The nonjudgmental, no-strings-attached care they get there, from the DV survivor (BJ Harrison’s Denise) who manages the place, feels bittersweet it’s apparent that Alex has never really had her own needs catered to before. So we see that her first “clean” leaves her in the red even before the client- Anika Noni Rose’s snobby Regina, who comes to play a somewhat unfeasibly large role in Alex’s life-stiffs her.Ī few more disasters and a fair bit of soul-searching later, she and Maddy wind up staying at a shelter for victims of domestic violence. Working with a majority-female team of writers and directors, showrunner Molly Smith Metzler ( Orange Is the New Black) maintains viewers’ awareness of Alex’s dire financial straits by periodically printing her declining bank balance right on the screen. The social worker ultimately points her toward Value Maids, a shoestring operation that cuts corners by keeping employees part-time to avoid paying benefits and making them pay for most of their own expenses, from uniforms to cleaning supplies. And her dad, Hank (Billy Burke), an apparently nice guy who’s remarried with kids, is out of the picture for reasons we can only guess at first. It’s in that office where Alex explains to a social worker that staying with her family is “not an option.” Her mother, Paula (Qualley’s real mom Andie MacDowell, in a zany yet soulful performance), turns out to be a manic hippie artist, living in a camper van with a younger dude named Basil (Toby Levins) whose Australian accent Alex suspects is fake. Mother and daughter hit the road again, curling up together to sleep at a scenic overlook until a cop sends them to social services, because they can’t park here. The first place Alex goes after leaving the trailer where she played housewife to little Maddy’s (Rylea Nevaeh Whittet) alcoholic bartender father, Sean (Nick Robinson from A Teacher), is the home of the couple’s best friends-who immediately call Sean in a misguided attempt at peacemaking. 1, also demonstrates how the families our society refuses to help can get trapped in cycles of poverty and abuse. A wrenching (though not unremittingly bleak) portrait of a 25-year-old mom who’s desperate to give her daughter a more stable childhood than she had, Maid, which comes to Netflix on Oct. Which is why so many Americans must rely on social services when precarity swerves into crisis. But, as this poignant, layered and persuasive drama based on Stephanie Land’s best-selling memoir Maid: Hard Work, Low Pay, and a Mother’s Will to Surviveso vividly illustrates, having friends and family doesn’t always mean having anyone you can count on. It’s not that the woman, Margaret Qualley’s Alex, is entirely alone in the world.
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