SPOILER ALERT: This story contains spoilers for “Queens,” the Season 1 finale of “Maximum Pleasure Guaranteed,” now streaming on Apple TV.
At the moment we think that Paula Saunders has finally gotten her life together, things get sent reeling once more.
Over the course of the first season of Apple TV’s “Maximum Pleasure Guaranteed,” Paula (Tatiana Maslany) has juggled several huge challenges. After watching Trevor (Brandon Flynn), a webcam sex worker she was paying, seemingly get murdered onscreen, Paula has attempted to solve the crime — and to get free from the web of blackmailers making her life hell. In the midst of all this, too, she’s been trying to keep custody of her daughter Hazel (Nola Wallace) even as her ex Karl and his new wife Mallory (Jake Johnson and Jessy Hodges) want to move the family to Boise.
As the season comes in for a landing, all seems solved! Paula wins her custody hearing, despite her erratic behavior lately, and the danger she’s endured has faded into the rear view. Shadowy crime-world figures, the same ones, seemingly, who’ve been running the entire web of miscreance into which Paula has plunged, force Frank (Murray Bartlett), Paula’s main antagonist, off a roof with a fake suicide note admitting to Trevor’s killing, all loose ends seem tied up. Detective Sofia Gonzalez (Dolly de Leon) believes there’s more to the story, but Paula, free from suspicion and ready to move on, doesn’t care. “I don’t know anything that makes any sense!,” Paula tells Detective Gonzalez, closing the door on her involvement in the police investigation. She goes on to say that she’s going to celebrate her victories, and even go on a date (she’s been circling Steve, a fellow parent played by Raymond Lee.) “I’m dropping everything else, and maybe you should too.”