DAVID BIANCULLI

Founder / Editor

ERIC GOULD

Associate Editor

LINDA DONOVAN

Assistant Editor

Contributors

ALEX STRACHAN

MIKE HUGHES

KIM AKASS

MONIQUE NAZARETH

ROGER CATLIN

GARY EDGERTON

TOM BRINKMOELLER

GERALD JORDAN

NOEL HOLSTON

 
 
 
 
 
PAYCHECK TO PAYCHECK: THE LIFE & TIMES OF KATRINA GILBERT
March 17, 2014  | By David Bianculli

HBO, 9:00 p.m. ET

 

Maria Shriver is one of the executive producers of this documentary, which takes a one-person sample of someone working near or below the national poverty level, and follows that person through daily life, without narration. In this HBO Documentary Film, the person is Katrina Gilbert, a single women with three young kids, a job in a nursing home that pays just over $9 an hour, and a life that seems a nonstop treadmill of caring for others and facing more bills. It takes a while for what’s being shown on camera to be accepted as something other than self-conscious, camera-conscious behavior – but by the time Katrina, speaking directly to the camera, yawns partway through her sentence, Paycheck to Paycheck should be accepted as the real deal. When it’s over, you feel for her, and for her kids, and for the men in her life, and even for her patients. The camera crew could follow anyone, anywhere, and tell a similarly dramatic story about hopes, struggles and poverty. Which, in a way, is precisely Shriver’s point.

 
 
 
 
 
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