If you don’t like conflict on Margo’s Got Money Troubles, just wait fifteen minutes. In this week’s episode, the family Millet takes a trip to Las Vegas for Shyanne and Kenny’s Elvis-themed nuptials. Once again, one of Margo’s parents finds out her big sex-worker secret. Once again, ugly things are said. Once again, they’re forgiven (if not forgotten) a couple scenes later. For a show that’s trying mighty hard for dramatic heft, this sitcom structure keeps wrapping things up in once neat little bow after another.

The episode pulls a bit of a bait and switch in terms of which parental figure does the disapproving. Throughout the Vegas trip, Kenny is impossibly square, ordering virgin piña coladas, not gambling, and objecting to a mildly risqué act by a stage magician (Jon Daly) like it’s a screening of In the Realm of the Senses. Considering how much of her own life Shyanne has hidden from him, it feels like he’s the one to worry about, although an emotional and heartfelt speech he gives Margo about how much he loves and values her mother softens that expectation somewhat.

It’s Shyanne, of all people, who goes absolutely apeshit when Margo divulges her day job during a two-woman all-night bachelorette party they’re having behind Kenny’s back. Seriously, you’ve gotta hear this:

“You’re quitting. Now, okay? You’re done….This is not a request. You think this is funny? You have destroyed your life! Forever! You’re, you’re a sex worker, Margo! You’re selling it!…This is about you giving people everything they need to decide that you’re a piece of trash that isn’t worth shit! It is about losing the respect of every single person who would ever help your sorry ass even a little bit!…I did not raise you to do filthy things like this!”

“No,” Margo retorts, “you raised me to be your friend because you don’t have any!” This is the right tack for her to take, I think, not to point out that Shyanne’s work as a Hooters waitress was not entirely dissimilar, nor to note that they’re both wearing novelty penis headgear during the entire argument. She expected better from Shyanne not because she once wore skimpy orange shorts to work, but because this woman had always fancied herself Margo’s bestie. Now she’s treating her like a wayward child.

Michelle Pfeiffer tears into Shyanne’s breakdown with tremendous force, making it look like every word hurts to get out. Indeed, Shyanne’s reaction is so strong that I suspect some of what she says about being disrespected and abandoned when your career as a sex worker is discovered stems from something that happened to Shyanne herself. Whatever the case, it’s a jaw-dropper of a scene, in large part because Shyanne’s reaction surprises us as much as it surprises Margo.

But even before she leaves she’s saying Margo still has to come to the wedding to be a witness. Both women look radiant, Kenny looks nervous, the Elvis impersonator looks like an Elvis impersonator, and before you know it Margo is giving heartfelt toasts, to both Kenny (whom she clearly thinks isn’t right for her mom because he’s so straitlaced) and to her mother (who called her trash who isn’t worth shit several hours earlier). 

Even Jinx, who spends the entire trip crying silently over how much he regrets blowing it with Shyanne, reassures Margo as they eat room service later that night. “You two battle all the time, and you always come out the other side loving each other more,” Jinx says. “You didn’t ruin her big day.”

“I ruined her so pretty,” Margo says cryptically in response, but we’re clearly meant to think Jinx is right. Both women end the evening on their own, gazing wistfully into the outdoor pool–illuminated night, and some of that wistfulness is surely to do with their argument. 

But Margo’s also busy plotting her next big move as an artist with her OF coworkers. After her and Kenny’s painfully awkward first night in bed together, I suspect Shyanne is wondering if her daughter was right to worry about whether Kenny’s the man for her. At any rate, I don’t think their fight will have any lasting implications; my evidence is every other time Margo’s fought with the people who love her on this show.

The sense that the story’s a bit on the simplistic side is not helped by the soundtrack, which drops one sledgehammer-subtle needle drop after another. Shyanne and Margo belt “Angel of the Morning” together in Shyanne’s convertible on the way to Vegas. The lights of the strip are accompanied by the Cocteau Twins’ shoegaze classic “Heaven or Las Vegas,” a question that you’ve already answered if you’ve set the episode in literal Las Vegas. Shyanne and Margo’s wild night out involves dancing around to Billy Idol’s “Rebel Yell.” These are great big songs with no particular connection to the action beyond the most surface-level obvious ones; their main job is to make you say “hey, I like that song!”, in hopes you’ll now like the scene that comes along with it.

That’s sort of Margo’s deal though, isn’t it? Its hugely likeable actors like Pfeiffer, Elle Fanning, Nick Offerman, and Greg Kinnear are so hard not to enjoy that it’s also hard not to enjoy the show they all happen to be in together. Hard, but not impossible. 

Sean T. Collins (@seantcollins.com on Bluesky and theseantcollins on Patreon) has written about television for The New York Times, Vulture, Rolling Stone, and elsewhere. He is the author of Pain Don’t Hurt: Meditations on Road House. He lives with his family on Long Island.