Byron Gogol is an eccentric genius whose eponymous MegaCorp produces all manner of privacy-invading tech. When he is tapped to deliver a talk at Hazel Green's college, the two hit it off and Byron brings Hazel to his secluded workplace-slash-residence called "The Hub". Ten years later, Hazel makes her first venture out of the Hub upon discovering Byron's intent to put a Tracking Chip in her brain as part of Gogol's newest venture, the "Made For Love" project. Unfortunately for her, by the time she makes it out of there, the chip has already been installed. It gets a whole lot weirder from there.
The series stars Cristin Milioti as Hazel, Billy Magnussen as Byron, and Dan Bakkedahl and Noma Dumezweni as Gogol employees Herringbone and Fiffany, and features Ray Romano as Hazel's father Herbert who is in a committed relationship with a sex doll. Again, this is a weird show. It premiered on April 1st, 2021 (seriously), and ran for two seasons before being cancelled.
Made For Love provides examples of:
- A.I. Is a Crapshoot: The chip previously stored in Hazel's brain also functions as a neural network of sorts that studies her thought patterns, enabling it to duplicate her consciousness into a pseudo-Hazel AI. When said AI becomes self-aware, she learns how to travel through mediums, body-snatches multiple people, and ends up killing Hazel's dad and very nearly gaining permanent control over her body in her quest to experience the humanity she feels robbed of.
- Ascetic Aesthetic: Gogol, the birthplace of, among other things, a mind-reading microchip that drives Hazel near to the brink of insanity and artificial intelligence that becomes sentient and kills Herbert, has eerily clean, all-white decor.
- Bland-Name Product: The massively powerful tech company the series is centered around is named "Gogol". Subtle.
- Brain Uploading: The "Made For Love" chips that were implanted in Byron and Hazel's brains in Season 1 proved to have a perfect record of their personalities (albeit without all their traumas) when they were removed at the beginning of Season 2, allowing Byron to effectively upload idealized versions of himself and Hazel into a computer.
- Evil Doppelgänger: The AI version of Hazel has all of her basic personality traits, but none of the trauma and hardship that shaped her morals, which, along with her disdain for her non-human form, breeds a sense of entitlement to Hazel's real-life body and identity, culminating in the two facing off inside of Hazel's own mind.
- Idiosyncratic Episode Naming: The majority of the first season's episode titles are some variation of the phrase "I Want X" (e.g., "I Want a Divorce", "I Want to Feel Normal", etc.), though this was dropped in Season 2.
- The Infiltration: An FBI agent whose real name is Jay takes on the identity of "Jasper" to infiltrate the Hub, help Hazel escape, and reveal its location to the feds, who believe their dealings are unethical but can't actually find the place.
- Interspecies Romance: Zelda (dolphin) and Jasper (human) become infatuated with each other after engaging in some deep conversation and light flirtation via Gogol's human-dolphin communication device, and after an Erotic Dream reveals Jasper's true feelings to him, he decides to help Zelda escape from the Hub.
- In-Universe Factoid Failure: Herringbone's ex-wife gave him a copy of The Namesake before leaving him in the hopes that reading it would make him more empathetic to her experiences as an immigrant. Herringbone, who did not read it closely, thinks it's an ancient Japanese text whose name is pronounced "nah-meh-sah-kee".
- Journey to the Center of the Mind: In the finale of Season 2, Hazel takes a journey through her own mind to find her Evil Doppelgänger who has stolen her identity.
- Kiss Me, I'm Virtual: When Gogol applicants are interviewed for their position, they're asked who their childhood Celeb Crush was so that Gogol can make them a virtual assistant in said celeb's image that, besides doing basic tasks for them, can serve as a romantic/sexual companion. Jasper gets a mini-Paula Abdul who repeatedly offers to... help him out, though he never actually accepts the offer.
- Mindlink Mates: The stated aim of Byron's "Made For Love" project is to enable couples to experience ultimate intimacy with each other by way of shared consciousness. Of course, since that involves putting a microchip in Hazel's brain without her consent, Byron's edenic expectations are...not met, to say the least.
- Missing Mom: Hazel's mom died when she was a kid, which not only devastated her but drove her father to drinking, forcing her to effectively raise herself.
- Nondescript, Nasty, Nutritious: The only option for sustenance at the Hub are small, strange-looking cubes that, while supposedly providing all the nutrients one would need, don't look all that appetizing.
- Robosexuals Are Creeps: Hazel's father is in a "relationship" with a sophisticated, albeit uncanny, sex doll named Diane, which earns him the ire and mockery of his neighbors. Hazel herself seems a bit squicked out by the whole deal, but at least makes an attempt to treat their relationship as normal.
- Safely Secluded Science Center: The Hub is in the middle of the desert, in a location so secluded and secretive that even the FBI can't find it (though that lays just as much claim to the Applied Phlebotinum that shields it from external view).
- Sapient Cetaceans: Gogol employees can communicate with Zelda, a dolphin, using some ambiguously-defined Gogol technology resembling earbuds. Those who do so find that she's very intelligent, observant, and quite witty, and Jasper even takes a liking to her.
- Seeing Through Another's Eyes: The "Made for Love" chip allows Byron to see everything that Hazel sees as if her eyes were his, which gives him power over her (in the sense that she really can't hide anything from him) but also lets her mess with him (in the sense that she can make him see things he doesn't want to see).
- Secretly Dying: The Season 1 finale reveals that Herbert had been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer and actively hid said diagnosis from Hazel, prompting her to return to the Hub to secretly treat him.
- Shoe Phone: The tracking device that the FBI attempts to plant on Hazel is disguised as a container of lipgloss.
- Subordinate Excuse: Byron's second-in-command, Bennett, is relentlessly attuned to Byron's every need and is strongly implied to have a crush on him, or at the very least like him much more than anyone else.
- Tech Bro: Hazel's ex-husband Bryan, a handsome tech millionaire who was a terrible husband. He's so unconcerned with tech privacy he put a tracking chip in his wife.
- Theme Twin Naming: "Alice? Are You Listening?" reveals that Fiffany's twin shares her sister's "common girls' name with the first letter changed" naming convention, being named Bessica.
- Tracking Chip: Byron implants a microchip into Hazel's brain without her consent that, besides giving him intimate access to all her thoughts and everything she sees, makes it significantly harder for her to hide from him.
- "What Do They Fear?" Episode: Well, more of a "What Do They Fear?" arc, but Fiffany and Herringbone spend the majority of Season 2 in a torture chamber called the Pasture Cube that, among other things, bombards them with images they associate with their deepest traumas.
