To decide to put your life on hold to bring a new life into the world takes courage. But to live with the consequences of that decision is beyond courageous. It is actually a mix of feelings that often confuses one - something only single parents can understand. This is the basic idea behind the new Apple TV show Margo’s Got Money Troubles, starring Elle Fanning as the main lead, Margo Millet, who decides to make an unexpected pregnancy her whole life.

The show focuses on her struggles as a young single mother who has no idea how hard it is to raise a baby all on your own. However, she is aided by her mother, Shayanne, who was once in her shoes when she decided to have Margo, and her estranged father, retired wrestler Jinx. Together, they embark on a beautiful yet terrifying journey of raising a newborn while being financially overextended.

The show first sets things up by taking the viewers through the events that left Margo in between choosing a life for herself and a life for her baby.

Margo is a gifted writer, but was never complimented for her talent until a professor, Mark Gable (Michael Angarano), at her college did. For the first time in her life, Margo, who was a single child and kind of alone all her life, felt noticed for the first time. When someone makes you feel special, it is hard not to fall for them. That is exactly what happened despite her best friend, Becca’s, prudent advice.

Starting an affair with a married professor is a bad idea, but what is worse is getting pregnant in the process and then deciding to keep it without any prospect of your own future. At least this is what everyone else in her life thinks of Margo’s current predicament. But Margo, on the other hand, is happy. She is thrilled to bring a kicking and screaming baby into her life, which is yet to be sorted.

Her mother, Shayanne (Michelle Pfeiffer), is devastated at her decision, as she has been down that road and does not want the same for her daughter. However, Margo is adamant about going ahead with her decision, and she has an ally in the form of her roommate, Susie (Thaddea Graham). Her other roommates are not entirely on board with her decision, though.

For a big part of the first episode, it seemed as if she did not care about whether the father of the child, her professor, wanted to be involved in the situation or not, as he went stone-cold silent on her after the pregnancy reveal. But when she saw him with his family in a parking lot of a shopping center, she could not hold herself back. She confronted him without revealing anything to his family. It became pretty evident to her now that Mark does not wish to be a part of this, as, according to him, he already did the responsible thing by discouraging her from having this baby.

She is furious and distraught at his reaction, and she takes it out on her mother, citing that she cannot even feign a shred of genuine excitement for her baby. Shayanne now cannot hold back her emotions either and says that she will obviously love her grandchild, but she cannot shake the feeling that her daughter threw away a chance to be someone in her life to have a real career after finishing college. She knows what this path entails, and she is scared that her daughter has to now go through all that as well.

This scene here is the highlight of the episode that really exposes how terrifying single-parenting can be, which is especially hard on single mothers. After spending years fighting the world, the circumstances you end up finding that your daughter will now have the same fate will obviously break a single mother who wanted a life entirely different for her daughter. Still, she is there for her every step of the way, and we see that in the ending scene where Margo is delivering the baby and Shayanne is right beside her.

‘Margo’s Got Money Troubles’: Release Date, Cast, Plot and All You Need To Know About the Apple TV+ Series

What all happened in the first episode really helps the audience to understand mainly two characters - Margo and Shayanne - and their motivations. It also sets the stage for the real struggle to begin from the next episode.

Margo returns to her apartment after giving birth to her baby, Bodhi, without any parenting guides, believing her mother would be all the manual she needs. But as soon as she drops them off at their apartment, Shayanne rushes back to her job, showing signs of hesitation to associate with her grandson.

Anyhow, the postpartum aftermath, continuous breastfeeding, and the infant's incessant cries leave the new mother feeling largely alone and overburdened. Susie makes an effort to be patient and encouraging, but the other two are unable to see past the hardship the baby is bringing them.

However, Margo herself has a lot of conflicting emotions over becoming a new mother. Despite the challenges, she is content to dedicate herself to her son's care because she loves him unconditionally. However, her undying love for her baby cannot outrun the reality that comes to bite her.

Margo needs to start earning money again because her bills and childcare expenses are mounting. But she does not have enough money to hire a babysitter. She is forced to return to her profession as a waitress and ask her hesitant mother to fill in. Shayanne, however, has her reservations about being able to spend a few hours alone with her grandson.

Her worries are eventually validated when Bodhi starts crying uncontrollably after spending just a few hours in her care. As a result, she brings the infant to Margo at work, where she breaks down about the whole situation. Her feelings toward her grandson are actually resentment towards her own life decisions and failure as a parent that led Margo down this path. She thinks that everyone is now judging her for her mistakes, even her grandson. Margo consoles her shattered mother, trying to make her see the whole situation from a different lens.

