The Revival of HBO Max Marks a Return to Normalcy | Vanity Fair

As the nation reels in all the sudden, horrible change of this grim moment, it feels increasingly impossible to ever go back—to somehow reverse entropy’s course and return to the relative Eden of a simpler, more sensible time. Like, say, May of 2020, when the streaming service HBO Max launched.

Fine: May of 2020 was not exactly free of tumult. Across the globe, countless people were huddled in our houses while a mysterious virus stalked the streets. But at least we had a clearly identified place to look to when we wanted to binge Sex and the City and Band of Brothers for the nineteenth time. The platform was HBO to the max; all the pleasures of the erstwhile HBO Go, with the volume turned up. (Plus offerings from Cinemax, without the late-night softcore that Cinemax was once largely associated with.) HBO Max was shiny and new and yet also comfortingly familiar; HBO’s flag stood proud and tumescent against the onslaught of fierce headwinds.

Then a wicked man came a’meddlin’, as wicked men so often do. His name was David Zaslav, the cigar-chomping executive who, in 2022, became the CEO of a hybrid most foul: Warner Bros. Discovery. Zaslav ascended to the throne from the Discovery side of things, that malodorous pile of HGTV and Food Network chum (enjoyable chum, but chum nonetheless) commingled with the leering anthropology of TLC, where no strange and sinister aspect of human life in America goes unexploited. The stench of all this fetid pulp threatened to overwhelm the sterling brand of HBO (a Warner property)—long held up as the classiest entity in all of television, save perhaps for the principled and turtlenecked Volvo driving of PBS.

Yet Zaslav was capricious with his fancy new toy. He did not seem to value HBO in the way almost all others in the industry did. He figured the heaving, wheezing masses of America—and, lo, the world—would prefer the garbage slurry of his malignant Discovery. And so he lopped the head of HBO Max right off. The streaming service became known simply as Max, as if the “Max” part was its most sellable aspect. Because everyone loves Cinemax? Because HBO Discovery somehow didn’t ring nicely in an executive’s dinosaur brain? Who knows what whims govern such decision making. But decided it was, to change everything to Max in 2023.

HBO soldiered on. It launched a zombie show and hurried its dragon show into a second season. It gilded its age as best as it could. And yet still it was occluded by that accursed Max moniker, hidden in the shadows cast by Zaslav’s grand folly.

Until now. Light has broken on the eastern horizon, and a new day dawns. Warner Discovery is doing another shakeup, cleaving HBO from the brands that once soured its name. Finally Zaslav has awoken from his restless but productive slumber, throwing open the curtains of his bedroom and calling down to a beggar child on the street: “You there, boy, what streaming service is this?”

And the poor waif replies, “Why it’s HBO Max, sir!” Zaslav issues a whoop and a calloo-callay and cries, “There’s still time!”

Gone are all the hideous associations of the Max era. HBO Max, and balance, have been restored.

Doesn’t that feel nice? That one precious thing has been rescued from the ashes of apocalypse? It is hard not to get emotional watching the newly released promo video announcing the return of HBO Max. It promises a journey back to sanity, back to reason, back to a time when quality and consistency were the chief gods of an industry’s worship. This is but a small step toward redemption, but it is a step nonetheless. It might augur a glorious future, one in which maybe the guy who orchestrated this turmoil isn’t paid $50 million a year. We can dream, at least.

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