Maid: The High Cost of Being Poor

I read Stephanie Land's memoir, Maid, last year and loved it. So it made sense that I had similar feelings about the Netflix series that is "inspired" by her memoir, though apparently not directly based on her life, for what I assume are convoluted legal reasons. Like the book, the show is incredible, and incredibly sad. It's important that people watch this show and/or read the book, because there is a perpetual narrative in this country about how poor people just need to pick themselves up by their bootstraps, and the one thing that this story made clear to me was the number of ways in which society fails our most vulnerable citizens and throws obstacles in their path so they will never in fact be able to pick themselves up. So no, this is not a feel-good recommendation, but it's still a very hearty recommendation for an eye-opening and valuable lesson in the need for better social safety nets.

Margaret Qualley stars as Alex, a young woman who leaves her abusive boyfriend, Sean (Nick Robinson), in the middle of the night with her two-year old daughter, Maddy (Rylea Nevaeh Whittet). Over the course of ten episodes, we follow this woman's journey through government bureaucracy and dysfunctional family dynamics, as she desperately tries to find any way to earn some money so she can take care of her child, while encountering a neverending series of seemingly insurmountable obstacles. In some scenes, there is a running tally in the corner of the screen of how much money Alex currently has. This was a narrative device in the book as well, and has been effectively translated to the screen so you can literally see how this woman is living from dollar to dollar and the toll it can take when she has to put gas in her car and therefore choose if she will be eating a meal that day. When she gets a job as a maid (with carefully restricted hours, natch, so the owner won't have to give her any benefits beyond her paltry salary), we see how quickly her paycheck is used up through the simple act of buying cleaning supplies, getting gas for her car, and then having to take a ferry to get across to the house that she has to clean. When a customer unexpectedly cancels, she might not not have enough money to pay for Maddy's daycare, which means she then can't leave her kid alone to go work, which means she's stuck in this horrific grinding cycle of poverty.

Most people have an abstract notion of how it must suck to be poor. There's a lot of rhetoric of how if people just stopped buying Starbucks and avocado toast everyday, they'd have enough money to pay for everything. But Maid showcases how people who are merely looking for the bare necessities of food and shelter are constantly thwarted and beaten down by those in society who have the privilege of never knowing that grinding worry of making ends meet. Alex cleans the house of a woman named Regina (Anika Noni Rose), who is a wealthy lawyer and lives in the lap of luxury. The evolution of that relationship is wonderful, with Regina having absolutely no clue what Alex's life must be like, and slowly learning to check her assumptions and understand what happens when Alex is not in her house. It's a gradual reckoning, and it isn't perfect by any means, but it offers up one example of the kind of education in empathy that all rich people need before they realize what it means to be poor in America.

Obviously I'm an incredible fan of the writing of this show and the thought and care put into this adaptation by creator Molly Smith Metzler. But none of it would work without the scintillating acting from this cast, particularly Qualley and Andie MacDowell who plays her mother, Paula. The two of them (who are mother and daughter in real life!) play off of each other in such heartbreaking ways, and you can certainly see how Paula's struggles with her mental health and erratic life choices have weighed upon Alex, and how hard Alex is fighting to break out of this cycle before her choices end up weighing down Maddy and limiting her future. And I am already cringing when I say "choices" because the thing that this show makes so emphatically clear is how little "choice" these women have had in their lives. Each episode of the show can feel so predictable, because you'll think that things are finally improving for these characters and they have found a way to better their lot, but then they immediately take two steps back. And you have to check your impulse to blame Alex or Paula for their individual actions and instead acknowledge there is a whole social system that has let them down. They have suffered from abusive boyfriends, have not received appropriate health care or social services, and have generally been led to believe that they are less than, which makes it all the more remarkable to see how much they still accomplish and defiantly achieve every single day. 

Maid also boasts incredible production values. This is a well-shot show that is beautifully imaginative and comes up with economical and riveting ways to reflect a character's emotions or capture a mood. I certainly tried to binge this show but could only take it a a few episodes at a time with long breaks in between because it is quite painful and demoralizing to watch. And yes, the irony is not lost on me that I can't even watch a show about being poor, while millions of people have to endure that reality every waking moment. So please do watch Maid. It's an emotional slog, but from an acting and storytelling perspective, it's absolutely compelling and riveting and deserves all manner of acclaim. And when you're done, have a think about all the assumptions and preconceived notions you've been carrying around about poverty and try to be less of a terrible human. Maybe if enough of us get on the bandwagon, we can be less pretentious and ridiculous about helping people who are simply trying to help themselves.