‘Margo’s Got Money Troubles’ Episode 3 recap: Open for business

“If you are into a certain Type of Guy, Nick Offerman has never been hotter.” When I saw critic Angie Han post these words, I had not yet watched this third and final episode in Margo’s Got Money Trouble’s three-part premiere. I had not yet seen the vision. But it simply cannot be denied: Nick Offerman looks amazing in this show. Jinx, his grizzled ex-wrestler character, brings forth his innate combination of traditional masculinity and avuncular vulnerability like nothing I’ve ever seen him do, and he gets off some incredible aged biker fits in the process. I’ll put it this way: Nick Offerman has scenes with Michelle Pfeiffer and Elle Fanning where you can’t take your eyes off him.

This is in keeping with Margo’s established pattern: When David E. Kelley’s writing retreats into cliché, the winning performances of the stacked cast rescue the project. Elle Fanning feels relatably overwhelmed by the pressures of navigating life as a capitalist subject while also trying to maintain healthy relationships with family and friends. It’s all been made pretty difficult, hasn’t it? In Margo, Fanning exudes a recognizable blend of exhaustion, tenacity, gallows humor, and an ability to really treasure and enjoy the good things when they come. That’s a vital survival tactic for working class, which strikes me as being the real subject matter of this series.

Michelle Pfeiffer, meanwhile, is playing a woman who’s as much as 20 years younger than she herself is in real life, if you reconstruct a timeline based on Margo’s current age. And she’s supposed to be roughly the same age as Jinx, who’s played by a younger man whose trademark is coming across older than he is. I bring all this up here only because I didn’t think about it once while actually watching the episode. Pfeiffer is completely convincing as a woman who gave birth to Elle Fanning at an age young enough that she regrets it, after being swept off her feet by an equally young Offerman. I believe her as a woman seeking stability with a square like Greg Kinnear’s character too. They’re all so magnetic and earnest that I never questioned any of it.

This episode follows our heroes as they navigate Jinx’s return to their lives following his previously undisclosed, voluntary stint in rehab. Like many professional wrestlers, injuries to his spine led to addictions to painkillers and opiates to dull the pain. Now clean and sober, he puts himself to work on Margo’s behalf in a way that Shyanne never did. Notably, he asks to hold baby Bodhi right away where Shyanne avoided doing so for days. 

Before Margo knows it, he’s cleaning her bathroom with a toothbrush and scouring the inside of the stove. Resplendent in a cutoff t-shirt and yellow dishwashing gloves, he explains that doing chores like this helps keep his mind occupied. His fear, of course, is relapsing, and his therapist fears that being alone with his thoughts — or with his other family, where his relationships are even more strained — will trigger one. He needs someone “to perform sanity for.”

So Jinx moves in with Margo and Bodhi — and Susie, who is beyond starstruck to learn that her favorite wrestler is her roommate’s dad. Though money remains a real problem, Margo now has a pretty solid support structure in place. Shyanne, however, warns Margo that Jinx always had a tendency to show up, do something nice for her, play the hero, and disappear again. She blows up at Margo over it during a fitting for her wedding gown, tells Jinx that moving in with Margo is a mistake, and badmouths him to her fiancé Kenny, who remains the most judgmental Episcopalian I’ve ever seen.

For now, though, so far so good with our friend from the squared circle. Jinx gets along great with all three of his new roommates, the infant included. And again, he looks great. 

But his biggest contribution to Margo’s life is a surprising one. Catching a wrestling match Susie’s watching on TV, Jinx notes that one of the wrestlers, Arabella (real-life grappler Penelope Ford, shown defeating Willow Nightingale), was forced out of WWE and joined their real-life rival company AEW because they disapproved of her OnlyFans, where she made more in a month than she did in a year of wrestling. 

Naturally, Margo’s ears perk up. Arabella is proof you don’t need to do actual porn to make money on the platform. Susie additionally informs her that cosplayers can make a killing there too. Even on the porn end of things, guys will pay cash money just to have their penises insulted. Nice work if you can get it! By the end of the episode, Margo’s got her page set up, with some sexy topless photos and a cleverly written come-on to bring in the customers. Her phone begins lighting up with notifications in no time. 

The show’s weaknesses are still evident in a variety of scenes, in which you can still count on characters to be as rude as possible as a substitute for real comedy or conflict. A condescending job interviewer (Kerri Kenney) refers to Margo’s baby as a ditch she dug for herself  Her patronizing best friend Becca (Sasha Diamond) suggests she give the kid up to foster care. Her babydaddy’s mother Elizabeth sets up a meeting with a lawyer to call off the blackmail and establish a trust in the kid’s name instead, but she spend the whole meeting issuing threats of her own. Even her lawyer (Geoff Pierson) can’t figure out why she’s acting like this. I can’t either! None of this, by the way, is laugh-out-loud funny even once.

But with the addition of Offerman, the charm of the cast is just too powerful to ignore. Without genuine laughs Margo seems destined to struggle as a comedy, but as a showcase for some immensely likeable performers, its pleasures, though limited, are undeniable.

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.