“Made for Love” HBO Max TV Review by Josh Davis
April 29, 2021 2:02 pm |
In the opening scene of the new HBO Max series “Made for Love,” Hazel Green crawls out of a watery hole in the ground and finds herself in a desert on the outskirts of a town in the middle of nowhere. She’s wearing an emerald-green nightgown and is soaking wet, her hair matted, and her huge brown eyes smudged in black raccoon makeup. It’s a striking sequence.
As the episode unfurls, we learn that Hazel is the wife of tech billionaire Byron Gogol, played by Billy Magnussen of “Into the Woods” and “Game Night.” Cristin Milioti (“How I Met Your Mother,” “Palm Springs”) stars as the bewildered but determined woman trying to escape from a relationship worthy of “Brave New World.”
Hazel has lived with her husband for 10 years in a sprawling, high-tech compound with artificial skies and an enormous pool with a pet dolphin named Zelda. It sure looks nice, but to Hazel the massive estate may as well be a prison.
Byron has often used Hazel as a test subject to help him gather valuable data, and their home is filled with cameras and sensors that record their every move. At one point, Hazel is asked to rate and review her most recent orgasm on a scale of one to five.
Later, Byron tells a small crowd of party guests that he and Hazel will be literally (or digitally?) joined together by his latest invention, dubbed “Made for Love.” Publicly, he beams as if making the world better through altruistic capitalism but, in another scene, he gleefully gloats as his latest product has caused riots across several countries.
Before this new tech can be installed, Hazel attempts suicide by tying a weighted noose around her neck and jumping into the pool, only to find herself washed away, perhaps carried by an elaborate drainage system, to a dusty small town seemingly miles away from anything. She hitchhikes to a strip club, steals fresh clothes, and nabs a six-pack of beer for good measure. When one of Byron’s henchmen corners her, she lops off half his left hand with an axe and escapes into the streets, covered in blood and clearly freaked out, but still clutching the beer.
Hazel hitches a second ride, but Byron is able to track her through his omnipresent tech, and the walls close in on her leading up to the big reveal: that the “Made for Love” system is already installed in her head — and Byron has been watching Hazel’s every move through her very own eyes.
Milioti walks a fine acting tight rope, balancing fake smiles whenever Byron is near, and her frantic attempts to escape in the outside world. She also gets to show off her comedy chops, albeit in smart, subtle ways. Magnussen, meanwhile, looks to be having fun as an over-the-top, grinning villain with buckets of money and zero accountability.
Ray Romano (“Everybody Loves Raymond,” “The Irishman”) also costars as Hazel’s father, Herman, but he barely appears in the pilot.
Series co-creators Patrick Somerville (“The Leftovers,” “Maniac”) and newcomer Alissa Nutting have created a creepy, surprisingly violent, funny, and thoroughly entertaining first episode that’s part dark comedy and part social commentary on big tech. It’s a fun watch, with a heck of a punchline involving Romano in the last frame that this review won’t spoil.
If the rest of the series can keep up the bonkers energy of the pilot, “Made for Love” should give HBO Max another standout black comedy to pair with the excellent “Flight Attendant,” which has already been renewed for a second season.
PCL Rating: Tupperware
Rotten Tomatoes Rating: FRESH
Tags: Cristin Milioti, HBO Max, Made for Love, made for love hbo max 2021, Ray Romano, Television Review, TV Review
Categorised in: Television Reviews
This post was written by Leftover Brian
Comments are closed here.