The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel - TV Series Review

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Sherman-Palladino, A. The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel(2017-2023). Amazon Prime. Link to Image.

“I want a big life. I want to experience everything. I want to break every single rule there is. They say ambition is an unattractive trait in a woman. Maybe. But you know what's really unattractive? Waiting around for something to happen. Staring out a window, thinking the life you should be living is out there somewhere but not being willing to open the door and go get it. Even if someone tells you you can't. Being a coward is only cute in The Wizard of Oz.”

Midge Maisel, “Four Minutes”, The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel

The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel is an award-winning comedy-drama from Amy Sherman-Palladino, creator of Gilmore Girls, about Miriam “Midge” Maisel (Rachel Brosnahan), a Jewish-American housewife living in New York City in the late 1950s, who discovers she is talented at stand-up comedy. The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel premiered on Amazon Prime Video on 17 March 2017. The series ran for 43 episodes over five seasons. The season finale of the final season aired on 26 May 2023. The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel was met with positive praise from critics and received award recognition and nominations for its writing, acting performances, production design, comedy, and musical direction.


Sherman-Palladino, A. The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel (2017-2023). (Video). Amazon Prime.
Link to YouTube.

Midge Maisel was raised to be the model wife and mother. When her husband Joel (Michael Zegan) expresses a desire to pursue a career in comedy, she supports him wholeheartedly, because she thinks that’s what a good wife would do. When Joel bombs as a comic, he gets very frustrated, and confesses to Midge that he’s been cheating on her and wants out of their marriage. After Joel moves out, Midge drinks an entire bottle of wine, and takes the subway down to the Gaslight Café. She stumbles onto the stage and gives an impromptu stand-up performance about her break-up with Joel that attracts the attention of Susie Myerson (Alex Borstein), the manager of the Gaslight, who convinces Midge to become a professional comedian and to let her manage her stand-up career.


Sherman-Palladino, A. The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel (2017-2023). “Pilot.” (Video). Amazon Prime.
Link to YouTube.

The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel had one of the best pilot episodes that I’ve seen in years. It drew me in straight away with its witty dialogue, costumes, set design, amazing cast, music soundtrack, and stand-out performances. Rachel Brosnahan KILLS IT as Midge Maisel. The scene where she does her first performance at the Gaslight is one of my favourite Midge monologues. I love how Midge steps up onto the stage in a daze muttering to herself “So this is it, huh? This is the dream. Standing up here on this filthy, sticky stage all alone. Couldn’t have that, you didn’t want me, was that it Joel?” The audience is intrigued, the spotlight hits Midge, and she realizes that she has the attention of everyone in the room. And what does Midge do? Does she apologise for stepping onto the stage and grab her things and leave? No, she doesn’t. She grabs the microphone and speaks her mind. I love her rage, her disbelief, her heartbreak, her observations, and her sarcasm. She has so much confidence on stage it is no surprise that she caught Susie’s attention.


Sherman-Palladino, A. The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel (2017-2023). “We’re Going to the Catskills!” (Video). Amazon Prime. Link to YouTube.

The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel has a great supporting cast. Award-winning comedic actor Tony Shalhoub plays Midge's strict and old-fashioned father Abe Weissman. I did not like Abe Weissman’s character at first. I thought that he was too strict with Midge and treated her as a child. My opinion of him changed over time as he grew as a character and became more supportive of Midge and her comedy career. One of my favourite Abe Weissman scenes occurs in the season two episode “We’re Going to the Catskills!”

Abe has a special morning routine in the Catskills where he dresses in a romper and gets up early to do exercises near the lake. The music playing in the background while Abe is doing his exercises is a 1962 song called “Chicken Fat” which was written by Meredith Wilson and performed by Robert Preston. Tony Shalhoub is so funny in this scene. It was around this point in the series that I started to warm towards Abe.


Sherman-Palladino, A. The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel (2017-2023). “Simone.” (Video). Amazon Prime. Link to YouTube.

My least favourite character on The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel is Midge’s ex-husband Joel Maisel. It is really hard for me to sympathise with him. Joel never appreciated Midge and all the hard work that she put into maintaining her appearance, supporting his dream to become a stand-up comic, and being the best housewife and mother that she could be. I think Joel’s problem is he comes from a very privileged background. He is spoiled and has a lot of misogynistic qualities. He wasn’t happy in his marriage with Midge because he was raised with the belief that he was entitled to everything he wanted.

After he leaves Midge, he realizes his mistake and whines about it a lot, which just annoys me. He had a wife who was smart, beautiful and funny, and he blew it. Men like Joel never know what they want and never appreciate what they have until it is gone. They like to complain about how unfair life is to them and rarely take responsibility for their bad decisions. When Joel finds out that Midge has natural talent on the stage as a comic, he gives her back his wedding ring, and finalizes their divorce. He tries to phrase this as his attempt at supporting her career, but the truth is, he can’t handle being a joke. Joel is a well-written character who is very much a product of the era that he grew up in. Even after divorcing Midge, he still thinks of her as his wife, and acts like it is his job to protect her, which I hate. He does soften a little bit towards the end of the series which I did like but I don’t think it excuses his earlier behaviour.


Sherman-Palladino, A. The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel(2017-2023). “How Do You Get to Carnegie Hall?” (Video). Amazon Prime. Link to YouTube.

I’ve heard a lot of people complain that they think that Midge is a very privileged person and a bad mother because she has ambition and wants more out of life than just being a mother and a house wife. The show is very open about the fact that Midge is a very privileged person and makes a lot of jokes about it like in the episode “A House of Extremely Lame Horses” which showed the Weissman household struggling to live without a maid. The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel is a great show but it is very white-centric and very white-washed. The show borrows a lot from movie musicals and rom-coms. Most of the cast are white, thin, beautiful, very rich, and wear beautiful clothes. The showrunners do not hide the fact that privilege and wealth make up a big part of The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel.

Midge Maisel is not always a sympathetic character. In season three she gets a job opening for Shy Baldwin, a black man, who is a famous singer. While on tour with him, Midge finds out that he is a closeted gay man. Later in the season, during a performance at The Apollo, Midge makes jokes that compare Shy to a gay man, which gets her and Suzie fired from the rest of the tour. Midge does not take this setback well. She is so blinded by her privilege she cannot see things from Shy’s point-of-view. She doesn’t realize that she just outed him and what that means for him and his career as a black gay man in the 1960s. All she cares about is how she feels. She feels betrayed by him because she thought that they were friends. Midge sulks about being fired for the entire next season. It is only in the season four finale “How Do You Get to Carnegie Hall?” that Midge snaps out of her sulk after being lectured by Lenny Bruce. I just wish we could have seen Midge give Shy a real heart-felt apology.


Sherman-Palladino, A. The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel (2017-2023). “Four Minutes.” (Video). Amazon Prime.
Link to YouTube.

There’s a lot of reasons to love and hate Midge Maisel. She is a very rich and privileged woman who is very sheltered. But she is also witty, smart, ambitious, and unafraid to speak her mind. Once she steps into a spotlight and hears applause, she doesn’t want her old life back. This is what I love about her. She wants more than just being a wife and a mother. She wants to be able to swear and tell rude jokes and speak her mind. Midge faces a lot of set-backs on her path to fame but doesn’t let anything stop her. In the season five finale we finally see her get her break on the Gordon Ford show. It’s just perfect. We see her parents applauding in the audience, Joel smiling proudly, Susie with tears in her eyes, and Gordon Ford introduce her to the audience as “The magnificent, the magical, the marvelous Mrs Maisel!”

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