What’s up with that strange ‘ad’ for Hilton Head in Jonah Hill’s new Netflix show?

Note: this article contains spoilers.

“Hilton Head (Island)” — the place, the brand — makes a brief, if jarring, appearance in a new Netflix series set in a dystopian near-future, one seemingly hellbent on stamping out loneliness.

Or, maybe, just the lonely.

And, on an even grander scale, pain, the consequences be damned.

“Maniac,” starring Emma Stone and Jonah Hill, is set in New York City and follows fellow down-and-outers Owen (Hill) and Annie (Stone), two people apparently on the fringes of society — that’s at once futuristic and retro, with a 1980s feel — who stumble into the same high-risk pharmaceutical trial.

Owen is diagnosed with schizophrenia and thinks Annie might be his contact for a secret mission set in motion by his brother, who visits him in visions and gives him instructions.

Annie — at least a person who appears to be Annie — is featured on a series of digital billboards Owen encounters on his way to visit his family, a tight-knit, well-heeled unit of which he’s an outcast.

He’s walking on a dark, rain-soaked street at around the 13-minute mark of Episode 1 when he sees her on the billboards — dressed in golf attire and holding a club under a double-”H” logo that advertises “Hilton Head GOLF VACATIONS.”

The billboard speaks.

“You made a promise to me,” it says, in a woman’s voice. “You made a promise to yourself. You promised we’d golf together, in Hilton Head.”

The billboard is accented by a graphic that reads: “WORLD’S BEST AWARDS.”

“TRAVELERS’ CHOICE - WINNER TOP ISLAND IN THE U.S.” (We’ll give the show’s writers a nod for the likely Conde Nast Traveler Readers’ Choice HHI-is-No. 1 reference.)

As it speaks, the billboard transitions to a second picture, this time a close-up of Annie, who appears to have just hit a nice shot. She’s smiling. “Book your stay now!” the sign reads.

The Hilton Head reference is an interesting detail, one perhaps meant to juxtapose the lonely, gloomy present Owen is navigating with the promise of human connection and happier times.

But connection seems to come at a cost in “Maniac” — lonely people can buy substitute friends, and widows can opt for volunteer temporary husbands. Not to mention that happiness is a relative, personal feeling, regardless of how much futuristic advertisers in the show try to make it less so.

A question viewers might ask themselves: What are we willing to pay for connection — what are we willing to sacrifice to fit in — if the product is contrived, disingenuous, hollow?

Even the suggestion that Owen book a vacation seems a cruel tease, or perhaps a nudge for him to acquiesce to the pressure to become a company man in the family business and earn some real money. Recently furloughed in an apparently depressed economy — with the pharmaceutical trial his only job prospect — Owen has little hope of escape.

But what’s also interesting is the billboard’s hard-sell, you-promised-me tone. The sign, one seemingly personalized and directed at Owen by all-knowing advertisers, seems to target his sense of isolation and associated guilt.

In its review of the show, the New York Times called “Maniac” “unstable, exhilarating and one-of-a-kind, a sci-fi pharmacological dystopian family-therapy dramedy.”

Vulture.com said the show “is about the American mental health crisis, the disintegration of the family, the intrusive role of advertising in everyday life.”

Rotten Tomatoes scores it a “Fresh” 81 percent (with an audience score four points higher).

I say give it a try, Lowcountry folks, if for no other reason than to take a stab at making sense of the Hilton Head reference.

It’s worth the headache.