Apple TV has quite a few shows on its roster that somehow always seem to fly under the radar. Even during awards season, when they have critical praise and plenty of support, they never seem to get quite the attention they deserve. The math just never adds up. A show like Stick, which certainly had its fair share of awards potential, walked away empty-handed this year, along with series like Smoke, Criminal Record, Down Cemetery Road, For All Mankind, and the recently returned Trying, which has always eluded Emmy voters. Yet Margo’s Got Money Troubles, with the pedigree of David E. Kelley and its star-studded cast, somehow broke the chain and skyrocketed to the top. That doesn’t necessarily mean it’s far better than everything else on Apple’s roster. Apple consistently makes excellent television, and it has to be a nightmare figuring out what stays and what goes because I rarely see one of their shows that I’d outright cancel. Funnily enough, I almost think Slow Horses should be nearing the end of its run at some point. It’s strange that it’s become Apple’s longest-running series, but I digress.
This new Elle Fanning half-hour impressed me, not immediately, but with the way it steadily grew over its eight episodes. At the beginning, Fanning’s Margo Millet is a promising college student and aspiring writer who makes one terrible decision by sleeping with her English professor, Mark, played by Michael Angarano. The affair leaves her pregnant, and suddenly she’s trying to figure out how to build a future while raising a child with a man who can’t publicly acknowledge that he’s the father because he’s married, has children of his own, and has everything to lose professionally. I have to admit I struggled with the casting here. Michael Angarano is only about ten years older than Elle Fanning, and he still sounds and feels so youthful to me that I never completely bought him as a college professor. Maybe that was intentional, but I think I would have gone with someone who felt more decisively older to better sell that imbalance of power.
Margo’s money troubles are exactly what the title promises. She’s a struggling college student with a baby, trying to make ends meet while living with roommates. Susie quickly becomes the important one because she’s the only roommate who sticks around once the realities of living with a newborn set in. Thankfully, Margo also has a bizarre but surprisingly lovable extended family. Her mother, Shyanne, played by Michelle Pfeiffer, is trying to reinvent herself through her relationship with a pastor, played by Greg Kinnear, while keeping some distance from the daughter who reminds her of a much wilder past. Then there’s Margo’s estranged father, Jinx, played by Nick Offerman, a former professional wrestler who battled substance abuse and is finally trying to become the father he never was. On the other side sits Professor Mark’s fiercely protective mother, Elizabeth, played by Marsha Gay Harden, who has enough money and influence to ensure that her son’s reputation remains intact no matter what it costs Margo.
Another important figure is Lace, played by Nicole Kidman, another retired professional wrestler who reinvented herself as an attorney. Her history with Jinx eventually makes her personally invested in helping Margo, and that relationship pays off by the end of the season. The series also uses Margo’s financial desperation to explore sex work through OnlyFans. Margo discovers she can earn a respectable living producing fairly tame content, but the stigma attached to the platform creates problems once people learn who’s behind the screen name. Suddenly, the same people who wanted nothing to do with Bodie become deeply interested in his future.
That eventually builds into a custody battle that I found a little frustrating. Earlier in the season, Elizabeth essentially buys Margo’s silence by offering Bodie financial security through a trust fund in exchange for Margo agreeing never to publicly claim that Mark is the father. It feels like the sort of contract that should have played a much larger role once lawyers became involved. Instead, the series pivots almost entirely into whether an OnlyFans creator deserves custody of her own child against a father who originally wanted no part of that child’s life. It isn’t enough to derail the show, but it did leave me wondering why such an important agreement was mostly ignored once the courtroom became the setting.
Oddly enough, though, that isn’t the emotional core of the series. Nick Offerman’s Jinx quietly becomes the heart and soul of Margo’s Got Money Troubles. From the moment he appears, you can sense this is a man desperately trying to repair decades of damage. His journey through sobriety, redemption, fatherhood, forgiveness, and relapse carries enormous emotional weight, and Offerman plays every stage of it beautifully. He understands the exhaustion of someone trying to become a better person while constantly wondering whether it’s already too late. The relationship he slowly rebuilds with Margo, and even with Susie, who idolizes him because of his wrestling career, became the part of the show I found myself caring about the most.
That shouldn’t overshadow Elle Fanning, though, because she’s excellent throughout the season and absolutely earned her Emmy nomination. Her performance benefits tremendously from watching the complete journey rather than isolating one submission episode. Emmy voters always have to judge actors based on individual episodes, but Margo is one of those characters whose growth accumulates over eight installments. I don’t think she has much of a chance against Jean Smart in what appears to be Hacks’ farewell season, but if Margo’s Got Money Troubles continues, I could easily see Fanning becoming a major contender in the future. Michelle Pfeiffer is also terrific as the former party girl trying to reinvent herself, and it’s fun seeing this performance alongside her work in The Madison, where she’s playing a woman navigating almost the exact opposite set of life circumstances. Marsha Gay Harden is predictably fantastic because she’s Marsha Gay Harden, Greg Kinnear is appropriately understated in a role that’s intentionally a little dull, and Nicole Kidman somehow continues to appear in everything without ever looking like she’s accidentally wandered in from another set. Between this and Scarpetta premiering around the same time, she seemed to be everywhere.
David E. Kelley has a lot on his plate here. The series tackles substance abuse, redemption, broken families, absent parents, forgiveness, financial hardship, bodily autonomy, and society’s complicated relationship with online sex work. One of its strongest observations is the hypocrisy surrounding OnlyFans. There are plenty of people willing to consume that content while simultaneously looking down on the people creating it. Mark’s moral outrage toward Margo becomes almost comical considering he’s the professor who was perfectly willing to sleep with one of his own students. The series isn’t especially subtle with that point, but I don’t think it needs to be.
I ended up enjoying Margo’s Got Money Troubles quite a bit. It really snuck up on me. I wasn’t completely sold by the pilot, but by the second or third episode I was fully invested. That’s perfectly okay. Not every great show has to knock you flat in its opening hour. I felt similarly about Shrinking, another Apple series that needed a little room to breathe before everything clicked into place. The difference is that when you have a cast this strong, audiences are usually willing to be patient enough to let the show find its footing, and thankfully this one does.
The audio description is also excellent. Produced by Pixel Logic for Apple TV+, it takes the unusual approach during the opening credits of skipping cast names entirely in favor of describing the elaborate video game-inspired visuals. Normally I’d prefer hearing the credits, but here I actually appreciated the choice because I would’ve hated missing out on what sounds like a very creative title sequence. The rest of the series is well supported too, giving blind viewers everything they need without ever feeling intrusive.
At only eight episodes, Margo’s Got Money Troubles is an easy binge. The episode lengths vary, as streaming shows tend to do, running anywhere from roughly half an hour to just under an hour, with the pilot and finale feeling like the longest installments. By the end, what started as a series I merely liked had become one I genuinely admired. Between Elle Fanning, Nick Offerman, Michelle Pfeiffer, and the rest of this terrific ensemble, it’s another impressive win for Apple TV+ and another reminder that some of television’s best shows continue to be hiding there in plain sight.
Fresh: 8.8/10
