High Maintenance

The story telling is so weird and intervowen - not like those horrible emsamble movies where at the end you find out the are All connected.

High Maintenance stars Sinclair as "The Guy," a friendly pot dealer whose clients include an eccentric group of characters, revealing the dynamics of their lives. From the unexpected and offbeat to the predictable and mundane, the witty series provides a glimpse into the daily routines of the customers and how they light things up.

HBO previously had another comedy series that dealt extensively with weed, Jonathan Ames' Bored To Death. In its rare move from online to premium cable, High Maintenance joins Showtime comedy Web Therapy.

Love this series. Bravo to them for bringing it to the next level!YES! This is an amazing show.

High Maintenance is like nothing I've ever seen before.

This is not a typical "stoner" comedy. Yes, the title. Yes, the one regularly recurring character is "The Guy," a likable, articulate weed deliveryman. Yes, the current poster for this IMDb page features said likable, articulate weed deliveryman smoking a joint. All that aside, this is not Pineapple Express or Harold and Kumar. Nothing against those two films, but High Maintenance is something far more subtle, beautiful even.

Each standalone episode is a window into the daily lives of different New Yorkers. "The Guy" provides that window, as he is the only stranger the characters let in the door.

There are so many things High Maintenance absolutely nails. There's the stellar acting. There's the rich detail in almost every shot. There's the complete lack of melodrama. There's the runtime (6-15min) that feels so natural. There's the way in which it portrays the commonplace struggles of everyday people in such an honest, compelling way. Somehow, this web series is more than the sum of its parts, though. It's authenticity is just so damn captivating.

For me, watching an episode of High Maintenance is like reading a brilliant short story. I finish, slightly entranced, thinking about the characters for days.

Long live this web series.

This show is more than just a guy selling weed. It's about interactions we all have between us and what it means to be alive and part of the human experience. The Guy is just another person that passes through these events and is a ubiquitous, yet relate-able, presence throughout the series. Each of these episode's vignettes give us a somewhat voyeuristic look into the lives of many people that happen to be the Guy's customers. The stories are like a short novel that can vary from episode to episode, yet continuously follow the main character as he progresses throughout the series.

Ben Sinclair plays the Guy and is often a soft-spoke yet vocal character that weaves through each episode and offers insight, a laissez faire attitude, and general openness to life. The show is written by both Ben Sinclair, and his wife, Katja Blichfeld. High Maintenance was based on the web series which HBO had picked up after 19 episodes. HBO produced Season 2 and it has recently been renewed for a 3rd season (as of February 21st, 2018).

I can't find the words to describe how good this series is. The freedom of being able to make each episode just as long as it needs to be provides a lot of good returns in terms of the narrative. Weed plays a prominent part in the stories in terms of stringing them together, but it is far from the only thread, and each episode is a hilarious, depressing,or somewhere in between, slice of life. The characters run from archetype New Yorkers to some serious weirdos, both of which can exist in the same person. The dealer and main character played flatly and beautifully by Ben Sinclair is both a kind of a low key superhero, and a deus e machicna that lights the bong in each tale. This is far and away the best web series I've seen, and possibly the most artistic.