Apple Has A Mid-TV Problem.

More miss than hit, the streamer's murky identity is still baffling.

On Wednesday night I finished the profoundly disappointing Apple TV series, “Maximum Pleasure Guaranteed” and decided to roll right into the first episode of its new release, “Lucky.”

The “Lucky” pilot is good, not great. But there’s a reason I didn’t rush to watch the second episode, which Apple TV also dropped, before the show reverts to a one-a-week release format: Because of “Maximum Pleasure Guaranteed.”

And partly because of “Your Friends & Neighbors.” And “Sugar.” And “Murderbot.” And “Stick.”

And absolutely because of “Down Cemetery Road.”

Apple TV is a bit of an enigma. It is mostly a hit and miss operation with its dramas and comedies. It has enough quality shows to merit a test subscription, but not enough good movies to make that a smart decision. And a very weak archive to bring the whole distribution of your dollars into serious question.

Will we get “Lucky” with this plot?

To be clear, Apple TV is not alone in churning out a lot of Mid TV. But in the streaming world, despite the lineage of its parental name, Apple is a small fish. Its percentage of success should be much higher.

I would argue that the best thing Apple TV currently has going for its reputation is Netflix.

Yes, Netflix.

The Godfather of streaming services catches an enormous amount of flack for its quality because the “Netflix makes so many bad shows!” concept is such an easy target, a lazy “hot” take turned cold ages ago. Netflix is everyone’s favorite whipping dog because the streamer is enormous, has an ocean’s worth of programming where you can bob your head repeatedly into the barrel of, uh, apples, and come up with a ton of weak, mushy fruit.

That kind of “why are Netflix shows so mediocre” as a bang-it-out column is ubiquitous and provides the right kind of shade to hide Apple TV from the same judgement.

The problem with the Netflix argument is that it was never built to be a prestige streamer. It was built to have everything you or anyone else could want. It was — and is — the modern equivalent of a broadcaster, emphasis on broad, built to destroy both broadcasting and cable, which it did rather brilliantly.

That will always and forever be its legacy.

But in becoming the first essential streaming service, Netflix has also created plenty of great programming, plenty of top-tier prestige series, endless amounts of Mid-Plus content and, yes, gratuitous amounts of Mid and Mid-Minus series.

And films, for that matter. What does that make it?

Hands down the best value for your subscription dollar.

The breadth of choice, both great and dubious, was baked into the original plan. A whole bunch of everything that would take years of around-the-clock viewing to find and finish.

Love it or loathe it as a masterplan, you probably subscribe to it.

Tatiana Maslany, looking at the plotting choices.

Apple TV? It launched on Nov. 1 of 2019. Three and half months shy of its seventh birthday, how would you describe the streamer?

Take your time. You’ll need it.

More simply, how would you sell its merits to friends who are considering whether or not to subscribe? What’s the return on their investment?

That’s problematic, mostly because the best that can be said about Apple TV at this stage of its development is, to modify a sports analogy, argue that it has a (mostly) high floor and a low ceiling. What does that mean? Roughly translated, this:

Solid series in the Mid range, with a couple of outlier great ones. If you subscribe, there are series that will probably entertain you, and a few that seemingly everyone will have talked about as buzzy and must-see. But because Apple TV doesn’t consistently turn out greatness, you could probably live without it if needed.

Picks will vary among you, but here’s my quick breakdown of Apple TV series to date:

Great:

• “Severance”

Excellent:

• “Slow Horses.”

• “Silo.”

• “The Studio.”

• “Pluribus.”

• “Pachinko.”

• “Bad Sisters.”

I quite enjoyed “Tehran” and “Drops Of God” but, critically, those are in the Mid-Plus category — which is where most “really good” TV resides. “Margo’s Got Money Troubles” had a wonderfully surprising and solid first season to build hopes on, and people seem to love them some “Widow’s Bay,” but Apple TV doesn't have the best track record of preventing good series from going off the rails, so I’ll wait to judge those when the sample size isn’t so small. (And if you’re wondering, yes, “The Studio” and “Pluribus” showed more than enough in one season to merit their placement).

After that, you can debate yourself silly over whether series are Mid or Mid-Plus, including “For All Mankind,” “The Morning Show,” “Foundation,” “Invasion,” “Ted Lasso,” “Shrinking,” “Monarch: Legacy of Monsters,” and “Platonic.”

Everything else seems Mid-Minus or worse.

So let’s go back to the just concluded “Maximum Pleasure Guaranteed,” because within this series we might be able to find the issue that is starting to express itself in a larger sample size of Apple TV fare.

“Maximum Pleasure Guaranteed” became “Maximum Frustration Guaranteed” because of the plotting.

This series is not an outlier.

Plotting, I would argue, has derailed a number of Apple TV series — not as many as weak writing, the usual culprit on most bad shows, but enough to raise alarms. In “MPG” you’ve got an excellent lead actress in Tatiana Maslany and a supporting cast more than able to engage viewers for the long haul, which is critical to a series maintaining long-term interest.

And the writing in “MPG” is, overall, solid enough to make the series work. It can be funny and nuanced and thoughtful. That should be more than enough. Except, the entirety of the season was cratered by a ridiculous plot where Maslany’s character, falsely accused of murder, tries to solve the issue herself, making a cascade of dumb and simply unbelievable decisions. Why? Because the entire plot and premise relies on this smart woman to be stupid in order to create its drama.

There was another way to do it, but “MPG” never found it.

That’s a bad — and frustrating — show, one that wastes its evident potential. In the process, it wasted my time, to the point where I had to hate watch most of the latter half of the 10-episode season, just like I did with the first season of “Your Friends & Neighbors” and — still recovering, so pardon the PTSD shakes — the ridiculous “Down Cemetery Road.”

How to waste a great cast.

All of these series started strong. All of them. (And perhaps others you might have encountered and can expand on in the comments). But their plotting failed them. If you don’t take the intelligence of your audience seriously, you start to get a reputation.

Which is why I hesitated to watch the second episode of “Lucky.” It has all the hallmarks of a road I’ve walked down too many times before on Apple TV. Maybe someone there will be a little less lenient on dumb plotting going forward?