Summary
Margo’s Got Money Troubles boasts a lot of creativity and character depth in “Grudge Match”, but it also seems to herald worse things to come for Margo, Jinx, and Bodhi.
One of the best flourishes of Margo’s Got Money Troubles is that it really sells the idea of its title character’s OnlyFans page as a creative outlet. There’s a negative association with the platform, obviously, and it’s certainly not one the show is trying to avoid, given that the big development of Episode 6 is that Margo gets doxxed the second she dares to venture into the outside world. But there’s a spark of creative energy to “Grudge Match” that feels daring both conceptually and formally. There’s something so innocent about HungryGhost as an idea that you like Margo more for having come up with it.
This episode really leans into the HungryGhost thing. Margo’s big art project, mentioned on the way home from Vegas, turns out to be an introduction to her extraterrestrial alter ego. She stumbles through a tiny set framed so she resembles a giant, and her subscribers lap it up. It’s an obvious metaphor for the alienation she feels in this new world of online content, and a full commitment to the bit in collaboration with KC and Rose, but it’s also telling us – sometimes very explicitly – that Margo has real talent.
She also has a dedicated team. One of my favourite moments of the episode was simply Margo entering KC and Rose’s rented apartment flanked by Susie, for creative direction, and Jinx, for fake fight choreography. Both provide moral support. Together, they form a tight-knit little family unit that is impossible to dislike. You can believe, even for a moment, that they aren’t all nursing their own issues, some of which are pretty serious.
And that brings us to Jinx. At a glance, he’s an extremely supportive, understanding dad and grandfather, but internally, he’s a wreck. The fact that he has been absent for most of Margo’s life makes him wildly overprotective now, and the fact that he’s a struggling addict who lost what it increasingly seems might have been the love of his life makes his inevitable mistakes even harder for him to deal with. That’s why he broke several of the small bones in Mark’s hand last week, and why, as we learn here, he has continued to call him incessantly since.
On account of this, Jinx is served with a restraining order, which means Margo finds out what he has been up to, and he has to go to Lace, who’s a lawyer as well as a former pro wrestler, for legal advice. There isn’t a great deal of legal advice that applies here beyond “abide by the terms”, but it’s always nice to see Nicole Kidman in things, and the end of “Grudge Match” implies that we’ll be seeing her again sooner rather than later. This scene also reveals that she and Jinx had a bit of a romantic dalliance, but it mainly reiterates that Jinx hasn’t gotten over Shyanne and indeed went to Vegas in the hopes of winning her back (and almost succeeded, at least for the length of a bathroom break).
It’s nice to imagine Jinx and Shyanne together, but I also really like what Margo’s Got Money Troubles does with Kenny in Episode 6. It was made pretty clear in the previous episode that he’s essentially a nice guy and has just been a pious shut-in for most of his life. That theory is tested when Margo’s identity is leaked after she attends a party, and the virality of the exposure gets back to Shyanne. Since the scandal might threaten to infiltrate his congregation, Kenny has to know. But he’s unequivocally supportive. Jinx has his hackles up, ready to defend Margo from what he assumes is going to be a judgmental attack, but it never comes. And that’s a bit disappointing to him, since it makes the idea of positioning himself as a better romantic partner for Shyanne even more unlikely.
It’s Margo getting found out by some deeply unpleasant college bro that leads to another falling out with Becca, who immediately judges Margo for her OnlyFans page and gives her a verbal laceration about Mark only being attracted to her on account of her obvious daddy issues (Becca doesn’t seem like a great friend). It also leads to Mark finally having enough ammunition to cause Margo some genuine problems. All the exposure compels him to tell his wife about the affair, but that frees his deeply unpleasant mother up to push him into filing for full-time custody of Bodhi. He clearly doesn’t want to, but he’s too much of a mommy’s boy to disagree, and Margo’s life is a small price to pay for the potential reputational damage a really tame OnlyFans page might cause.
Who you gonna call? It looks like Lace will be sending Jinx another invoice for services rendered.
