I’ll say this for these past two episodes. First, it’s great, and by Netflix standards positively groundbreaking, that they are two episodes. There’s really no reason for them to be — they’re both set in the same two fantasy worlds created when Annie and Owen ingest the C-pill and tell one continuing story about them from start to finish.

But Maniac is a half-hour dramedy, give or take a few minutes from time to time (mostly take, lately, which is also frankly incredible), and by god they’re sticking to it. Thus what would be a dense hour of TV becomes two breezy sitcom-length installments. It’s amazing how much easier the result goes down. I mean, can you imagine powering through 60 minutes of the fake Lord of the Rings world? Fortunately, you don’t have to!

I’ll say this for these episodes as well: I’m kind of shocked by how much I enjoy Owen’s gangster fantasy, and Jonah Hill’s performance in it. Combine that Soundcloud-rapper look in a mafia environment, which I haven’t seen before, and that weird blend of taciturn and terrified that’s Owen’s default way of interacting with the world, which I also haven’t seen in this context before, and you’ve got something…well, that I haven’t seen before.

That’s the first time Maniac has done anything original. It’s amazing how much easier the show’s magpie tendency to pluck ideas from other films works when there’s something genuinely unusual going on. I mean, the plot mechanics of the gangster fantasy are just remixing The Departed — more so now than ever, with Owen’s lost brother Jed/Grimsson appearing as a deep-cover gangster working with the cops to rescue him at the last minute, and high-ranking guys in the outfit secretly working with the Feds, and all kinds of out-of-nowhere murders and whatnot. But with that oddball take on the rogue-prince gangster archetype at the center, I didn’t mind.

Also, murder on TV is kind of fun sometimes.

And Owen’s date with Olivia, in which they discuss the Gnostic Gospels as a metaphor for how your brain interprets reality and weeds out conflicting data, and in which Olivia reveals she had a paranoid ex-boyfriend who sounds a lot like Owen himself, is a strong scene. Okay, so lines like “For people we’re supposed to love unconditionally, families seem to have a lot of conditions” is some very writerly shit, but oh well. At this point it’s clear I’m never gonna be deeply embedded in this show’s fantasy, so I’ll take whatever blips of enjoyment I can get.

I reviewed the eighth episode of Maniac, aka the one where the epic-fantasy and gangster-movie fantasies end, for Decider. Trying to look on the bright side here.

Tags: decider, maniac, reviews, TV, TV reviews

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