Take Three: Maniac

Maniac: Season 1, Episode 3 “Having a Day” (B+)

This show is definitely unique. There are people, or at least consciousnesses, that live within computers, capable of emitting real tears that can drip onto something else, but it’s not possible to accurately monitor what’s happening within someone’s brain. Owen got quickly flagged for not taking the pill, which he purported he did so that he would be ready if Annie needed to activate him. After all the background we got about Annie’s past in the previous episode, it was nice to see her lighten up to a degree in this installment, coming clean with Owen about just trying to get him out of her way by telling him what he wanted to hear, and then she actually went and brought him in when Dr. Muramoto just went and died right on his desk. You’d think that the employees in this study would be a bit more on top of what the subjects were doing, to the point that a doctor couldn’t die and have his drawer raided by two subjects without them noticing. The peculiar – and apparently agoraphobic – Dr. Fujita didn’t waste in time in bringing Justin Theroux’s Dr. Mantleray back into the operation to head the study, and we got to see another technological development with its own purposes in the form of his half-animated sex simulation. Owen and Annie may be taking their pills own and experiencing their miseries, but that short-circuit is definitely not something that was supposed to happen and is sure to influence things in an unpredictable way.