There’s a scene in Netflix’s series Maid when protagonist Alex (Margaret Qualley) enters the family court to fight her abusive ex-partner Sean (Nick Robinson) for custody of their three-year-old daughter.
The camera switches between quick shots of the proceedings to lingering closeups of Alex’s face, her eyes wide in fear. She’s dressed awkwardly in clothes borrowed from another woman staying at the domestic violence shelter; her eyelashes are thick and dark. The perspective switches and we see through her eyes, as the words stop making sense to her: for many victims of domestic abuse, family court is their first experience of the legal system and they are blindsided by languages and processes they have no way of navigating.
“Your honour Ms Russell has failed to legal, legal, legal,” she hears Sean’s lawyer say, “and she’s legally legal, we ask the court to legal, legal, legal.”
Alex, who didn’t have a lawyer, loses custody for a week. She stares blankly as her violent ex-partner carries their daughter through the security gates in a wonderfully underplayed moment of tragedy that contrasts with the satire. Back at the shelter, she lies rigid on the carpet beneath the “creepy” gaze of a herd of plastic toy ponies. It’s an exquisite merging of the two emotional tones that define the show: comedic and infuriatingly sad.
Being so distraught you can’t get off the carpet isn’t funny. Domestic abuse and the patriarchal system that supports it isn’t funny. But Maid, a 10-part word-of-mouth hit which came out earlier this year, weaves bleak humour through harsh realities to invite the viewer to look closely at complexities they might otherwise turn away from: in particular, issues facing victims of domestic abuse in a system that doesn’t serve them.
After Alex flees Sean, the catastrophes pile on; the series explores intergenerational violence, financial abuse, poverty, alcoholism, PTSD and society’s minimisation of coercive control as an abusive behaviour. When Alex tries to explain the isolation and financial abuse she has suffered, her mother Paula (played by Qualley’s real-life mother Andie Macdowell in an acclaimed performance) dismisses it: “Can I name 450 things men have done to me that are worse than balancing a chequebook? Yes, I can!” But it’s the financial abuse that has made Alex’s life so precarious. After fleeing, she sits at the social services office with her toddler on her lap.
“I need a job to prove that I need daycare, in order to get a job? What kind of fuckery is that?” she asks the social worker, who nods like she’s heard it all before.
When Alex finds a possible employer, she asks if she can take her daughter.
“To a job interview?” the social worker replies with a quizzical look.
The catch-22 is funny to me because I know it’s true. Domestic violence is a trap, but leaving it can feel like a trap too; I’ve done it myself. When Sean takes custody, Alex is told she likely won’t get it back if she can’t find a house and a job. She sits on the bus and fills out more inscrutable forms, whose text transforms on screen again to the message she believes she is being sent: Go fuck yourself, cry me a river, nobody cares, you’re gonna lose, you’re gonna lose. Moments of respite – like Sean agreeing to shared parenting – are short-lived as the story circles back again and again to the problems of post-separation abuse and inadequate support systems, the narrative arc mirroring the toxic cycle of an abusive relationship while keeping humour as a thread throughout.
The show would be a tough ride without it. The ability to laugh wryly alongside Alex is vital not just for comic relief but to help the viewer see her as a fully rounded human being: strong, funny, flawed. After a patronising court-ordered parenting class where the teacher droningly lists fruits they can feed their children, Alex declares: “If it helps me get Maddy back I’m gonna be the fucking valedictorian of Bad Mom School.”
Gallows humour is a way for victims to cope. I know I wouldn’t have survived without it. I made jokes to friends during my own experiences not because I didn’t take it seriously, but because I had to find a way through it. I appreciate the humour in Maid because I recognise it in myself. I hope that others will let the comedy introduce them to the “fuckery” that is domestic abuse and the flawed system that overcomplicates the lives of its survivors because this is something people need to stop turning away from. This is something people need to see.
