\n\tViewed from a great distance \u2014 like, say, the interstellar perspective of the UFO that descends upon Fullerton, California, in one of the protagonist\u2019s fanciful sci-fi videos \u2014 Margo\u2019s Got Money Troubles might appear at first like a venture into a strange and alien land.<\/p>\n
\n\tThe ensemble is stuffed with colorful job descriptions: former Hooters waitress (Michelle Pfeiffer<\/a>\u2019s Shyanne), ex pro wrestler (Nick Offerman<\/a>\u2019s Jinx), a trio of OnlyFans models. The opening narration, from Margo herself (Elle Fanning<\/a>), tells of \u201cimpossible possibilities\u201d and \u201ctrying to avoid reality by rewriting it.\u201d All in all, the David E. Kelley<\/a> series would seem to have all the hallmarks of an aggressively quirky family drama, the sort where everyone seems adorably odd but also not quite real.<\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\tMargo’s Got Money Troubles\t\t<\/p>\n \n\t\t\t\t\tThe Bottom Line<\/p>\n \tWarm, welcoming and well-acted.<\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t\t\tVenue: SXSW Film Festival (TV Premiere) \n\tLook closer, however, and Margo\u2019s Got Money Troubles reveals itself to be something else. Its characters are memorable, sure, and their family relationships a bit unconventional. But this is a story firmly grounded in the real world, and all the more interesting for it.<\/p>\n \n\tWhile Margo is a head-in-the-clouds fabulist, the circumstances that kick off the plot are all too quotidian. During her freshman year at the local community college, Margo attracts the notice of an English professor, Mark (Michael Angarano), who\u2019s a fan of her writing and an even bigger admirer of her long, shapely legs. Soon enough, they\u2019re falling into bed together. A few months into their affair, Margo realizes she\u2019s pregnant. Not long after that, Mark stops taking her calls.<\/p>\n \n\tUnable to attend school or hold down a job while raising Bodhi alone \u2014 to the bitter heartbreak of her mother (Pfeiffer), who herself had Margo while young and poor and single, and hoped her daughter might enjoy a brighter future \u2014 Margo finds herself in an impossible situation. But salvation arrives from two unexpected avenues. <\/p>\n \n\tOne is the sudden appearance on her doorstep of Jinx, her semi-estranged father, who\u2019s fresh out of rehab and in need of a place to stay. The other is Margo\u2019s decision to start on OnlyFans account. With Jinx and their other roommate, a shy young cosplayer named Susie (Thaddea Graham), helping to watch Bodhi, Margo\u2019s finally able to start making money from home.<\/p>\n \n\tInitially, Margo\u2019s work is text-based \u2014 for a tip, she\u2019ll tell you what Pok\u00e9mon your dick resembles. Gradually, she expands into saucy photos and then videos, all the while insisting it\u2019s less porn than art. For its part, Margo\u2019s Got Money Troubles pushes back against characters who view this as disreputable or degrading, delighting in Margo\u2019s satisfaction as she spins increasingly elaborate sci-fi plots to shoot with help from Susie, fellow models KC (musician Rico Nasty) and Rose (Anora\u2019s Lindsey Normington) and even (for the SFW parts) Jinx. But the show\u2019s own tendency to highlight the whimsical trappings of Margo\u2019s work while downplaying its sexiness suggests Margo might not be the only one dealing with a bit of what Rose calls \u201cinternalized whorephobia.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tStill, it\u2019s a minor discordant note in what is generally a thoughtful and endearing dramedy. Margo\u2019s Got Money Troubles, based on the novel by Rufi Thorpe, appreciates what\u2019s offbeat about these characters without treating them like oddities, empathizes with them without ever once pitying them. Fanning is typically winsome as Margo, maintaining the heroine\u2019s spark of joy even as life throws her one dirty diaper and unpaid bill and legal issue after another.<\/p>\n \n\tBut it\u2019s her parents who really shine. Clad in skintight leopard and faux-fur trim, Shyanne is hardly a retiring personality. But Pfeiffer brings deep nuance to the character\u2019s big feelings, such that she conveys an entire lifetime\u2019s worth of emotion just by the way she watches Margo during her baby shower. As for Offerman, though he can be quite amusing as Jinx \u2014 the enthusiasm with which he explains wrestling moves or the plot of I, Claudius to an uncomprehending Bodhi is downright cute \u2014 he really excels at drawing out the character\u2019s sadness, which runs so deep it seems to have settled into the very crevices of his face.<\/p>\n \n\tAlong with Kenny (Greg Kinnear), Shyanne\u2019s obliviously square fianc\u00e9, and Susie, who goes sadly underdeveloped despite Graham\u2019s likable presence, Shyanne and Jinx and Margo form a family unit around Bodhi that feels all the stronger for how unexpected and complicated its bonds can be. <\/p>\n \n\tIt\u2019s a great pleasure to simply get to sit in with the crew as Margo and Shyanne bond and fight and make up again, in a pattern recognizable to mothers and daughters the world over, or as former lovers Jinx and Shyanne wistfully reminisce about their romantic history on the eve of her wedding. Though Margo\u2019s Got Money Trouble is the rare show that feels just about the right length for the amount of story it has to tell, at eight 40-ish minute episodes, I still felt a bit sorry to see them go at season\u2019s end.<\/p>\n \n\tInevitably, the fact that this unorthodox clan can be awfully messy despite their good intentions \u2014 a broken jaw, a broken hand and a restraining order all figure into the plot \u2014 requires defending, with help from a lawyer played by Nicole Kidman<\/a>. (In a fun change of pace from her sad white lady roles<\/a>, her Linda is a well-adjusted, middle-class white lady.) Once Mark and his mother (Marcia Gay Harden, so icily patrician she could be a Ryan Murphy character), who\u2019d previously tried to cover up Bodhi\u2019s very existence with an NDA, reenter the picture, they try to cast Margo\u2019s circle as unreliable, deviant, just plain strange.<\/p>\n \n\tOn that last point, they may be right \u2014 it\u2019s not every family that will bond over choreographing and constructing costumes for a serialized OnlyFans series. But, Margo\u2019s Got Money Troubles counters with a defiant smile, so what? Maybe their corner of Fullerton is a little kooky, populated by people who make their very living by being larger than life. It still feels, at the end of it all, like a home.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Viewed from a great distance \u2014 like, say, the interstellar perspective of the UFO that descends upon Fullerton,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":336564,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[83607,19514,146,85,46,83606,397,81602,11087,52222,165097],"class_list":{"0":"post-336563","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-movies","8":"tag-david-e-kelley","9":"tag-elle-fanning","10":"tag-entertainment","11":"tag-il","12":"tag-israel","13":"tag-michelle-pfeiffer","14":"tag-movies","15":"tag-nick-offerman","16":"tag-nicole-kidman","17":"tag-sxsw-2026","18":"tag-sxsw-reviews"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/336563","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=336563"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/336563\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/336564"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=336563"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=336563"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=336563"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
Airdate: Wednesday, April 15 (Apple)
Cast: Elle Fanning, Michelle Pfeiffer, Nick Offerman, Greg Kinnear, Thaddea Graham, Michael Angarano, Nicole Kidman
Creator: David E. Kelley, based on the novel by Rufi Thorpe\t\t\t<\/p>\n