Review: Love, Anger, and Disgusting Toilets in Netflix’s ‘The Maid’

It’s too bad, though, that the expansions in Land’s story tend towards cliché story lines involving mental illness, alcoholism, and recovery—valued and sometimes well-done but utterly familiar. Material dealing directly with domestic violence has a better meaning than dramatic. It might move you, but it won’t surprise you.

The central place of housekeeping and the critique of class and economic structures that could put a working single mother in an almost inevitable box have been somewhat lost or diminished in the re-imagination. The physical cost and meager payoff of Alex’s work, or his observations of his clients’ lives and homes, doesn’t take up screen time. But they are not as central as they could be – they tend to be there to embellish or exemplify other more melodramatic story lines. Don’t get the feeling that Metzler or fellow executive producer John Wells (“The West Wing”), among others, is preoccupied with the maid angle or spending a lot of time thinking about how to organically incorporate it into a standard television series. complo.

In “The Maid,” this plot is built around two opposing sets of characters divided by gender. On the male side, Maddy’s father Sean (Nick Robinson) and grandfather Hank (Billy Burke), who have both addiction and anger issues, played a major role in derailing Alex’s life with violence.

On the women’s side, Alex’s mother, Paula (Andie MacDowell, Qualley’s mother), is a free-spirited bipolar and two women who have thrown their lifelines together with the narcissist who is a huge burden on Alex: Denise (BJ Harrison), the company’s executive. Regina (Anika Noni Rose), a domestic violence shelter and an ambitious, hard-hit lawyer whose house Alex cleans up.

These talented artists are doing their best with pieces that feel like writers room compositions. MacDowell can’t do much with Paula, whose indecency and hurt have grown to cartoonish proportions. On the other hand, Rose does something poignant and poignant out of Regina’s insecurities, even in a gruesome scene where Alex lightens the load for chardonnay and Thanksgiving pies.