Thief
Episode 5 of “Maid” begins with Alex waking up to Maddy coughing uncontrollably. The pair end up sleeping together, as Alex looks up and realizes the root cause of this may well be mold. As someone whose son was originally on an inhalator because of extreme mold in my previous apartment, I know all about this and it’s absolutely heartbreaking to watch play out. ..
With Sean and Alex both needing to go to work, Paula refuses to pick up her phone. Because of course she does. Yolanda has a big job for Alex too, and that means Maddy needs to go to daycare while she works.
The landlord, Luis, is less than accommodating to the mold situation. And worse, the daycare isn’t particularly happy given Alex hasn’t paid all of her funds yet. Still, thankfully they take Maddy and Alex heads on to work.
Maddy is sick, and her grandfather is taking her to the hospital. Maddy’s mother is also there, and she’s been crying and screaming since she found out. She wants to go home, but her husband says they can’t leave Maddy behind. They have to take her to the hospital with Hank.
Hank seems like he’s not really like the other people Paula has described and he encourages Alex to come around more often given he has an open invite. However, Alex isn’t exactly thrilled with this deal.
Maddy wakes up to the smell of mold. This has a knock-on effect on her health, who ends up getting even more ill. With very little choice, Maddy turns to Hank for help.
When Maddy drops her off, Alex learns the horrifying truth about how bad this mold situation actually is. It could well mean the carpet needs to be ripped up and the walls redone. Hank though, encourages her to stay with him for the time being unless it’s sorted out.
Alex begins to worry when he doesn’t hear from Paula and goes on the hunt for her. He finds Danielle, who is scared of her controlling boyfriend.
Alex returns to Hank’s place after gaining some reassuring words from Denise. He admits that Paula left with her in the middle of the night, but that’s not actually true. ..
The real story is that Paula left because of Hank’s anger. She disappeared in the middle of the night with him because they were afraid – not unlike Alex and Maddy during episode 1.
As Alex rushes to find a place to live, she hits another roadblock when she learns that her moldy apartment needs serious work done to it. Because of this, she’s essentially thrown out with nowhere to go. Luis nonchalantly shrugs off responsibility, telling her she needs to discuss accommodation with her case worker.
Alex heads to Paula’s, where she flamboyantly rocks up laughing and joking about. Alex is deadly serious though and brings up the abuse she suffered, and how Hank used to hit her in the past. She shrugs it off though and throws some big news of her own – she’s now married to Basil.
The Episode Review
The maid’s halfway point signifies another swing back to the dark and depressing reality of living in a halfway house like this. As someone who has been through serious mold issues before, having back and forth conversations with stubborn landlords about health concerns, this is something I wouldn’t wish on anyone.
The cough is awful and for me, it brings back some serious flashbacks of my son coughing and being forced onto an inhalator while the walls slowly turned a darker shade of black. The trouble is, the more you clean and try to air the rooms out, the more futile it becomes, given that you have to air it out in the cold wind that just makes things worse. ..
This chapter does an excellent job of showing the reality of this situation and it makes it all the more difficult to understand what’s really going on. The old adage of not judging a book by its cover is still true in this case.
Paula is clearly suffering from depression and the abuse but she’s kept it hidden behind her flamboyance and deep desire to be loved.
This is a powerful and personal story that I found difficult to watch, but in the grand scheme of things it all works out. Each house that Alex cleans has an added effect of reinforcing her emotions. In that respect, Maid does have some similarities to Move to Heaven, but the story here is far more personal and difficult to watch.
Alex’s future is still up in the air, but it’s clear that this isn’t the end of the story for his dysfunctional family. ..
