The great irony of Amy Sherman-Palladino’s television shows is that the dialogue gushes forth with the insistence of a burst hydrant, and yet the most beguiling moments are the ones in which no one speaks at all. Midway through the third season of Amazon’s The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, a man and a woman whose chemistry has smoldered almost since the show’s inception find themselves alone, in the early hours of the morning, at a hotel. They gaze at each other. They each glance meaningfully through the open door toward a bed. They say nothing. The energy is so heightened and so loaded with expectation that I couldn’t have stopped watching if the room around me had suddenly caught on fire.
The five hours or so that preceded it, though, had mostly the opposite effect, where any scenes without Rachel Brosnahan’s unsinkable comic Midge Maisel—and even a few with her—were either inert or insufferable. What used to feel like Sherman-Palladino trademarks now come across as tics: the barrage of inane chatter; the superficial stereotyping; the overreliance on spectacle without substance, like a dinner composed entirely of cake pops. More vexing than anything, though, is how defiantly The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel refuses to have stakes. Everything plays out in the same major key. Everything—lost children, homelessness, divorce, social injustice—is just a joke, bedazzled and glib and gorgeous. This is a series so vacantly uplifting, it’s managed to transfigure Lenny Bruce into Prince Charming.
While the show has always been this way, previous seasons have always had something specific to elevate them: Midge’s talent. Over the first eight episodes, Midge evolved from serene housewife to jilted single parent to accidental comedian to blacklisted talent with breathtaking velocity. Her discovery—after her weaselly husband’s departure prompts her to take a drunken subway ride to a downtown comedy club—that she could make rooms of people laugh was the kind of fairytale moment that was easy to believe in, because Brosnahan’s performance was so entrancing. Onstage, Midge dazzles, even when she bombs. And in the first two seasons, the show seemed to suggest that Midge wasn’t satisfied being merely funny; she had the kind of ambition that can change the world she inhabits, redefining the way people think about women, comedy, and especially the two together.
But great comedy has to acknowledge darkness, which Mrs. Maisel has always resisted. The presence of Bruce as a character (played in magnetic, Emmy-winning style by Luke Kirby) seemed to suggest that Midge’s comedy might skirt the edges of propriety. But apart from a wine-soaked interlude in Episode 1 where she bared her breasts onstage and was arrested, her routine has played it safe, rarely advancing beyond the subjects of sex, failure, and men having the privilege of comfortable shoes. (...)
It’s frustrating, because the show keeps hinting that it’s edging toward more substantial fare, only to back out at the last minute. The running joke wherein strangers mistake Susie for a man wasn’t funny to begin with—now it only draws attention to how timidly the show avoids the subject of Susie herself, and her desires. When Midge accepted in Season 2 that pursuing greatness in comedy would mean sacrificing personal happiness and stability, I thought the show might be going somewhere groundbreaking. Instead, Midge dispatched with her fiancé, Benjamin (Zachary Levi), as carelessly as if she were throwing out leftovers—offscreen, and with no apparent sense of loss. Midge’s chemistry with Bruce is a potent force, but the more the series leans into it, the more I have questions about how a show this ebullient is going to eventually deal with a man who died of a morphine overdose in a Hollywood bathroom.
The five hours or so that preceded it, though, had mostly the opposite effect, where any scenes without Rachel Brosnahan’s unsinkable comic Midge Maisel—and even a few with her—were either inert or insufferable. What used to feel like Sherman-Palladino trademarks now come across as tics: the barrage of inane chatter; the superficial stereotyping; the overreliance on spectacle without substance, like a dinner composed entirely of cake pops. More vexing than anything, though, is how defiantly The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel refuses to have stakes. Everything plays out in the same major key. Everything—lost children, homelessness, divorce, social injustice—is just a joke, bedazzled and glib and gorgeous. This is a series so vacantly uplifting, it’s managed to transfigure Lenny Bruce into Prince Charming.While the show has always been this way, previous seasons have always had something specific to elevate them: Midge’s talent. Over the first eight episodes, Midge evolved from serene housewife to jilted single parent to accidental comedian to blacklisted talent with breathtaking velocity. Her discovery—after her weaselly husband’s departure prompts her to take a drunken subway ride to a downtown comedy club—that she could make rooms of people laugh was the kind of fairytale moment that was easy to believe in, because Brosnahan’s performance was so entrancing. Onstage, Midge dazzles, even when she bombs. And in the first two seasons, the show seemed to suggest that Midge wasn’t satisfied being merely funny; she had the kind of ambition that can change the world she inhabits, redefining the way people think about women, comedy, and especially the two together.
But great comedy has to acknowledge darkness, which Mrs. Maisel has always resisted. The presence of Bruce as a character (played in magnetic, Emmy-winning style by Luke Kirby) seemed to suggest that Midge’s comedy might skirt the edges of propriety. But apart from a wine-soaked interlude in Episode 1 where she bared her breasts onstage and was arrested, her routine has played it safe, rarely advancing beyond the subjects of sex, failure, and men having the privilege of comfortable shoes. (...)
It’s frustrating, because the show keeps hinting that it’s edging toward more substantial fare, only to back out at the last minute. The running joke wherein strangers mistake Susie for a man wasn’t funny to begin with—now it only draws attention to how timidly the show avoids the subject of Susie herself, and her desires. When Midge accepted in Season 2 that pursuing greatness in comedy would mean sacrificing personal happiness and stability, I thought the show might be going somewhere groundbreaking. Instead, Midge dispatched with her fiancé, Benjamin (Zachary Levi), as carelessly as if she were throwing out leftovers—offscreen, and with no apparent sense of loss. Midge’s chemistry with Bruce is a potent force, but the more the series leans into it, the more I have questions about how a show this ebullient is going to eventually deal with a man who died of a morphine overdose in a Hollywood bathroom.
by Sophie Gilbert, The Atlantic | Read more:
Image: Amazon
[ed. Love the show, she does have a point.]
[ed. Love the show, she does have a point.]
