In 2017, Alissa Nutting (what a last name, but who cares when you’re getting all those royalties with that moniker?) released her second novel Made For Love. Complete with its hooey Lisa Frank-esque cover (further solidified by the presence of dolphins), the majority of critics reviewed the book favorably, while one critic, Annalisa Quin, assessed it best when she said that the “ideas are never more interesting than in their first iterations.”
It’s clear that the show’s creators (including Nutting herself, as well as her fellow professor boyfriend, Dean Bakopoulos) felt the same way, choosing to hone in on the novel’s primary anchoring story about Hazel Green and tech mogul Byron Gogol—an obvious nod to Google. In the series, Hazel is played by Palm Springs’ Cristin Milioti, while Bryon’s douche baggery and narcissism are brought to life onscreen by Billy Magnussen. At the time of writing the book, Nutting couldn’t have anticipated just how true to reality her “fictional” characters would end up being to Grimes and Elon Musk. For their relationship didn’t come to pass until 2018 (officially unveiled, oh so typically, at the Met Gala. Adding to the irony of their coupling was that the theme that year was Heavenly Bodies: Fashion and the Catholic Imagination—how rich considering Musk is among the billionaires who have stamped out any remaining trace of spirituality from our lives).
Two years later, Grimes “gave birth” to their robot spawn, Æ A-Xii, and Musk delved ever-deeper into a project called Neuralink. Unlike naming a chip for your brain something as supposedly “romantic” as Made For Love, Musk went with this more clinical moniker despite the fact that, yes, theoretically, it could lend the “telepathy” required to fully understand your significant other.
While Byron favors use of a dolphin to test out his chip, Musk has instead opted for a pig for the placement of his own brain chip implant, which can both read and write brain activity. This, one supposes, is why he’s opted to cheerily liken it to “a FitBit in your skull.” Not quite. But one can imagine Byron positioning it to Hazel that way as well. Instead, he simply tells her, along with the millions of people watching him give an interview on the subject, that, “Hazel and I have the answer for what everyone wants in this life: true love. With this chip implanted in the brains of two partners, we’ll synchronize two minds.”
Except Hazel definitely doesn’t want any of this—least of all the scheduled task of rating her orgasm on a five-star tier. But Byron “feels” it’s the best way to ensure Hazel’s “satisfaction.” In truth, everything about Byron’s approach to life is indicative of wanting to wipe out all unpleasantness, therefore all sense of humanity. That’s why he’d rather just “troubleshoot” the problem of “figuring out” “what’s wrong” with Hazel by literally getting inside of her head instead of putting in the real effort required of any enduring relationship. And so, why would a man like this bother with something like, oh, consent? Which is why he freely films a promo commercial for the product without actually “using” Hazel, but instead “her likeness,” as narration insists, “Now you and your loved one can truly come together—every thought, every feeling…shared. Your brains fully connected, a network of two. We made it possible because you were…made for love.”
After this is shown to the interviewer that’s been allowed unprecedented access inside “The Hub,” the sanitized alternate dimension (like, literally) that Byron has created for himself (again, how Elon), Hazel takes him aside and demands when, exactly, this was filmed—because she certainly doesn’t remember partaking in any scenes. Byron carefreely responds—as though it’s the most natural thing in the world, “We deepfaked you. You were busy that day.” Hazel, who knows that everyone else also knows she’s never doing anything, hits back, “Doing what?” He shrugs, “I think you were napping.” When she tries to further express the extent of her anger, she simply stifles it and pretends it’s all fine, leading Byron to assert, “This is a perfect example of why Made For Love is such a great product. It’ll close the gap between our miscommunications—there’ll be none!”
Ah yes, how one can imagine Grimes going through the same horrors these past couple years. Her diminishing public presence also an indication of being evermore under Elon’s brainwashing thumb. Made evident by the scanter and scanter number of tweets in comparison to days of yore—and no, it isn’t just because she had a baby and so she’s “super busy.” Ah, and let’s not forget that eerie picture she was forced to take of Elon and Kanye standing next to one another (as the glare of her reflection was dimly visible in the window) in the summer of 2020, prompting fans to promise Grimes, “We’re gonna get you out of there.” No such luck on that yet, alas.
