The Highs and Lows of ‘High Maintenance’

“High Maintenance”, a webseries-turned-television show, made its TV debut on HBO last Friday. Created by husband and wife duo Ben Sinclair and Katja Blichfeld, the show previously ran as a webseries for six seasons on Vimeo. The transition to television, kicked off by first episode “Meth(od),” has been largely successful, which is lucky, because this webseries is a hidden gem.

“High Maintenance” follows the many stories of the Brooklyn residents purchasing from marijuana deliveryman The Guy, played by Ben Sinclair himself, with each episode featuring an entirely different cast, apart from The Guy. The episodes in the webseries are quippy in nature, in part due to their shortness: Each ranges from around five to fifteen minutes, allowing for short, allegory-esque stories with highly interesting and often deeply disturbed characters. The show is surprisingly not actually about marijuana itself; instead we view the stories of Brooklyn’s people through the eyes of The Guy, using the obtaining of marijuana as a framing device. The closest parallel that can be drawn is to FX’s “Louie”, as “High Maintenance” shares the same wry, condensed humor presented in a series of episodic, unrelated vignettes.

“Meth(od)” presents two stories—one with an angry “Jersey Shore”-like character named Johnny who orders from The Guy, and another with the narcissistic and despicable Max (Max Jenkins) and Lainey (Katja Blichfeld), who are both familiar faces from the webseries. The focus here is on Max as he attempts to simultaneously overcome his drug addiction and his all-consuming “fag hag” friendship with Lainey. The premiere does well with each of these stories individually: Each is packed with absurdist humor that is grounded in such mature issues as addiction and drug abuse, and will have you cracking up during one moment and feeling existential dismay in another. “High Maintenance” is highly successful in the twists and turns of its writing and is blatantly unafraid to push boundaries; the premiere is no exception. Moreover, “High Maintenance” is aesthetically excellent: Its use of montage in tandem with brilliantly-paced music fleshes out the shows. The show’s poignant pans over the cityscape and honest looks at the fouler side of the drug world capture the grittier nature of the metropolis.

However, “Meth(od)” is not without its faults: The season premiere struggles particularly with its new television format. The success of the original webseries resided largely in its trailblazing ability to defy the typical thirty minute or hour-long timeslots that other TV shows conform to. In “Meth(od),” the thirty-minute episode feels noticeably longer, with its two stories squished into the TV-allotted time slot. As a result, there are moments that make “High Maintenance” feel distinctly different from its online predecessor. Long, accentuated pauses and some anticlimactic plot points in the first story punctuate the differences between the much more dynamic episodes previously featured on Vimeo.

Nevertheless, the success that “Meth(od)” brings to the television world is promising. If the show is able to continue its original brand of humor and resolve the mismatch stemming from its longer time slot, there seems to be much potential in the episodes to come. With such a novel concept, there is no reason to believe that creators Ben Sinclair and Katja Blichfeld cannot do get here; indeed, the very success of “High Maintenance” lies in their creation of compelling and introspective characters. The show’s premise may revolve around weed, but Brooklyn’s inhabitants are the focus, and rightfully so.