Made for Love in HBO Max s new techno-dystopian series (Image Courtesy of HBO Max)
Hazel Gogol (Cristin Milioti) wanted a divorce long before her husband and tech CEO Byron Gogol (Billy Magnussen) inserted a chip in her head, allowing him to see her every move and track her “emotional data.” That, understandably, was the last straw.
The latest in
Black Mirror-esque tech nightmares, HBO Max’s
Made For Love premiered its first three episodes on April 2. Adapted from Alissa Nutting’s 2017 novel of the same name, the series tenses the moment Byron makes Hazel Made For Love, the name of his romance-optimizing brain microchip. Splicing together Hazel’s desperate attempts at freedom and her secretly unhappy, ten-year marriage stuck inside a doorless tech campus called the Hub, the series unravels itself as a creepy, comically unhinged portrait of the extents of “love.”
Intimacy in relationships is so often about feeling seen. And for Byron Gogol, the tech billionaire at the center of the seriocomic HBO Max series âMade for Love,â thereâs no better way to ensure his wife, a long-haired beauty named Hazel, feels understood than to surreptitiously implant a chip in her head that gives him access to ârudimentary emotional dataâ as well as her four senses.
Thatâs right, four senses: âByron doesnât believe in smell,â Hazel wryly explains to her father after escaping the serenely upscale, subtly menacing ultra-modern compound where sheâs spent every day of her life with Byron for the entirety of their 10-year marriage. Played by the terrifically sly Cristin Milioti (âPalm Springsâ), Hazel has more or less been bugged with a GPS tracking device to allow her husband to control her more than ever.