TV Review: "Maniac"
Netflix’s “Maniac” is unlike any television show of its time. It is bound to have your head spinning from start to finish.
The best part about this mini-series is not watching Emma Stone and Jonah Hill perform a lemur heist. Nor is it the show’s creative reimagination of New York in an alternative retro future, nor its homages to other science fiction works. What stands out is the show’s ingenuity in unpacking the complexity of the two protagonists’ lives and emotional issues through their dreams. Director Cary Joji Fukunaga, best known for “True Detective,” carries you through the subconscious minds of Owen Milgrim (Hill) and Annie Landsberg (Stone).
The show follows Owen and Annie, two strangers brought together by a pharmaceutical trial for a drug that, with the help of his emotive supercomputer, can cure any mental illness by allowing his subjects to confront past traumas in a series of dreams. However, things go awry when the supercomputer, reminiscent of HAL 9000, malfunctions and places Owen and Annie in the same dreams.
Owen is an underachiever with a savior complex. He suffers from hallucinations due to his schizophrenia. Annie is a witty but aimless young woman fixated on her irreparable relationships with her sister and mother. Owen joins the trial to earn some easy money, while Annie is there to get a fix after illicitly experimenting with the drugs outside of the trial.
The show is set in New York, but everything seems slightly off. Much of the futuristic technology addresses isolation, like a service where people can be paid to act as friends, or a sensory deprivation tank that allows subjects to hide away from the world for days at a time. What allows Owen and Annie to confront their troublesome pasts is their ability to form a connection through each other’s emotional pain. The show leads and ends with this concept: “The infinite potential of our connections.”
Having starred in the 2007 teen comedy “Superbad,” Stone and Hill have great chemistry and a masterful command over their characters. The multiplicity of characters the two play in “Maniac” pushes their acting to the limit, especially when the characters confront their pasts during their dreams. However, these dreams, induced by the pharmaceutical drugs, create the hilarious yet emotionally complex scenarios that reveal the core of the characters’ emotional suffering.
In one instance, Stone plays a drunk half-elf, a parody of Legolas from “The Lord of the Rings,” donning a British accent. Her duty is to guide an elvish princess suffering from a disease to a fountain with the cure. However, underneath her costume and wig, the audience will notice that the princess is actually played by the same actor who plays Annie’s sister. Her dreams parse her relationship with her sister, revealing guilt and regret.
“Maniac” is an intellectually stimulating show, with Fukunaga bestrewing recurring names and objects throughout the series, forcing the viewer to pay attention to subtleties that meld characters’ real lives with their dreams. With its unique insight into human psychology, the show carries a message about the necessity of human connection, especially in a digital world.