Margo’s Got Money Troubles is an eight-episode comedy-drama on Apple TV+ based on Rufi Thorpe’s 2024 novel of the same name, produced by A24 and written by David E. Kelley. Elle Fanning plays Margo Millet, a twenty-year-old aspiring writer who gets pregnant by her English professor, drops out of college, and turns to OnlyFans to keep the lights on while raising her son Bodhi. Nick Offerman plays her estranged father Jinx, a broke ex-professional wrestler who shows up on her doorstep with a duffel bag and approximately forty years of unsolicited wisdom. The cast is excellent, the tone is warm without being saccharine, and the show earns its laughs. It also loses a little momentum in its middle stretch, and handles some of its more uncomfortable material with more polish than it strictly needs.
What Margo’s Got Money Troubles Gets Right
Characters are often written as good or bad; a cautionary tale or a triumphant underdog. This show mostly resists both. Even characters that are portrayed as bad in the beginning are shown to be more complex later on and have a legitimate motive for their actions. They may not make you root for them in the end, but they aren’t bad just for the sake of being bad. The characters make choices that range from reasonable to genuinely questionable, and the cast sells it with conviction.
Elle Fanning has been good in things before, she was amazing in The Great. She is even better here. Margo is stubborn, funny, occasionally infuriating, and genuinely easy to root for because Fanning plays her as a full person rather than a symbol of anything. Even though her actions may seem questionable at times, her character is complex enough to be believable.
Nick Offerman’s Jinx is the reason to watch. The character is a broke, aging professional wrestler trying to figure out what he has to offer his daughter now that his body is failing and his career is over, and Offerman plays it without a single note of self-pity. The scenes between Jinx and Margo are the show at its best, two people who love each other and have no idea how to say it working through the practical business of keeping a baby alive in an apartment they cannot afford.
Michelle Pfeiffer as Shyanne, Margo’s mother and former Hooters waitress, is doing something interesting in a role the show does not always give her enough room to do it in. Her relationship with Greg Kinnear’s Kenny, her religious boyfriend who represents everything Margo does not want for her life, gives the show its sharpest generational tension. Pfeiffer makes Shyanne’s choices feel like they came from somewhere real rather than from a character type.
Where Margo’s Got Money Troubles Falls Short
The middle of the season loses some momentum. Episodes four and five in particular feel like they are marking time while the show waits for its final act. It’s especially frustrating because things are happening and based on conversations as well as actions, it is clear things are happening, so it’s not like they’re trying to hide them. The problem is that they aren’t shown. The aftermath is shown instead. If you binge watch it like I did, it isn’t so bad.
Nicole Kidman is billed prominently and appears sparingly. She was in every episode, but at first it was in the background and I had no idea it was even her. Her role as wrestler turned lawyer is genuinely interesting in theory, the dynamic between Margo’s situation and a woman whose job is to manage the fallout of situations like it has real potential, but the show does not spend enough time in that space to pay it off. She and Jinx also have a good history, which is clear the minute they interact, however later in the season the way she disregards him makes it seem like there may have been some bad in it too. That could be just my reading on it though, since we’re not given any other indication of it. Kidman is good in what she is given, and what she is given is not enough.
The OnlyFans material is handled more carefully than the premise suggests it will be, which is both understandable for an Apple TV+ production and occasionally frustrating. The show is better when it engages directly with the economics and the reality of Margo’s choices, and there are moments in the back half of the season where it steps back from those specifics at precisely the moments that needed specificity.
Margo’s Got Money Troubles Season 2
Apple TV+ renewed the show for a second season ahead of the May 20 finale, which suggests both confidence in the property and a story that is not finished. The renewal makes sense. The character relationships have room to develop, and the show’s weaknesses are structural rather than fundamental. A second season with tighter pacing and more room for Pfeiffer and Kidman to work would be a stronger show than the first. Season one ends where the book does, so season two will be free of the source material.
Is Margo’s Got Money Troubles Worth Watching?
There are a lot of boobs in the show, understandably. That doesn’t bother me, but it’s worth knowing going in. It is smart and funny, and the actors do an amazing job with the material they are given. Hopefully season 2 gives them more to work with. All eight episodes of Margo’s Got Money Troubles are available to stream now on Apple TV+.
