Maia won’t let her friends, boss, or boyfriend slow down her ambitions for Tallulah’s career, even when Tallulah doesn’t seem to care all that much.
Photo: Kenny Laubbacher/HBO
The most devastating fights to be in are the ones in which everyone involved kinda has a point — and in “Divas Down,” Maia has no less than three of them. Tough.
The first is with Tallulah, her best friend slash client who’s been slacking off on both fronts since cocooning into her new relationship with Tessa. Though Maia’s apparently now crushing being Tallulah’s manager in terms of getting her lucrative deal$, Tallulah’s still smarting from the embarrassment of her cheesy Ritz ad, leaving her unmotivated to keep going with whatever new ideas Maia puts in front of her. They mostly keep their disagreement to a few passive-aggressive snipes — until Maia loses control of the ENORMOUS kitchen knife she was using to open Tallulah’s ten thousand PR packages, flinging it into the air and watching helplessly as it lands straight through her shoe, toe, and Alani’s pristine floor.
The rest of the episode (once again directed by Lorene Scafaria) unfolds at a frantic clip, especially as Maia bulldozes her way through an overcrowded hospital. Determined to get Alani to a meeting with toxic French kingmaker Antoine (The Righteous Gemstones’ Tim Baltz, who makes every line hilarious), Maia refuses to let her profusely bleeding foot keep them from greatness.
As always, Tallulah’s far less motivated. She’s still never really articulated what it is she actually wants from her career or manager at all — which might fit her character, but really has to change in season two of I Love LA if we’re going to get more invested in her influencer career. If it’s not shilling Ritz crackers on Hyperion, what is it? Just being cool and magnetic enough to keep herself draped in Balenciaga bags for the foreseeable future…? Go on, give us something, girl!
In the short term, though, Tallulah settles for making Maia admit that the Ritz ad was a complete tonal mismatch for her brand, whatever that is. Though Maia tries to point out that it still made Tallulah one hundred thousand dollars, Tallulah stands firm that it “was a flop.” As any halfway decent manager would with a stubborn client, Maia gives up and just tells her what she wants to hear. More importantly, though, she manages to convince Tallulah that impressing Antoine is a gateway to not just a fancy dinner, but the kind of glamorous, edgy campaigns Tallulah’s wanted all along.
Though Maia’s career tunnel vision has seemingly catapulted her up the ladder in record time, it comes back to bite her big time when it comes to her future at Alyssa180. Determined to land Tallulah a spot at Antoine’s legendary Formé dinner, Maia makes sure he sets up a meeting with them, thus ignoring Alyssa’s clear preference for another client to land the spot. Maia knows she has to assert herself in order to get noticed. Plus, the adrenaline rush of meeting with her former boss, who dared her to keep going even while “in a hurricane,” definitely hasn’t worn off yet. So when Alyssa calls to let her know Antoine has to cancel the meeting, Maia refuses to accept it. She finds out where Antoine is, limps out of the hospital against the doctor’s orders (“fuck the toe”), and struts into the restaurant with Tallulah at her side — only to see Alyssa, a liar, sitting in on Maia’s meeting.
Maia’s right to be pissed. And it’s perversely thrilling to watch her meet Antoine’s challenge to catch his attention by throwing her bleeding foot up on the table next to his martini, because “that’s how much I believed you needed to meet Tallulah.” Antoine, a man who wishes we could all just smoke in museums and kiss pretty secretaries without everyone being so boring about it, is thrilled. “Your little nesting doll is insane,” he tells a clearly seething Alyssa, “and I love it.” He immediately invites Tallulah to both the dinner and Kristen Stewart’s house for homemade sushi (“You’re not pregnant, are you?”), leaving Maia to face her boss, who may have pulled a sneaky move, but is also right to be pissed!
Maia is Tallulah’s manager, but she’s also Alyssa’s employee. Getting Tallulah in with Antoine was as impressive as it was insubordinate. When Alyssa asks if Maia can handle making sacrifices for the company at her client’s potential expense, Maia tells the truth: “No.” Alyssa doesn’t have much choice but to let her protogé go. “You’re in such a hurry for more, you don’t realize what’s in front of you,” Alyssa says. She lays the pity on a bit thick; Maia outsmarted her at her own game, so condescension is one of the last weapons she has left. But she’s also not entirely wrong, especially given how “Divas Down” ends.
Remember how Maia has a boyfriend? Because until the moment she finally gets home from her very weird, mostly bad, but ultimately kinda good(?) day, she sure didn’t — and he’s officially fed up.
Dylan was close to reaching his limit during last week’s disastrous game night, and clearly hadn’t gotten over it by the time this episode opens. He even finishes a joke Maia tries to make about how “sand is just dirt” before she can, with a kind of exhausted annoyance we’ve rarely seen him indulge. But his girlfriend forgetting about dinner with his dad — not to mention forgetting to tell him when she ends up in the hospital — well and truly pushes him over the edge. Every question he asks her in the ensuing fight is brutal. Whether it’s something as specific as, “you called everyone you know except for me?” or as general as, “when’s the last time we did something I wanted to do?”, she doesn’t really have an answer for any of them.
He also says she hasn’t been the same since Tallulah came back into town, but Maia knows what he actually means by that. Tallulah’s not the one pushing Maia to sacrifice everything for her career; Maia is. “I want a big life. I thought you loved that about me,” she sobs. A fair point, but Dylan has one of his own to counter it. “I feel like the bigger your life is, the smaller I get,” he replies. He, like Tallulah, can’t understand why she won’t slow down even for just a minute to let something, anything, other than work take center stage. But as much as I want to side with them (Maia reallyyy shouldn’t be sacrificing too many toes in the name of influencer dinners), she does unfortunately understand something about the way things work that Dylan and Tallulah don’t.
More than in almost any other industry, in entertainment, out of sight really is out of mind. “I feel like I have one shot, and if I don’t take it, I’m gonna fucking miss it,” she tries to explain. Dylan’s unmoved, but she’s not wrong. Still, taking every shot does sometimes mean missing something else. So now that she’s on the precipice of leveling up, she’s got to ask herself: is Dylan something she’s willing to lose along the way?
• So, uh … what’s Maia’s endgame, here? How’s she going to build her “big life” outside of Alyssa180? Tallulah’s doing well, but she’s still her only client, right? New York better go well, is all I’m saying.
• Maia pretending to be a Jewish victim of a Hasidic bus crash in order to get faster treatment was a v good meta bit, given how often Rachel “Shiva Baby” Sennott gets mistaken for being Jewish.
• In non-Maia news, Charlie gets both a hair transplant (along with “every senior vice president from Netflix”) and his old job back. (Mimi Rush’s new stylist tried to transition her from “alien” to “mermaid,” ending in a humiliating onstage disaster.)
• Also humiliating, but a perfect visual nonetheless: Charlie donning his “Mimi Rush Fired Me For Being Gay & Jewish” hat for her benefit, and smiling through the transplant pain as blood trickled down his forehead. Long may their partnership continue!
• First “Heartbeats,” now “Oblivion”? Putting money now on the finale opening with “Time to Pretend.”
• “I lied. I didn’t come to pick up my antique French scoliosis corset.”
• “We got an invite to the Formé dinner.” “…I’m so mad that I know what that is.”
• “‘Berthume’? That’s what I said!”
