Movies like The Worst Person in the World and Frances Ha had put me in the mood of the “lost twentysomething woman finding her own place in the world”. But instead of dealing with women who are just floundering through life with little sense of direction, let’s watch a woman who needs to find her own place in the world completely out of circumstance and suffering! That sounds fun, doesn’t it kids?

The Premise

Margaret Qualley is Alex Russell, a young woman living in a trailer with her abusive boyfriend Sean Boyd (Nick Robinson). They both have a two-going-on-three-year-old daughter named Maddy (Rylea Nevaeh Whittet), which really make things complicated. You see, Alex is attempting to escape her shitty life with Sean, but she needs to be able to prove her independent sustainability to gain custody of Maddy. What ensues is a comedy of errors where everything that could possibly go wrong does go wrong.

Well, I don’t have a job but I do have $45 in Chuck E. Cheese tokens!

People in her life include her bipolar mother Paula (Andie MacDowell, Qualley’s real-life mother), who is way more trouble than she’s worth. Tracy Vilar plays Yolanda, Alex’s cranky boss. Billy Burke is Hank, Alex’s well-meaning, but a little too late, father. BJ Harrison plays Denise, the incredibly kind operator of the local women’s shelter. And, of course, Raymond Ablack as the kind acquaintance who wants to fuck the shit out of Alex.

Does Alex escape her awful life? Does Sean get murdered conveniently? Does Paula help Bill Murray escape his Groundhog Day hell? The answers to all these and more are on likely some other website.

My Half-Baked Thoughts

Maid gave me so much anxiety in the first couple of episodes that I considered bailing on it. This woman leaves in the middle of the night with her kid, sleeps in the car, gets told by a social worker that she needs a job to get a place to live, gets a shitty job as a maid that pays like $0.02 an hour, drops her kid off with her bipolar mother, gets shit on by Regina while cleaning her house, has to pick her kid back up from her abusive boyfriend’s house, GETS IN A CAR ACCIDENT while returning the Regina’s to complete an “unsatisfactory job”, and spends the night in a ferry station. And that’s Episode 1! In Episode 2, Alex — among other events of misfortune — appears in court and loses her kid for 7 days until she can prove she’s fit for custody. It’s like, Jesus Christ man. I’m having a panic attack just writing all this out.

M*A*S*H taught me that suicide is painless. I’m sold!

I stuck with it, though, and it gets better. Things start going Alex’s way, then there are major setbacks that made me want to throw my tiny little $50 Amazon Fire Stick remote control at my tiny little $600 50″ 2013 Sharp TV. It’s all ups and downs for 10 episodes until Alex learns that she literally must ditch her entire existence and start fresh in Montana with Maddy or she’ll be miserable forever. With a boyfriend like Sean and a mother like Paula, who could blame her?

Nick Robinson plays a fantastic, complicated character. You expect some trailer trash trope and you never get the vibe. Of course, you start out hating the fucker, then he works very hard to redeem himself. Man, does he work hard. You almost root for him until he relapses and starts drinking again and treats Alex like his prisoner. Then you almost root for him again when he ends his story arc doing the right thing and giving Alex full custody of Maddy, but instead you see Alex’s point of view where she tells him he’s doing good for Maddy, tells him she’s finally happy, and gets in the car and drives off without saying goodbye. Rough stuff, but you’re not supposed to be on Sean’s side and the show did a good job of making you know this at the end of it all.

Andie MacDowell’s performance was spectacular and, therefore, infuriating and obnoxious. Her behavior is exhausting. I get that we as an audience are supposed to feel the sheer frustration that Alex feels from her mother, I think MacDowell gets entirely too much screen time. Her schtick gets tired fast and there’s never really a wake-up moment from her. No growth whatsoever. She merely existed as another sign for Alex that it is ok to drop everything and take care of her own self. Even her mother. Her shitty, infantile, manic-depressive mother. Don’t even try to make me feel bad about this. Watch Maid and tell me you don’t hate her. I dare you. I was indoctrinated at a young age to hate Andie MacDowell by my Andie MacDowell-hating parents, and I never understood any of it until now. That’s how horrible this character is.

Day after day, night after night of annoying behavior? What is this, Groundhog Day? Ha!

Let’s get to “nice guy” Nate, who I honestly feel very bad for. This is a guy who happened to stumble upon Alex and Maddy while they were squatting at the ferry station and was nice enough to try to help. Of course, he wanted to bone her badly, but we can forgive that as he didn’t press the issue too hard. Nate legitimately cared about helping without a real ulterior motive, you can tell. Unless he was really going for the long shot. But he even let Alex keep one of his cars after he got mad at her for making him wait up while she was off fucking Sean again. He checked in throughout the night and was legitimately hurt, infatuation or no infatuation. Of course, just because a man is kind to a woman doesn’t mean she owes him anything in return… but, he didn’t really ask for anything in return. Not really. He liked her and he wanted a relationship. He wasn’t malicious about it or anything. He watched Maddy all day and took her for pony rides and Alex wasn’t thoughtful about his feelings. I didn’t like Nate’s beard, though. Gross. Shave that shit, motherfucker. I guess the point of Nate was that it was clear cut and one should draw your own conclusions. Personally, I’m tentatively on Team Nate even if he made me cringe. He made me cringe a lot actually. Now that I think about it, screw that guy. Wow, I have no idea where I stand on this, do I? I should move on.

The force that kept Alex going was Maddy, and Alex without Maddy would’ve probably given up early on. None of the stuff she went through was worth the effort. My effort. I was exhausted just watching her overcome all her obstacles and make all her stupid decisions. Even with kids I don’t know if I would’ve been able to handle all that. I can’t even call Domino’s without having a nervous breakdown panic attack conniption fit.

Shit, suicide doesn’t sound painless! That sounds like Putin’s propaganda!

That’s a good note to end on.

Worth the Watch?

Sure. It’s only 10 episodes, the acting is good from all parties, and I think the story is gripping. The characters are complicated and don’t always make the best choices for themselves or others. Most people find Alex’s behavior inconsistent and dumb, but these people are forgetting the fact that SHE HAD TO BUILD HERSELF UP FROM NOTHING AND MAKE ON-THE-FLY DECISIONS WHILE OUT OF HER MIND WITH STRESS AND DEPRESSION. SHE’S TRYING TO ESCAPE HER ABUSIVE RELATIONSHIP WITH NO RELIABLE OUTSIDE HELP. SHE’S TRYING TO WIN CUSTODY OF HER CHILD FROM A DOMESTIC ABUSER. Fuck anyone who has the balls to say that Alex’s behavior is inconsistent. You try even accomplishing a fraction of what she was able to do in her situation, dipshit.

Arrgh.