Margo’s Got Money Troubles Recap, Episode 4: ‘Buddies’

It takes a village, right? In the fourth episode, “Buddies,” the world of Margo’s Got Money Troubles expands delightfully, populating the screen with colorful and larger-than-life characters that serve to round out Margo’s village as she begins to dedicate herself to her new job in earnest. Yes, there’s the Nicole Kidman of it all, but we’re also introduced to KC (Rico Nasty) and Rose (Lindsey Normington), and the introduction of these three women underscores the idea that performance for pay can be everything … as long as you’re having fun doing it.

So far, Margo is having a blast. In between scrubbing poop off onesies and caring for Bodhi, we see her write reams of dick-focused prose. The sequence gives us gems such as “Your penis is filled with a quiet menace.” We’re mostly spared the torrent of dick pics that Margo is rating, so we just have to guess if her assessments are accurate. Even though her fan count is growing — 196 and counting — she knows she needs a boost if she’s going to really make a go of it. She enlists the wonderful Susie to be a photographer for her topless photo shoots, and she sells access to this content to her fans for a slight increase in income, but it’s not enough. After a brief search online, she realizes she has to pair up with creators who have more followers in order to get eyes on her prize(s).

Margo stumbles upon a sexy-silly duo with the stage names Succulent Rose and Wang Mangler. In their free videos, they lounge on their couch and dreamily speculate on the X-rated content they might create and how they might go about creating it. They’re cute and appealing with ditzy SoCal-girl personas, and Margo instantly clocks that they’re in her geographical orbit. She recognizes Huntington Beach Pier and Knott’s Berry Farm in their videos, and she decides to send them a message. “You can’t buy buddies,” protests Susie. But it turns out she kind of can. Margo sends the girls a $50 tip and a (very thirsty) plea to meet up and possibly collab, and all she gets back is a “haha.”

This dismissive response throws Margo into a rage. Eventually, after Margo calls them “flat-lit, flat-ass, trash-heap bitches,” the girls send her the address of their “weird sex loft” and Margo storms off to get justice. We’ve seen her like this before, when she stormed into Mark’s office and demanded money, but this time she’s kind of irrational. Susie warns her against going to see two online strangers in a strange place by herself — yes! Very dangerous! — but Margo is hearing none of it. When she shows up at their doorstep, it’s a small miracle that these women seem to be decent, hardworking, and interested. Rose invites her in and immediately starts showing off her impressive skills by working the pole in the living room. Normington, a standout from the Oscar-winning Anora, is also a stripper in real life, and it shows. She’s only noodling around on that pole, but the insane strength she exhibits while she casually performs an inverted thigh hold is wild. (She makes it look easy. Reader, it is not easy.) As an active member in helping unionize the strip club she worked at, the Star Garden in North Hollywood, Normington clearly knows her way around the business side of things, too. And her character, Rose, is tasked with giving Margo the rundown on all the legal and technical requirements that are necessary to safely participate in this kind of work.

Margo is kind of willing to do whatever it takes, though. The girls inform her that she has to immediately stop posting on her personal Instagram and TikTok and instead make accounts strictly for her HungryGhost persona. She also has to sign an NDA. And she needs to grow a thick skin because plenty of people will tell her to shred her pussy with a cheese grater or to kill herself. Ah, the internet. KC and Rose are particularly excited to hear that Margo has yet to sell any “vag pics,” because the big reveal can make a creator a lot of money. Rose has an idea of how they can do it — by making Margo a “scary girl” — but Margo has other ideas. Or she wants to have other ideas. Honestly, Margo continually insisting that she’s really great at writing and then not actually having any concrete ideas to present to her new collaborators in the moment was really giving “freelance writer” to me, and I totally get it.

The idea of selling a narrative is all over this episode. We visit a wrestling fan expo with Jinx and Margo, and we’ll get to that, but we also get a bittersweet moment with Shyanne and Kenny as they plan their wedding. When Kenny asks Shyanne if she’s having second thoughts, she explains her line of thinking. In a touching, if brief, monologue, she tells him that her marriage to him is like buying a car: She wants to slip on a new persona, and Kenny fits the bill. “I even like me when I’m with you. That’s awesome because I don’t always like myself” is a line that is equal parts endearing and terrifying because it’s a lovely sentiment that feels very complimentary on the surface, but ultimately a good marriage shouldn’t depend on one individual to make the other feel whole. It feels as though Shyanne has been performing for everyone in her path, just waiting her whole life for someone to complete her, and that breaks my heart a little. Also, this marriage is pretty much doomed, right? Is anyone rooting for Kenny and Shyanne to actually make it?