In the meantime, there’s no question that, like Byron with Hazel, Elon wants Grimes to become his perfect doll. An ideal accessory for his own Hub. Ah, and speaking of the doll analogy, what would it be without being made precise? Indeed, it’s no coincidence that Hazel’s dad, Herbert (Ray Romano), her only living relative left on the outside, has taken on a “synthetic partner” in the time since Hazel left. Yes, that means a sex doll. At first repulsed by her existence in Herbert’s trailer, Hazel eventually comes to view Diane as a sympathetic “woman,” even seeing something of herself in the poor thing. She supposes that’s why she suddenly feels an obligation to “doll” Diane up for her anniversary with Herbert and insist that he doesn’t keep her sequestered inside the house for their special celebration. This all goes back to her flashback of a particularly terrible anniversary of her own. After telling Byron all she wants to do is something as simple as seeing Warpaint play a show in L.A., instead he creates a simulation form of the venue and gets the band to reschedule their concert just to play for them. It completely taints the entire experience and makes Hazel realize even more just how much of a prisoner she is as she remarks to Diane while doing her makeup, “I can’t believe I actually thought he was capable of doing something normal. I was Byron’s doll. That’s why I get you.”
But “interfacing” with humans isn’t the only thing Byron hates about humanity. Eating and sleeping are among the annoyingly human tasks that he has also managed to dispense with thanks to his “genius” (a.k.a. obscene wealth allowing for plenty of trial and error in experimentation). Like Elon, Byron is “taking efficiency to a whole other level,” as Byron’s interviewer somewhat glibly puts it. Both men are on a mission to improve society—as they feel it ought to be. And since he with the purse strings controls how images are remade, that’s what the rest of us get stuck with whether we wanted it or not.
When Byron’s interviewer asks Hazel if she would be willing to put a chip in her brain, she skirts the question by saying, “We just wanna give the world what we have.” Likewise, one can easily envision Grimes selling out her own views to align them with Elon’s in an interview so as not to incur the wrath of the beast. And, speaking of beasts, Zelda the dolphin, who they keep in their small pool as Fiffany (Noma Dumezweni) monitors its “sensory responses” with the chip implanted, is much more present in the novel—along with an entirely unmentioned character named Jasper, who can only be sexually aroused by dolphins. But maybe they’re keeping this plot on ice until season two (or not). The man Hazel ends up having a dalliance with almost solely as a means to irritate Byron while he watches (thanks to the chip he secretly implanted in her head being like a nanny cam) also exists in the book, however, and stems from an attraction based almost entirely on smell.
Her lust, more than anything, is all about the pungent odeur he emanates. His rawness and realness in direct contrast to Byron’s odorless world. In the book, he remains more constant, while in the show he is only a brief device. As for her falling in love with Byron so easily, Hazel describes it best in the book with, “Do you know how when people are really hungry they will be driven to eat the inedible? Grass and soil and the like? That also happens with love. If you want love badly enough, you will start gobbling harmful substitutes like attention and possessions.” The HBO Max version of Hazel instead blames it all on Daddy issues, telling her father, “Have you ever wondered why your daughter was so willing to run away with a sociopath? I mean, who does that? I’ll tell you who: girls with shit fathers.” Someone get Grimes’ papa on the horn to tell him that.
Yet unlike Hazel, Grimes didn’t come from a background of impoverishment or desperation—two other key reasons why Hazel was more willing to flee into the clutching arms of Byron. Upon their first encounter, he catches her running a scam using one of his products as the dangling carrot. Riveted by her “performance,” he approaches her and tells her he’s giving a lecture where people most want to know the secret behind success. “Be born rich, right?” Hazel offers back. “No, no. It’s being able to spot opportunity and understand human desire.” Elon, too, would seem to think he has this gift, and that being born rich didn’t one hundred percent play into his success.
Wooing Hazel on their first date in “Rome,” or rather, a virtual reality cube pretending to be a restaurant in Rome, Byron reels her in. Hazel doesn’t yet know that even for as horrible as the real can be, it’s still better than knowing everything is fake—sort of like learning about being in the matrix with the red pill. Hazel don’t want her fuckin’ blue pill no more. And neither did Mariah Carey, for that matter. For, let’s not leave out the idea that there are many elements of the Mariah Carey/Tommy Mottola dynamic at play in this show as well—which just proves white men should never be allowed to have money, because they only use it to stifle women with the control that comes with it.
Byron, meanwhile, can’t fathom Hazel’s departure. Her running away from all that is pristine. When he sees her again, he reminds her of those around them, “These people are prisoner to life’s variables. We don’t have these inconveniences at The Hub.” She retorts, “Do you realize that you’re just listing stuff that poor people have to deal with?” But Byron can’t understand, try as he might to practice existing in the real world with a simu-Hazel by telling his servant to ramp up the simulation of the scenario to include the most annoying possible “variables”—including passersby kicking a beach ball that dusts up sand on their blanket, a dog sidling up to stick his nose in their picnic basket, etc.
But like Elon, Byron cannot function among the peasants outside the world he created. Which means Hazel a.k.a. Grimes can’t either. She must be kept inside as Elon’s manic pixie dream doll.
