Apple TV+’s newest half-hour dramedy opens with a premise so painfully relatable it almost hurts: a young woman makes a series of questionable decisions, gets pregnant, and ends up hawking explicit content online to keep the lights on. Welcome to Margo’s Got Money Troubles, where the American Dream has been replaced with a $20 tip for a scathing review of a stranger’s genitals.
Meet Margo Millet (played by Elle Fanning), a Fullerton College student with a talent for writing and an apparently nonexistent talent for avoiding married men. Her lit professor, Mark, showers her work with praise, and, of course, Margo mistakes this for something more. Despite her long-distance best friend Becca’s very loud, very correct warnings, Margo tumbles into an affair with the older, married Mark faster than you can say “academic misconduct.” The affair ends when a pregnancy test delivers news that not even Mark’s literary vocabulary can adequately process. His solution? Abort it. Margo’s solution? Keep it, despite having no idea what life will look like as a single mother.
Her own mother, Shyanne is a woman who was a single mother herself, and is less than thrilled when Margo shares the good news. To be fair, Shyanne’s got her own circus to manage. She’s posturing as the wholesome, teetotaling girlfriend of Kenny, a church president who doesn’t yet know his future stepdaughter just had a baby out of wedlock. Shyanne is essentially running a one-woman PR campaign for a version of herself that doesn’t exist, while somehow still showing up when Margo needs her most.
By the time baby Bodhi arrives, the financial reality sets in hard. Two roommates bail after the colicky baby keeps everyone up, rent skyrockets, and Margo gets fired from her waitressing job after Shyanne’s inaugural babysitting attempt ends in disaster (she brings a screaming Bodhi directly to Margo’s workplace like some kind of chaotic food delivery). With no income, no childcare, and no childcare because she has no income, Margo is caught in the single mother doom loop that nobody puts on a motivational poster yet countless women deal with every single day.
Enter Jinx. Dad. Ex-pro wrestler. Fresh out of rehab. Nick Offerman plays him with the kind of gruff tenderness that makes you immediately terrified he’s going to relapse and break everyone’s heart. He shows up at Margo’s door, trades his championship belt for a motorcycle, and becomes the surprisingly capable grandfather that Bodhi — and honestly, the audience — desperately needed.
It’s Jinx, fittingly, who plants the seed that blooms into Margo’s entrepreneurial salvation. A throwaway anecdote about a female wrestler making serious money on OnlyFans, combined with Margo’s writing chops and a quick dive into platform market research, produces the show’s masterstroke: she sets up an account insulting subscribers’ anatomy, one Pokemon comparison at a time.
Because when you’re broke, brilliant, and completely out of options, the hustle finds you. Margo’s story is one that many women have lived and are living, and I can’t wait to see how it plays out in the next episodes.