‘Fantasmas’: Alexa Demie and Ziwe Get Kinky About Customer Service on HBO

You know that when a series kicks off with an ALF parody, things are going to get weird. But even by those standards, Julio Torres’s latest HBO project, Fantasmas, goes above and beyond the bizarre call of duty. Scene after scene, the dreamlike comedy weaves its way through surreal sketches, and in its second episode, it debuts the funniest of them all—a kinky exchange in which Euphoria star Alexa Demie and the iconic interviewer extraordinaire Ziwe Fumudoh play customer service reps who derive untold amounts of pleasure from following the rules and being categorically unhelpful to their “valued customers.”

The strangeness begins when Torres’s character (also named Julio) calls his health insurance company to resolve a frustrating discrepancy in his paperwork. That’s when he encounters a special kind of villain named Becca, played by Demie. Her cubicle is decorated with photos of herself sitting at her desk, and its walls feature a cut-out square so that she can reach her hand through for an automatic squirt of hand sanitizer. She’s got huge shoulder pads, a cinched waist, and terrifying posture. In a word, she is The System™ incarnate.

As she steadfastly refuses to help Julio, Becca’s internal monologue starts purring. “There’s nothing that excites me more than when a valued customer gets... agitated,” she says. “... I am a soldier for the company. A defender of the rules. Assembly Plan Insurance is the company, and I am his sword.”

Read more at The Daily Beast.