Me? I’m rooting for Jinx and Shyanne. When Shyanne drops by to ask Margo to try her wedding cakes, Margo is MIA at KC and Rose’s weird sex loft. Jinx agrees to try the cakes and hands over Bodhi so he can grab a fork. Shyanne is unmoored when Jinx tells her to bounce the baby in order to get him to feel safe, and she unleashes a torrent of anger on her ex. It is unfathomable to me that Shyanne wasn’t able to figure out the whole bouncing thing in the years she cared for baby Margo, but her anger at Jinx for holding a special place in Margo’s heart is very justified. She tells Jinx that he doesn’t even know his daughter, and he takes this to heart, inviting Margo to the wrestling expo.

Margo accepts the invitation and then goes into Susie’s room to work. Mid–photo shoot, Jinx walks in on the girls and Margo is found out. The reveal is pretty hilarious with everyone screaming and scrambling around like cartoon characters. Once things calm down, Jinx gets to the bottom of what’s going on. He initially assumes that Margo is in a relationship with Susie (Margo should be so lucky), and Margo does not take the out. Instead, she’s open and honest with her dad about what she’s doing. When she faces pushback from him, she gets irate, saying, “… My mom worked at Hooters, and my dad was a pro wrestler.” Margo is not wrong. She literally has the performance gene on both sides of her family, and she enjoys what she’s doing. Also, she needs to make money to support herself and her child.

Even in the fallout of this argument, Margo accompanies Jinx to the fan expo. And who do we see? A vision in blue-and-red spandex? Nicole Kidman! Kidman plays Lace, an old colleague of Jinx’s who has given up the life of wrestling to become a lawyer in Costa Mesa. After her seemingly endless run of playing sad white women with Buried Secrets™, it’s a delight to see a genuine smile on Kidman’s face as she playfully jostles Jinx and convinces him to do a little routine for the fans. This, however, turns out to be a big mistake.

Jinx gets in the ring, and we can immediately see that he’s overwhelmed. He’s a ball of nerves and PTSD, probably brought on by the physical pain he previously experienced onstage. At first, he’s mostly running on autopilot, following the instructions that Chris Jericho (!) and Lace give him on the fly. As he gets back into it, he does seem to be catching some fame fumes from the audience, and he rips off his shirt. (Hello, jacked Nick Offerman!) But he flies too far, too fast, letting the drug of attention creep up on him as Lace prepares for her finishing move. “Don’t you dare take it easy on me,” he says. She doesn’t. Jinx goes down and can’t get up.

Now, this moment is layered with a lot of emotions. Jinx can’t do what he used to anymore; his body won’t allow it. When he tells Margo not to disclose his history of addiction to the doctors at the hospital, he’s not wrong (in the wake of the opioid crisis, many doctors are afraid to prescribe to users with a past history of abuse), but he’s also alluding to what’s probably a long history with pain and pain meds that overlaps with his career as a wrestler. Jinx clearly loved what he did and probably did it for way too long, neglecting to get out like Lace did. The injury at the fan expo is another in a long line of them for Jinx, and it feels as though it brings back all sorts of memories for him, both good and bad. As he chats with Margo in the recovery area, he apologizes to her for judging her job. “We’re all just putting on a show,” he says wistfully. Truer words have never been spoken.

Jinx also asks about Bodhi’s father, and Margo tells him the truth. When she says it all at once, it makes Mark sound like a terrible monster (oh, he is), and Jinx is instantly fired up. In a mirror of Margo storming into Mark’s office back in episode two, Jinx is suddenly there and he’s irate. Mark is terrified to see this hulking, hairy man at his doorstep, as he should be. Jinx introduces himself and moves to shake Mark’s hand. A look of delirious fury, mixed with the slightest of hesitations, crosses Jinx’s face right before he crushes Mark’s hand to pieces. (We can only hope!)

• Susie is a saint, and Margo absolutely needs to be nicer to her. I got very frustrated with Margo when she sniped at Susie for losing track of Jinx while she’s also watching Bodhi, presumably for free. Susie is letting Margo borrow all of her expensive cosplay stuff and taking meticulously lit pictures of her … also for free! Most people would kill for a Susie in their lives, and Margo is a fool to take her for granted.

• Best line of the episode: “You showed up to a random person’s house in the middle of the week wearing fucking space buns?” This is rapper Rico Nasty’s first major acting role, and she’s killing it.

• Nick Offerman and Michelle Pfeiffer are so good at tenderly passing that adorable baby back and forth that I almost believed they’re his actual grandparents. Shinx? Jiaynne? What should their couple name be? And who’s (correctly) shipping them? Sound off in the comments!