Fox's The Cleaning Lady should be intriguing, but it's too forgettable

The Hollywood Reporter

The drama series starring Élodie Yung as a Cambodian doctor living as an undocumented immigrant in Las Vegas packs a ton of plot into its pilot, says Angie Han of The Cleaning Lady, which Miranda Kwok developed based on an Argentinian series of the same name. "Yet for all the bloody twists and tear-jerking turns that concept dishes out, the show itself feels oddly sedate," adds Han. "Too restrained to be properly soapy and too silly to be convincingly gritty, The Cleaning Lady winds up in that inhospitable middle ground of shows that are not so much hateable as just plain forgettable. Both the show’s strengths and its shortcomings are evident in protagonist Thony, played by Élodie Yung. It’s hard to root against her: Competent and compassionate, she is an exemplary employee, mother and friend. Yung plays steely as well as she does soft or scared, and her chemistry with Adan Canto (who plays Arman, her mob handler) and Martha Millan (who plays Fiona, her Filipino sister-in-law and best friend) breathe some life into flatly written relationships. But … shouldn’t it be a little easier to root against her? Even as Thony finds herself pushed into increasingly tight corners by the mob, by the FBI, by the threat of ICE, by her son’s medical needs, The Cleaning Lady demonstrates little interest in questioning her choices, sitting with their consequences or examining her conscience. Yung is given only a few notes to play, all of them broadly sympathetic. When she’s not gazing tenderly at her son Luca (Sebastien and Valentino LaSalle), she’s in full-blown crisis mode about his health. When she’s not pleading for mercy, she’s pushing back like the mama bear she is. Lather, rinse, repeat, with no long-term character development detectable in the five hourlong episodes I’ve seen so far of the series."

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• The Cleaning Lady is a fast-paced portrayal of a woman pushed to the edge and forced to contend with hard decisions for the wellbeing of her family: "Yung’s central performance is filled with warmth, determination, and grit. Thony isn’t a pushover and it’s immediately clear that she’s the type of mother who will not rest until her son recovers, and Yung plays that motherly instinct perfectly," says Radhika Menon. "But in scenes with the mob bosses that she’s now in league with, Yung lacks the charisma to go toe-to-toe with them. Still, it’s exciting to see an Asian woman in the lead of a story like this, with her complexities on full display and entering a world that typically isn’t inhabited by faces like hers. Kwok’s script does a good job of centering this narrative without hitting us over the head with claims of diversity and representation, the balance integral to its success. It’s a unique character inhabiting a unique world: the perfect ingredients for an exciting story."
• The Cleaning Lady desperately needs a character like Gus Fring on Breaking Bad: "The writing on The Cleaning Lady just isn’t sharp enough to do that," says Brian Tallerico. "One of the reasons is that the writing hits one talking point after another with all the subtlety of a hammer. Expect a melodramatic exchange about the health of her child, her former life in Cambodia, and the legal status of the characters every other scene. Nothing here is allowed to breathe in a way that makes it feel genuine, especially not the subplot about an FBI agent named Garrett Miller (Oliver Hudson) who ends up turning Thony way too early. The decision to basically pull Thony in two directions with Garrett and Arman early in the show’s existence takes too much agency away from her, defining her by the men who manipulate her more than any sort of actual character development. It’s a shame because Yung is an engaging actress who deserves a better show. She’s constantly pushing against the overwritten dialogue here and trying to sell the immediacy of Thony’s predicament, and she acts circles around everyone else. Sadly, that ends up being another one of the program’s issues because one realizes that performers like Canto and Hudson aren’t delivering on the same level. This show needed a rich, complex ensemble. As is, it’s more the tale of an actress who I hope can quickly escape this messy drama and move on to something cleaner."
• There’s something admirable about The Cleaning Lady’s attempt to use the tools of genre to illuminate the plight of undocumented immigrants: "The show’s own self-belief may have the power to win over detractors," says Daniel D'Addario. "Yung is an appealing lead, and Thony’s complicated backstory — Cambodian by birth, she emigrated from the Philippines — may appeal to a segment of the audience that is too rarely seen onscreen. While much of the mob action in the series’ background lacks verve and pop, Yung sells the significant portions of the show she is asked to carry, in particular the actorly red meat of fear for a child in peril. If The Cleaning Lady helps open hearts, at least a little, towards the challenges faced by those who have struggled to enter this country, then its excesses and slips matter far less."
• The Cleaning Lady is unbelievable, but its depiction of the fear of being deported resonates: "You probably won’t believe a minute of the heightened mob nonsense, but what rings true in The Cleaning Lady is its powerful depiction of the constant fear of arrest, deportation and separation in which illegals like Thony and her loved ones live. That’s a predicament worth dramatizing," says Matt Roush. "You’ll root for this defiant heroine as she puts her medical as well as cleaning skills to good use time and again — though I kept wanting to ask Thony if she had a cure for eye rolls."
• The Cleaning Lady is one of those end-of-empire broadcast TV shows that tries to be everything: The Cleaning Lady is "cute as This Is Us, violent as FBI, some medicine for the Good Doctor crowd, yet another good girl breaking bad," says Darren Franich, adding: "Is The Cleaning Lady ridiculous? Yes, and not always in the good way. Sin City trash whiplashes with mawkish cute-kid sensitivity. Thony's son Luca (Sebastien and Valentino LaSalle) mainly exists to make parents cry once an episode. People keep describing Arman's nightclub as an amazing place full of decadent debauchery; we can see it looks like an 18-and-over soda dungeon with aerial dancers. Still, executive producer Miranda Kwok (who developed the series) and showrunner Melissa Carter have adapted an original Argentine series into a drama with decently complex cultural politics. There is a subplot about a DACA application (the lawyer costs a fortune). Arman's entanglement with Hayak's family revs up the underworld succession counter-plotting. Episode 5 delves into the horrors of an immigrant detention center."