix, Jonah Hill and Emma Stone are superbadder with Fukunaga

Limited series beginning Sept 21st.

Thanks, my wife is a big Fukunaga fan.

This looks interesting.

I got a bit of Eternal Sunshine of the spotless mind vibe from that trailer.

Looks batshit crazy. Can’t wait :)

Watched the first two eps tonight. Mostly background/setup, but really digging it so far. Some Legion-esque vibes going on.

I decided to watch the first couple of episodes the other night too! At 3AM the next day, once I’d finished the whole series in one huge binge, I realized a few things:

  1. I need better self control about not letting excellent serial TV entertainment hook me.
  2. I was very tired and had to be up in a few hours for work
  3. This show was weird and awesome and I had no regrets

It’s a really hard show to describe. Imagine if Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and Mr Robot met in a bar and had a one night stand, then gave the resulting baby up for adoption. Then the baby was adopted by the loving couple of Punch Drunk Love and Inception and brought up there . With the video game Portal occasionally babysitting. That baby would grow up to be Maniac.

Reviews on this are diametrically opposed. They either like it a lot, or think it’s terrrible. Curious to see how the series continues for you.

Nothing can top the Dwain Esper original.

This was weird. It had some highlights but overall… Just weird.

I think you mis-spelled ‘fantastic’ there!

I thought it was absolute drivel. Whilst I can respect that a lot of work went into creating it and the actors are obviously trying their best I found it was weird for the sake of being weird. Made absolutely no sense whatsoever. Had no pathos or evoked any kind of emotion at all really except for vague boredom and confusion. However, I generally dislike surreal cinema/tv so I’m probably the opposite of the target audience.

TLDR: It was weird, with a giant capital W and made little to no sense.

Don’t watch “Falling Water”

This series was excellent, and had only a couple of low points, mostly due to Jonah Hill’s limited range. I can certainly see why there are comparisons to Eternal Sunshine, though I would say those are rather misleading in terms of the tone of the series, which isn’t at all twee like Eternal Sunshine is. I would sooner refer to Inception and Synecdoche, New York as more similar works that viewers can use as a basis to determine whether to watch. We really need more one-off prestige dramas like this that work just as set showcases instead of trying to drag things out. I really hope Fukunaga does more work in this vein.

I think Hill is barely recognizable on first glance due to the weight drop. It helps the setting I think.

Here are some pictures from the magazine I am sure everybody reads:

I stay up to date using this important resource.

http://isjonahhillfat.com/

He sort of looks like Bob Dylan now with those long pigtails.

I loved Maniac. It’s not perfect. Everyone should try it, not everyone should stick with it. This is me trying to sell everyone on why I think they should watch it without giving much away. I’ll be happy to talk more specifically and spoilery with anyone else who’s seen it or has questions and doesn’t care about spoilers, but this post is pretty much spoiler free.

First of all, I enjoyed the entire aesthetic of the show. The combination of slightly surreal retro-futuristic technology and the colorful, moody way things were shot was beautiful. I would’ve watched almost anything for ten episodes (or more!) that looked as good as Maniac (I’m the guy who loves TRON: Legacy because it simply looks and sounds cool). I’m trying to find a way to describe this appeal, I want to say “superficial”, but that has the connotations that the appeal is in some way false or invalid. I think the sensory appeal is real and valid and should be recognized, but I know that’s not enough to carry everyone through something they’re otherwise uninterested in.

I tried not to read too much about it in advance, but I picked up the impression that there might be some twists or tricks aimed at the audience; unreliable narrators or questions about what was real or whatever. That wasn’t the case at all. The story Maniac tells is actually pretty straightforward, and unless I was completely oblivious to some hidden dimension of the narrative, the events of the series can all be taken at face value. Sure, you could wonder at some of the meanings or symbolism of the dream/hallucinations, but there’s never any big question about what’s real and what’s not or anything ambiguous like that. I guess what I’m trying to say is that you shouldn’t watch it and feel like you’re missing something. Speaking for myself at least, I’m not enjoying it because of some deeper level of meaning hidden in the surreal elements that other people might miss. I’m enjoying it for exactly what we’re getting on the screen.

But the story it did tell, as simple as it ended up being, also worked for me, and largely on the strength of the performances of Emma Stone and Justin Theroux.

Emma Stone’s Annie (not to be confused with Emma Stone as Anna) is just great from start to finish, and she really sells everything. Not to single out @draxen, but I can’t imagine getting through at least episode three and saying there’s no pathos or emotion. Annie’s past and Stone’s performance were beautiful and heartbreaking.

Justin’s performance as Dr. James Mantleray is much stranger, and no one else in the show has the emotional hook of Annie, but in the same way I could just enjoy the beautiful, quirky, 80s visuals of the show, I could just watch Dr. Mantleray be weird and have a good time.

Pretty much every other secondary character was delightful too, which leaves us with Jonah Hill’s Owen. He was…fine. His performance looks weak compared to Stone, and some of that’s the nature of his character, but yeah, maybe someone else could’ve done his role better. He didn’t drag things down too far for me though.

Ultimately, this could’ve pretty easily been trimmed down to eight episodes, and both Hill’s performance and the character of Owen could’ve used some work to match the magnetism of Stone’s. And in some ways, the emotional impact of the show peaked well before the climax of the show for me. I don’t know, maybe it should’ve only been an actual movie and not a miniseries at all.

But what we got was beautiful and different and full of performances I enjoyed and I love it for all of those things.

Watch one episode, and if you hate it, of course you should bail on it. If you’re on the fence, stick with it through episode three at least, and I still won’t hold it against you if you decide to give up at that point, but that was around the point I decided I would stick with it no matter what, and I’m glad I did.

It’s by far my favourite thing about the show. It reminds me a lot of Alien. And I like individual scenes and bits of writing. But I’m not sold by most of the rest of it, in particular the characters and the overarching story. I’m just not engaged at all after giving it a try for five episodes

Spoilery impressions, read at your peril:

You’ve seen the best the show has to offer. I sort of hinted at that in my non-spoilery post, but there’s no big reveal or twist at the end that casts things in a new light, and nothing that landed on an emotional level more powerful than episode two and three. Seeing Annie relive the accident that killed her sister, and then explain it:

“Every time I take that pill, I have to live through the worst day of my life, just like you did. I have to hear myself say the worst, ugliest things I’ve ever said to anyone, and it ends with the worst thing that ever happened. I fucking love it.”

“Why?”

“Because I get to be with her.”

That was the emotional core of the whole series for me, and neither Annie nor Owen’s resolution offers any kind of catharsis to live up to that.

So I wouldn’t blame you for giving up on it if you’re still not connecting, but on the other hand, there is still a lot of fun in those “individual scenes and bits of writing” to come. If you can find some entertainment in setting your expectations and just taking in the weird superficial beauty of it, I’d still recommend it.