High Maintenance: Season 2

I'm sure I've said this or something like it before, but the strengths of the anthology story-telling format are also its weaknesses. New characters, new story, every weak? Great! That means when there's an episode I just can't muster a shit about, I don't even have to pay attention to it - next week will have something totally new. But on the other hand, when there are excellent episodes filled with fascinating characters, hey, sorry, there's no momentum sustained on a week-to-week basis.

Even the very best serialized shows still know how to use the idea of "episodes" to their advantage, telling focused stories every week, shifting character perspectives or even tones form week to week, the final product of the "season" being greater than the mere sum of its parts. But that's neither here nor there.

I was a fan of the first season of High Maintenance, which aired on HBO back in 2016. It was six half-hour episodes long, and it felt wholly new and refreshing, just to follow this unnamed weed dealer around on his bicycle as he visited and sold to various clients in New York. Generally we'd follow the lives of those clients, seeing the dealer ("the Guy") from a third person perspective for the most part, and in a limited capacity. It worked! I think I ended up placing High Maintenance fairly high on my year-end rankings in 2016.

Here in 2018, in its second season? Eh. Something felt off. Maybe it's just TV fatigue - so, so easy to be let down by television when you watch too much of it, and what felt new and fun even as recently as 2016 might feel completely trite by now - but I'm more ready to blame the show's shifting focus. We still saw new characters and clients every week, sure, but here in the second season it felt like the primary focus was on the Guy, the dealer - ostensibly the show's main character, sure, but also not as much of a character in the first season as he was a character-linking plot device. And maybe the expansion from six episodes in the first season to ten in the second was a bit much, a bit ambitious. Definitely there were fewer memorable moments for me here in this second season despite nearly twice as much content.

I'll probably be back for a third season as long as HBO is - this is still a very easy show to watch, after all, and in its best episodes I think it's very funny and tightly made and clever. But, yeah - it's trending downward! Sorry!