Margo thinks that now her mother is completely on board with her current situation, but she might be a bit wrong. It turns out she has kept Margo's condition a secret from her boyfriend, Kenny (Greg Kinnear), the Episcopalian Church President, whom she intends to marry. She is concerned, too, that Kenny could find it difficult to accept Margo having a child out of wedlock.

However, when Kenny eventually asks Margo to join them for dinner, it becomes impossible to keep the secret any longer. Even if Kenny's opinions on the new mother's circumstances are still questionable and somewhat outdated, he does not pass judgment on her throughout dinner. The purpose of the dinner soon becomes clear, as Kenny asks for Margo's blessings before popping the question to Shayanne. After receiving the blessing, he kneels down and asks Shyanne to marry him.

A happy moment for Shayanne and for Margo, too, but everything is about to get more complicated with Jinx’s arrival into the picture.

We saw Margo trying to get in touch with her dad, who apparently wanted to be kept in the loop on the big developments of her life. That seemed to be a farce for the first episode, because he was nowhere to be found when Margo needed him the most. But this appears not to be the case as Jinx or James Millet (Nick Offerman) shows up at Margo’s door. Actually, we see him in rehab in episode 2, and it was revealed that he had a stint with drug addiction.

The news of Margo’s pregnancy makes him head to Fullerton instead of his ex-wife and kids in New Jersey. Margo is both happy and shocked to see her father on her doorstep, but still she introduces him to his grandson, Bodhi, despite having a lot of questions to ask first. In the last episode, Margo's other two roommates hang her out to dry with a sudden decision to move out of the apartment. Consequently, there is a chance that Jinx will move in with them.

The concept does not bother Susie, who is a huge fan of the wrestler's career. But with Bodhi around, Margo cannot help but worry that her father, a former drug addict, might relapse. She eventually comes to the conclusion that Jinx genuinely wants to get his life together and to be involved in her and his grandson's lives. She chooses to accept him as her new roommate as a result.

Also in the last episode, Margo had threatened Mark for money as a last resort due to her dwindling financial situation with the rent increase and the excessively expensive childcare. Her threat was responded to by his mother, Elizabeth Gable (Marcia Gay Harden), who invites her for a meeting.

From the beginning, Elizabeth's animosity toward Margo is clear. She thinks that Margo is attempting to extort her son after deceiving him. She has therefore devised a strategy to ensure that she avoids Mark as much as possible. Margo receives a hefty offer from the family lawyer. Elizabeth would create a $50,000 trust fund in Bodhi's name. The money will have grown closer to $300,000 by the time the child can use it. To make this fund a reality, Margo just needs to sign an NDA, promise never to return to Fullerton College, and leave Mark alone.

But this deal still does not solve her current predicament with the money situation. However, a very unusual idea takes root in her mind during a throwaway conversation with her dad and Susie about the alluring world of OnlyFans and how monetarily lush it can be. The prospect of earning easy money gets her to the website and makes a profile for herself.

She creates an account for herself under the username HungryGhost, alluding to a poem Mark wrote for her while they were having an affair. Margo discovers a creator who gets money by making fun of their subscribers' p****** as she continues to explore the platform. Because she believes her writing might be useful in this situation, she chooses to offer a similar service. After a short and tempting introduction and a few photos for her profile, Margo created her account. In the meantime, a lot of things go wrong in her personal life.

It was obvious from the second she saw Jinx in Margo's apartment that Shyanne was not comfortable with the idea of him being around her daughter and grandson. She confronts Margo about her decision to let Jinx move in with them. She thinks his drug problems would be a negative influence on Bodhi. When Margo comes to his defense, Shyanne becomes more upset as she thinks that, despite his sporadic visits, which did nothing meaningful in her life, Margo idolizes him more than her.

While her personal life seems to be in shambles, a glimmer of hope for her financial condition emerges when she gets tipped $20 on her account about a new subscriber for a critical analysis of their p****. The episode ends here, and with it, the three-episode-long pilot successfully does its job on establishing the main characters of the series enough to connect with them on a personal level.

The cast of the show is simply enchanting in their individual roles. Elle Fanning, Michelle Pfeiffer, and Nick Offerman especially keep the emotional vulnerability of the characters to the maximum, which makes it easy for the viewers to navigate through their mental state in each scene. Hopefully, they will continue with their grip on their characters’ psyches for the rest of the season, and the upcoming episodes will be more mentally strenuous for them.

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Do you think that OnlyFans is a long-term solution for Margo’s money problems, or is it an invitation for further complexities in her life? Share your thoughts.