Peacock Hilariously Mocks HBO Max’s Change To Just ‘Max’

Last night, when I went to watch the latest episode of Barry on HBO Max, I was prompted to download a new app: Max, the one-word replacement to the perfectly fine streaming service we already had.

This new just-Max app looks and feels a lot like what we had before, but now it’s no longer weighted down by the HBO brand—you know, the brand that brought you hits like Game of Thrones, The Sopranos, The White Lotus and Succession.

The new app looks pretty slick, but I did run into a snag right away: On my Xbox, there was no Season 4 of Barry at all. I could only watch the trailer. Had they pulled new episodes of the hit Bill Hader show?

I went to my phone to find out, downloading just-Max to replace my HBO Max app and, weirdly, there was Barry Season 4, intact and ready to cast to my TV. Strange!

In any case, this is all preamble to the (bird) meat of this post, which is rival Peacock’s hilarious (mildly NSFW) Twitter takedown of the name change:

“I know you’re all very disappointed, but I will *not* be dropping the first half of my name any time soon” the tweet reads, with a pair of googly eyes emoji.

This is funny, though to be fair I should note that the name Peacock itself is rather silly.

Also: There are too many damn streaming services, and Peacock is part of the problem. I really wish that some of these big companies had chosen to sell their shows and movies to established streamers rather than trying to hop on the streaming bandwagon. Imagine if NBC had simply sold streaming rights for Poker Face to Netflix instead? It would have been a huge hit, made money, not cost audiences extra in streaming subscriptions and everyone would have been happy.

But I digress. This is a solid barb. A shot across the proverbial bow at Time Warner Discovery’s goofy Max name change which, to be fair, I think will be just fine and is not, in the bigger scheme of things, a big deal.