Viewers should go easier on idiot plots than they used to. Defined by science fiction writer Damon Knight as a story “kept in motion solely by virtue of the fact that everybody involved is an idiot,” the idiot plot an all too common method of generating movement, tension, action, and drama in fiction, and historically it’s been frustrating to encounter because it just doesn’t ring true. But this is America in 2026 — the entire country has fallen victim to an idiot plot! It’d get laughed out of the writer’s room on a CBS cop-troop procedural, but it happened IRL. Perhaps we should simply accept our new idiot overlords. (On TV, I mean.)
Even so, I can’t bring myself to forgive Margo’s Got Money Troubles for its reliance on sheer idiocy to propel the plot, or even for there to be a plot to begin with.
As the season finale, it’s fitting that the idiot plot reaches its apex in this episode. Margo is on the verge of concluding mediation. She has high hopes, because her addict father has moved out and her hot-tempered mother has swallowed her pride and apologized to Elizabeth Gable, the mother of Margo’s babydaddy, for punching her so hard her jaw is wired shut. (Have you seen how that character is written? Shyanne has nothing to apologize for.)
Meanwhile, Margo is the only parent her baby, Bodhi, has ever known. She has a clean psych eval, she has a safe and supportive home, she has a network of caretakers to rely on, including her roommate Susie, a clean-liver who’s right there in the house. Mark, the father, began the baby’s life by filing tons of paperwork ensuring he’d never hear from Margo or the baby again before it was even born. Even if you object to Margo’s line of work, there’s simply no way this asshole is going to get full custody. Family court systems just aren’t in the business of doing that.
Unless, of course, you keep on physically assaulting the guy and his mother. First Jinx breaks his hand, antagonizing a man who was content to leave well enough alone and forcing him to explain his injury to his wife and thus end his marriage in the process. Then Shyanne cold-cocks his mother in the waiting room outside the first mediation session, about the worst thing you could possibly do, almost as if she were deliberately sabotaging her daughter.
But don’t worry, Margo finally gets in on the act as well! Justifiably sick of Mark’s smug condescension and sneering cruelty (he’s written to be an enormously unsympathetic character even given the collapse of much of his life), she — I couldn’t believe it as I watched — leaps across the mediation table to attack him.
Does…does he have a point about Margo after all?
No, of course he doesn’t. Margo’s more than a fit mom, she’s a great mom, a mom who figured out a way to provide for herself and her kid without compromising her artistic vision. She just happens to stand naked in that vision is all. She’s a great daughter, a great friend, a gr…uh, a successful writer, let’s say that. Most importantly, she’s loving and patient and kind with her child, who in every interaction he has with her makes it clear his little baby brain thinks she hung the moon and stars.
The only way for there to be any suspense at all during the final custody hearing in court is for Jinx, Shyanne, and Margo to have physically assaulted Mark and Elizabeth. If they don’t attack, there’s no story; ergo they must attack. It’s shockingly weak writing.
And for what? The happy ending you knew was coming comes at last. There is suspense in the courtroom, thanks to the manic demeanor of the stentorian judge (a very memorable Paul McCrane). Hizzoner doesn’t even take the bench before marching around from Mark to Margo to her family and friends, barking at them, demanding they all answer for their various misdeeds.
But right away, it’s clear that the only reason he might side with Mark is if he disapproves of Margo’s sex work on some kind of moral ground. He doesn’t. And once he applies the snuggle test — he has each person involved hold the baby and discovers that he only cries when handed to Mark, a stranger to him — the case is closed. Mark will get two weekends a month with the kid; other than that, Margo has full custody.
It’s a fair solution, and a realistic one. Most courts want to ensure that kids remain in contact with both parents unless there’s an extremely serious reason for this not to occur, and sometimes even then. It even seems like Margo and Mark may partially reconcile now that they have to co-parent. Neither of them is such a terrible person, at least when they’re not being written as such.
Of course, this is Margo’s Got Money Troubles, so someone has to act like an unreasonable, judgmental piece of shit towards her, as this is the engine that drives the whole show. This time it’s Kenny’s turn in the hot seat, for calling CPS on her in the middle of a custody battle. He justifies himself to Shyanne by saying she loves not only Margo but also Jinx too much to hold them to account for their behavior. I’m not sure how you can see Shyanne’s treatment of her ex and her daughter as coddling, but I’m not the world’s squarest Episcopalian.
Kenny’s call to CPS is largely frivolous, motivated at least as much by his jealousy as his concerns. However, CPS are not “cops,” as Shyanne asserts — they don’t carry weapons or cuffs and can’t arrest anyone. They’re certainly not fucking “ICE,” like Shyanne also says, assaulting and kidnapping people off the street. You don’t want to see them at your door if you’re involved in a nasty custody dispute, but demonizing a governmental agency the purpose of which is to protect children from abusive households is a bad choice, no matter how much Margo doesn’t deserve that suspicion herself.
Anyway, none of this pays for itself, and the season ends where it started: Margo’s got money troubles. So she takes her colleagues’ advice, spreads her legs, and reveals her vulva to her fans — for a three-digit fee per user, of course. She even breaks the fourth wall and winks at the viewer, I guess because that’s the kind of thing plucky heroines do. The season ends on “All’s well that ends well.”
None of the show’s writing problems lessen the charm and vitality of the core cast. Elle Fanning, Michelle Pfeiffer, Nick Offerman, and Greg Kinnear are all excellent — adorable, infuriating, and empathetic at different times. Nicole Kidman has much less to do as their wrestler-turned-lawyer, but hey, it’s Nicole Kidman, and somehow wrestlers turned lawyers feel good in a place like this.
Thaddea Graham, however, is asked to do nothing as Susie but radiate sidekick energy, while Michale Angaro and Marcia Gay Harden are wasted on their characters’ exasperating villainy. This brings us back around to the writing. The Gables feel out of place because they’re the only characters who get to be assholes to Margo without either a) getting booted out of the story, or b) reconciling with her by the end of the next episode, or even the current one. That’s just how this show works.
Once you notice that mechanism…well, it’s a lot like that opening credit sequence. Margo gets bounced around from problem to problem that are inserted in her way expressly for her to collide with. She’s a pinball, not a person. That’s her real trouble.
Sean T. Collins (@seantcollins.com on Bluesky and theseantcollins on Patreon) has written about television for The New York Times, Vulture, Rolling Stone, and elsewhere. He is the author of Pain Don’t Hurt: Meditations on Road House. He lives with his family on Long Island.
