'Maximum Pleasure Guaranteed' Nailed Its Final Twist

Twists are easy things to throw into a story, but very difficult to execute well. On the surface, a twist is merely a shocking development in the narrative, but an excellent twist is different. It needs to be earned, with some build to so it feels organic. Under that initial shock of a great twist is a more fundamental shift in the viewers’ understanding of who the characters are, what they did, and why they did it. Maximum Pleasure Guaranteed understood this when it used its final twist to challenge viewer perceptions of the series’ events, but their understanding of the protagonist. As played by Tatiana Maslany, Paula was many things: a deeply stressed person in dire need of a break, a great mother trying to keep custody of her child, a woman doing her best amidst an absurdly scary mystery. In the last moments of the season one finale (“Queens”), Maximum Pleasure Guaranteed threw one more identity into the mix: a secret killer.

There were signs sprinkled throughout the series that something dark and deadly lurked in Paula’s past. Roughly once an episode, there was an allusion or a brief flashback to a seemingly accidental death in Portland, laying a foundation for the twist to grow from. In one episode (“Raisins”), we see glimpses of Paula pulling into her driveway in her car when a belligerently drunk neighbor, Caleb (David Garelik), comes to harass her. Caleb was already established as a local menace, and he chose a very bad night to do some nonsense. This is the same night that Paula noticed her then-husband, Karl (Jake Johnson), flirting with Mallory (Jessy Hodges) at a birthday party and making excuses to stay longer. When their daughter has a sugar crash, Paula takes her home, bitterly and tearfully ruminating on her crumbling marriage as she drives.

These circumstances further that sympathetic portrayal and suggest that Paula was too wrapped up in her thoughts to notice Caleb in the dark. It fits with the framing of Paula as a flawed, troubled, but ultimately innocent person. It’s not great that she seemingly ran Caleb over, but given what she was going through, it’s plausibly accidental. The moment when viewers see the full surveillance video of the Portland incident, things click into place. Paula and Caleb shout at each other, with the latter yelling, “I vouched for you!” This implies a relationship beyond Caleb’s drunken antagonism. What did he vouch for her for? What were they involved in together? Was Paula silencing Caleb?

This twist throws everything we’ve seen into a different light. Paula’s killed before, making her shooting of Dennis (Murray Bartlet) feel less like the actions of someone pushed to new extremes and more like Paula has reconnected with an old darkness. Her patronage of cam-boys initially felt like an unlikely outlet, but it could be more representative of who she is under a mask. This twist complicates and expands our perception of Paula. Her desperation to prove her innocence in the death of Trevor (Brandon Flynn) is genuine, but also informed by the panic of being a suspect yet again.

Maximum Pleasure Guaranteed had a roller-coaster ride of a first season, but it saved its best twist for last. Rocking the viewers’ understanding of Paula begs a thousand questions I’m desperate to see answered. If this wild show gets a second season, it’ll be exciting to get to know the real Paula.