“High Maintenance,” HBO’s new original series, is a fresh take on life in New York City, but it suffers from structural issues.
Initially a web series on Vimeo, a video sharing site, “High Maintenance” was created by married couple Ben Sinclair and Katja Blichfeld. Sinclair is the principal actor for the original series. The show first aired in 2012, and has since seen some major changes in production when HBO signed the show to produce six new episodes for the network.
The show follows a shaggy drug dealer, simply known as The Guy (Sinclair), and his many clients throughout New York City. Each episode intends to take a closer, vignette-style look at the people The Guy meets and interacts with, however briefly, as he goes about his dealing.
The premier episode, released Friday, began with The Guy in an uncomfortable situation with someone who wouldn’t seem to let him leave his own apartment. As the discomfort in the scene grows, the interaction ends with a worthy punchline and sets up the tone of the show.
The episode then jumps to another pair of characters, Max and Lainey (Max Jenkins and Heléne Yorke). This pair demonstrates the well-known “girl and gay best friend” trope, but mainly focuses on Max and different aspects of his life. The episode concludes with an attempted deal between The Guy and Max.
Max gets as much screen time as The Guy, yet most of it seems extraneous. Though the intention was to delve into the character’s life and to make it as interesting as possible, some of the events that transpire are almost too strange to watch.
Lainey is heavily dependent on Max, causing him to have a lot of stress. This is evident within the first scene in which they interact, but it is displayed bluntly throughout the episode. It serves as a possible explanation as to why Max is driven to drug use. However, it also causes the viewer to form a not-too-favorable opinion of Lainey.
Each time Lainey is on screen it becomes more unbearable — not only for Max, but for the audience. It is important that the viewer feel badly for Max for having to deal with Lainey, but it is annoying to watch them interact in this way.
The shining character in the show is The Guy. His drug deals, depicted in a comedic style, are interesting to watch. These types of interactions have seldom made it to the screen, as drug dealing and usage is typically a taboo subject in society. That being said, it does make it harder for the audience to relate to some of the quirkier characters and their longer, more in-depth storylines.
This problem could very well stem from the show’s switch from the web to television. Prior to the move to HBO, “High Maintenance” enjoyed an endless sense of freedom on the internet that television does not provide.
In a 2014 review for The New Yorker, critic Emily Nussbaum wrote, “Freed of the constraints of thirty-minute or one-hour formulas, the episodes are luxurious and twisty and humane, radiating new ideas about storytelling.”
With the move to the half-hour television formula, the two main show storylines needed to increase in length. This culminated in a few confusing and disjointed scenes with The Guy and an excessively deep look into Max’s life.
What made the web series so successful was the promise that if a story couldn’t be stretched to a typical episode length, it wouldn’t have to.
It’s difficult to sense whether all of the characters introduced in this episode will even be in future episodes, but it is safe to say “High Maintenance” would benefit from either longer stories involving mostly The Guy, or shorter episodes to keep things moving.
