How<em> High Maintenance </em>Creates Ethical Tension
As the highbrow salad chains that have gobbled up Manhattan pursue the exclusionary dream of a cashless society, TV’s loveliest vision of New York City still indulges the romance of little green bills. In the second episode of the fourth season of High Maintenance, the show’s star weed dealer (“the Guy,” played by Ben Sinclair) refunds a few bucks to a client whose rug is soiled by the Guy’s dog. That client hands an envelope of money to a sex worker, who later gives the envelope back after their hookup turns out to be more gratifying for him than for the man who hired him. That sex worker, who’s also a waiter, waits on a table that undertips him—but the undertipper returns later with cash to atone, and the waiter then offers to buy her a drink. Money moves across these stories less as a currency than as a proxy for goodwill, and the fuzzy mantra “Pay it forward” starts to feel concrete.
In this and so many other ways, paints NYC as a mystical ecosystem. Though the Guy is never far from the action in the masterful , the focus is always on a few different onetime characters. Bodega clerks, actors, construction
