A Fast-Paced Flurry of Funny with Plenty of Emotional Duress
Amazon Prime video introduced the Marvelous Mrs. Maisel in 2017 to both critical and popular acclaim. The series has since racked up 67 award wins and another 128 nominations over three seasons. Mrs. Maisel begins in 1958 when Miriam “Midge” Maisel is supporting her husband’s attempts at launching a stand-up comedy career. He completely bombs one night and has a breakdown, admits he’s cheating on her and leaves her and their two children. Ironically, she revisits the same nightclub drunk and does her own comedy set. This leads her to a relationship with the club owner, Susie, who sees a true talent, and sets her on her own path to comedic success.
Season One Events
Season one of the show is an origin story right out of a comic book. Midge is a housewife and mother who is a great student but who doesn’t have a ton of marketable skills. She’s entering a whole new world while trying to balance her children, her husband, and her parents. All the while, she’s starting not one, but two careers. She’s on an emotional rollercoaster. Susie’s not any help, as she mostly suppresses her emotions.
As the season moves along, she bombs, gets arrested, meets Lenny Bruce, and gets the bug to perform. She gets torn down and loses everything stable in her life. She quits. She evolves. She redefines her identity. Over the eight episodes, she becomes someone new yet still developing.
The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel Cast
Midge is expertly played by Rachel Brosnahan. She is emotive and wonderful and her Midge is desperate to connect with others. She is constantly leaning on her motherly instincts to help everyone around her. Midge talks a mile a minute, but she is naturally funny and she carries a subconscious ability to counterpunch when she’s challenged.
Alex Borstein is her polar opposite as Susie. She wears emotional armor, a necessity for a butch club owner trying to find her own way out of poverty. Susie is routinely mistaken for a man, but Borstein never flinches, showing that this is just something her character has accepted as her reality.
Michael Zegen is a puppy dog as Midge’s husband, Joel. He wants to be confident and in control but always seems to just miss the mark. Midge’s parents, Rose and Abe, are played by Marin Hinkle and Tony Shaloub. They are the uptight older couple who hardly listen to one another anymore. Luke Kirby is a standout as Lenny Bruce.
The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel Style
Creator Amy Sherman-Palladino is a master of dialogue. Not only are the lines rapid fire but they are witty and sarcastic. Borstein and Brosnahan are relentless with one another and their characters are stylized and signature. The wardrobe department goes the extra mile to ensure that Midge’s uptown flair always clashes just the right amount with Susie’s dock worker digs. Rose tells Midge at one point that the dress she’s wearing needs pearls. At the same time, Midge tells Susie to wear “something clean.”
The supporting characters are deep and their lines are so personalized that the actors inhabit them with ease. Abe is always obsessed with rules and control. Rose is an emotional shut-in who is subtle in her passive aggression. She believes she knows what’s best even though she is often the quietest voice in the room.
Music plays an undeniable role in the show. Peggy Lee, Duke Ellington, Sinatra and Streisand are popular choices, but stars aren’t the only ones who make the cut. The nightclub scenes feature musicians of every style. The end credits of each episode feature songs from different decades, as long as the lyrics match that show’s events. Bands like Paul Revere & the Raiders, The Go-Gos, and Romeo Void are a few examples.
Conclusion
The show combines personal development, family issues, and Jewish life as major themes. It remains unbelievably funny while never letting the viewer forget the lives impacted by each decision. It’s a stylish, fast-paced show that’s totally binge-worthy.