Anybody watching 'Made for Love' on HBO Max?

My wife and I watched the first 3 episodes over the weekend. The release schedule is kind of odd-- it’s an 8 episode season; 3 eps were released April 1, 3 more to be released April 8, and the final 2 on April 15.

It’s a technology-oriented black comedy that feels like a long episode of Black Mirror. Basic plot (should be spoiler-free):

a woman has been married for 10 years to a billionaire tech entrepreneur genius who’s last name and company name is “Gogol”. I think they’re evoking and parodying a real company, but I can’t put my finger on exactly which one… :roll_eyes:

Anyway, she lives with him in a place called “The Hub” which is this super-high tech simulated environment, and she’s basically a prisoner, not allowed to ever leave, and her every feeling and emotion is tracked using sensors and rating apps that she has to fill out. The last straw is when she finds out her husband is about to release “Made for Love”, paired computer chips implanted in a couple’s brains so they can read each other’s thoughts and have no secrets from each other. And he’s planning for them to be the first couple to have it done. So she escapes, but does not know that he already had her chip implanted. Gogol can’t read her thoughts because he hasn’t had his chip implanted yet, but he can experience all 4 of her senses through an app (he doesn’t believe in smell), so he can see and hear what she does, and can track her easily.

Cristin Milioti is the wife. She is the actor who was so likeable as the titular mother in ‘How I Met Your Mother’ that she sabotaged the reveal that she quickly dies after pumping out the two kids and Ted ultimately gets back with Robin. (spoiler-blurring in case anybody’s binging HIMYM for the first time). She was also in the recent movie “Palm Springs”. Ray Romano plays her dad in a goofy role.

All in all I would say watchable. There were a couple jarringly violent scenes played for laughs, which were a little difficult to process, as in “am I supposed to find that funny?”

I finished watching it (on Amazon Prime in Canada). It was OK, but not great. I thought the first couple of episodes were kind of a slog, but it picked up somewhat around halfway through.

I’ve watched a number of comedy-dramas recently (e.g. Russian Doll, Patriot, Forever), and I’ve come to a conclusion: I much prefer watching a drama that’s intermittently funny over a comedy that’s intermittently funny. So if a show is going to have fairly goofy characters in goofy situations, I would really prefer it to consistently have lots of humour. I thought a recent show that did it well was Upload which was very funny (at least until the last couple of episodes where it degenerated into a mediocre thriller).

Obviously the line between comedy and drama is blurry and different people will have different preferences.