Summary
Margo’s Got Money Troubles goes out of town in “Flamingoes”, taking in the Vegas sights while also delivering the best character work thus far.
A Vegas wedding is perfect for Shyanne and Kenny, since nothing about their union is especially sincere. This is not to say that they don’t like each other, by the way. They might even love each other in their way, though on that account I’m not entirely sure. But a lot of Margo’s Got Money Troubles is about identity, and in Episode 5, “Flamingoes”, a recurring theme is that Shyanne repeatedly has to deny hers to keep Kenny happy.
This isn’t to say Kenny is a bad guy. I sincerely don’t think he is. He’s just a boring, slightly self-centred prude, which is the exact opposite of what she wants. She’s marrying him for the qualities he has that she has never found in a man before – stability, dependability, that kind of thing – but hasn’t totally considered that she’s trading all the qualities she typically likes to get them. In other words, Shyanne wants a man like Kenny, but probably needs a man like Jinx, who’s more similar to her. Why else would she feel the need to lie about how much she likes to drink and gamble, even in Vegas!
That’s a point. “Flamingoes” is set pretty much entirely in Las Vegas, though it contrives a way to get all the major characters there so things don’t feel too different. But they are different, since freed from California, Margo is also freed from the responsibilities of her OnlyFans and her new collaboration with Rose and KC, so there’s very little of it in the episode. Instead, the focus is on very tight character work and stand-out performances, especially from Michelle Pfeiffer and Nick Offerman.
Which brings us neatly to Jinx. He comes along to Vegas mostly as a convenient manny and reassures everyone that they won’t even notice his presence, which, for large stretches of time, they don’t. That’s kind of a problem, though, since Jinx left to his own devices worries me. He’s still grappling with addiction, with a past and decisions he’s deeply ashamed of, and, it’s becoming increasingly clear, an unending love for Shyanne, whom he’s now having to watch get married. Nothing untoward happens with Jinx in “Flamingoes”, but his inevitable relapse is still the show’s primary source of tension, at least for me.
Margo’s Got Money Troubles is surprisingly subtle in Episode 5, especially given it’s set in Vegas. Jinx’s attempts to better himself include listening to an audiobook of Robert Graves’s wonderful I, Claudius, and reeling off little animal facts to Bodhi while he carries him around Sin City in a papoose. He’s essentially cosplaying the more learned, less bohemian man he has spent most of his life being the opposite of, and that internal contradiction clearly still torments him.
There are deliberate parallels drawn between Jinx and Kenny in this way. It’s probably not a coincidence that Shyanne has chosen to marry someone who is the exact opposite of her baby daddy, but it’s nonetheless surprising to see quite how uptight Kenny is. This is on full display during a tame magic show that Kenny is impossibly offended by because it’s ever-so-slightly lewd. He has to be consoled like a baby afterward, and then later apologises twice, once to Margo – at considerable length! – and again to Margo and Shyanne at dinner. The snippets we get of Kenny’s backstory suggest he has sacrificed most of his life on the altar of piety, but it’s interesting to watch his revulsion juxtaposed with Jinx’s efforts to reject his baser instincts.
The question of how Shyanne fits into all this is even more interesting. While Kenny is asleep, she takes Margo and Jinx (and Bodhi, hilariously) with her on an improvised bachelorette party that is basically a whistlestop tour of the sights that Shyanne and Jinx took in when they were last in Vegas themselves. Those sights included the inside of the bar’s bathroom for at least seven minutes, and it’s very obvious that both of them would like to add a few more minutes to the tally, but Bodhi’s presence prevents Shyanne from ruining her marriage before it even starts. There’s plenty of time yet, though.
After Jinx does the responsible thing and takes Bodhi back to the hotel, Shyanne and Margo get very drunk, order wings, and have a conversation that is a little too frank for both of them. Margo tries to lightly talk her mother out of marrying Kenny, having intuited that she’s making the decision for the wrong reasons, and Shyanne rejects the advice, presumably because it’s too close to the truth. But then later, Margo gets a bit carried away and reveals to Shyanne that she has been doing OnlyFans, and Shyanne goes ballistic. Initially, it seems like garden-variety hypocrisy, but it’s deeper than that. Michelle Pfeiffer is superb here, selling the idea that she’s suddenly terrified by seeing a reflection of her younger, Hooter waitress self, someone who gave people “everything they needed to decide you’re a piece of trash”. The idea of Margo being judged in the same way is untenable to her. It terrifies her. Her outburst is the best moment of the episode and one of the best of the season thus far.
Shyanne and Kenny get married in a ridiculous service that includes an Elvis impersonator. Through the service, Shyanne and Margo make amends, mostly obliquely, through little looks of pride and Margo’s thoughtful speech. Through one of the greasy door windows, a tearful Jinx looks on, no doubt thinking about how he could have enjoyed a wedding night with Shyanne if it weren’t for his own mistakes. As for Kenny, he gets that wedding night, but I’m not sure whether he enjoyed it or was so overwhelmed by it that he simply lost consciousness. It’s difficult to tell.
