Who the hell would want that? you might ask, a question “Made for Love” raises but doesn’t entirely answer. For the purposes of the story, what’s important is that Byron wants it and Hazel emphatically does not. This impels her to fly the cube, a madcap and violent escape with Byron watching from behind her eyeballs. (Turns out he implanted only her chip, not his: “I had to read your diary first to know if I could let you read mine.”)
Based on the novel of the same name by Alissa Nutting, a writer and producer on the series, “Made for Love” plays out as a screwball action satire, which likely makes its chilling premise — patriarchy and techno-utopianism as two sides of the same chip — go down easier than it would as a straight drama. (Christina Lee of the mordant “Search Party” is the showrunner; other producers include Patrick Somerville of Netflix’s “Maniac,” with which this shares a skeevy-dystopian vibe.)
The metaphors are never far under the surface here, like Byron and Hazel’s double-finger wedding bands, reminiscent of tiny handcuffs. And when Hazel seeks help from her widowed father, Herb (Ray Romano), she finds him having taken up a committed partnership with a sex doll — sorry, “synthetic partner” — named Diane. Their one-way relationship is an echo of what Byron is trying to make Hazel into, a wife machine, but it’s also oddly tender and respectful.
“Made for Love” is hardly subtle, and its cautionary tech tale has been told repeatedly in “Black Mirror” and elsewhere. But it’s playful and funny and almost momentum-driven enough to get away with hand-waving away its many implausibilities. Among those is the question of why Hazel, presented as a wily, resourceful skeptic, would have been swept off her feet by Byron, who from their first meeting throws up enough red flags for a giant slalom course.
The casting helps put this over. Milioti, with her charm and anime eyes, is an almost too-perfect rom-com-lead type. (She broke out on TV as the title figure in “How I Met Your Mother.”) But she smartly plays against that type in stories that subvert expectations. Her Hazel is cunning, feral and sardonic on the lam; in flashbacks to her married life in the Hub, you can almost hear her scream behind her 10,000-watt smile.