Margo (Elle Fanning) realises she’s pregnant when she throws up into a bread basket at her waitressing job. It’s not good news – the father is her literature professor, with whom she’s been having an affair since she started college in her hometown. Under the guise of supportiveness, he implies that she should have an abortion. Driven by an unexpectedly strong urge, Margo decides to keep the baby. Kicked out of university, struggling to make rent, realising the horrifying costs of baby maintenance and on another whim, Margo dips a toe into the world of OnlyFans.
Margo’s Got Money Troubles shines the brightest in its relationships. Margo’s mother, Shayanne (Michelle Pfeiffer), is not keen on the idea of being a grandmother, especially the grandmother of a scandal-born child, as she establishes a new relationship of her own. The pair have a loving, occasionally scratchy bond that veers between parent-child and close friends. As Jinx, Margo’s ex-wrestler, recovering drug addict, and distant father, Nick Offerman excels. There’s a striking intensity and vulnerability to his performance, which both Fanning and Pfeiffer play off of to create a trio of relationships that feel established, complex and very real. Occasional lingering, slow-zoom shots on a character’s face allow the cast to really milk and give nuance to these connections.
The baby, Bodhi, bursts onto the scene early on. By the end of the first episode, Margo is bringing him home from the hospital – to the apartment she shares with three other girls, two of whom quickly tire of the situation and move out. Bodhi’s constant presence is overwhelming. Many TV shows relegate small children to off-screen references, reluctant to negotiate a reluctant body into the space. Here, though, the inescapability of the baby is key. Motherhood as horror has been a popular theme in recent TV and cinema; MGMT both adds to the canon and provides a more grounded take. It helps that the babies that are cast are all incredibly cute.
Less successful is the show’s commentary on sex work– one of the main elements of the story. OnlyFans begins as a purely financial project, but Margo quickly begins to see it as a viable career and even a passion. She recruits local models KC (Rico Nasty) and Rose (Lindsey Normington) as mentor-collaborators, leans into the cosplay side of things with her roommate Susie (Thaddea Graham), and embraces the creativity of inventing an online persona (and world). Before long, she has a considerable following.
Yet aside from initial comments from KC and Rose that she should be careful to protect her real identity, not much is said about the dangers of what she’s doing. The show thoroughly explores different attitudes to sex work and how society treats those in the profession, but it occasionally feels a little too insular. Rose’s mention of Margo’s “internalised whore-phobia” opens the door for analysis – but that never arrives.
Margo’s Got Money Troubles rockets along, which leads to the final few episodes feeling slightly rushed, but luckily, this does not come at the cost of effective character and relationship development. Well-constructed characters overcome the occasional shallow plot point or cringey TikTok dance, and layered performances make for a funny, touching and compelling eight-parter.
★★★
Streaming on Apple TV from April 15th / Elle Fanning, Michelle Pfeiffer, Nick Offerman, Thaddea Graham, Greg Kinnear, Nicole Kidman / Apple TV
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