The first episode of Netflix's Limited Series (whatever that means; one-off, perhaps?) called Maniac was not all that riveting or attention-grabbing, and it's tones and settings clash in annoying ways. If not for the sheer love for this genre, I'd quit after one episode, but this has me asking just enough of the right questions to convince me to push on to the next episode.
Emma Stone and Jonah Hill play characters who are willing to become subjects of...something. An experiment of the mind in some capacity, something to "solve all their problems." Stone plays a girl named Annie, and Hill plays a character named Owen. Owen is as much a dullard as there can be, almost to the point he seems like he's on too much medication and goes through his day in a zombie state of mind.
Hill's lack of liveliness matches the odd tone and pacing of the show: Everything seems dark, dank, dull, and dreary. It's hard to get a beat on the timeline of this fictional United States. The Statue of Liberty is now a hybrid creature with a human body and eagle wings. There are high-tech sanitation robots hovering just off the ground around the city, scanning dogs and cleaning up after them. Yet these doctors and scientists running the experiment Annie and Owen volunteer for are using seemingly primitive computers and big-buttoned typewriters. What's weird to me (and potentially clever; I'll have to wait and decide) is how indirect and nonchalant this clashing of eras is. If it isn't, it's just unimaginative.
It's also weird that, in this throwback setting (if indeed it is in the fictional past), there effectively are these real-life pop-up ads in the form of an "Ad Buddy." If you can't pay for something on the spot, some businesses allow an Ad Buddy to come out of nowhere and read advertisements to you while you sit on the subway or walk down the sidewalk. What a sad, desolate existence society is in if those ever become real.
After one episode, nothing really happened at all, yet a lot has been established. While there's plenty of "mystery," I fear it's already too predictable in what's going on. Owen is being told he's schizophrenic, but his "imaginary" visions of his brother are obviously convincing enough for Owen to play along with. His brother is telling him to remember the most important thing: "The pattern is the pattern." If this some alternate reality that is passing through dimensions or something along those lines, the line is probably serving the same purpose that, say, the spinning top in Inception did for Leonardo DiCaprio's character, which was to provide some basis by which he can know what's real and what's not. What's going to happen if the pattern breaks?
From the opening episode, it appears he's trying to discover a truth that some entity is trying to keep from him, and possibly the rest of the world. He was brainwashed into saying there is no pattern as "they" try to convince him he's just crazy and there isn't anything going on. But one night he receives a package in front of his apartment inviting him to become a hero, and he follows suit as if he is enlisting in some secret...ahem...rebellion. Heck, why wouldn't he, right? His life sucks, and he's excited for the chance to start a new life.
NOTES:
-"Your kind of humor, where nobody laughs" was a line uttered to Jonah Hill's character, which is almost a winky-face moment directed straight for Hill, who is like that in most of his roles.
-Emma Stone didn't have cash for cigarettes, so she went outside to break into a newspaper rack. I wonder how futuristic this can really be (Zing! Hey, as a former newspaper editor, I've earned the right to make that joke).
WIFE'S TWO CENTS: She loves Emma Stone, who was the sole reason she chose to watch this. But now she's intrigued by the story. While she's glad that Jonah Hill lost some weight, it doesn't look like he did it in the healthy way (read: she hopes it wasn't drugs). I concur.