The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel

I know it's been talked about elsewhere, but surely this deserves its own thread?

Was never been able to stomach Gilmore Girls but this instantly won me over. Most notably, it manages to portray scripted stand-up that doesn't make you want to die

Rachel Brosnahan deserves all the awards that are coming her way (and hopefully Tony Shalhoub gets his due too)

The set design and costumes... heart aflutter.

whoever described it as a musical without the songs was otm

love this show

one episode in, Brosnahan is a firecracker. can't wait to watch more.

Couldn't get past Episode 2 but I'll shut up cause I don't want to be a party pooper

Brosnahan is indeed great, but Alex Borstein is the mvp of this series.

otm

It really takes off once it focuses completely on her and not the husband and kids, so past episode 2.

Attempting a rewatch of this. Loved it the first time around. Excited about season 2 this winter.

finished s1 today. the acting is really great and dynamic all around. every interaction/scene between midge and abe was a joy to watch. the family scenes were often funnier than the comedy bits.

that's because her dad is one of the funniest people on the show (not trying to be sexist!! probably just being a fellow dad)

he def is

deservedly crushing other comedies at the Emmys

*looks over at Atlanta fanbase charging like Rohan's army* You might want to regroup.

yes!

also Darren Criss!

Oh man, I saw new posts andI got excited that there was a new season.

and Regina King! (I know this is all off topic)

sorry didn't mean to make this the emmys thread

is that 4 for 4 then?

No, 4 for 5. Tony Shalhoub got robbed!

don't really mind that Henry Winkler won though...

finished this last night. It was a nice combo of a certain type of (mostly) feel-good show like GLOW coupled with breezy comedy throwback, along with a little Mad Men NYC (but with a more convincing NYC than Mad Men, tbh...)

I liked how her new comedy career being a secret wasn’t turned into a major plot point full of near-misses, like it would obviously be nothing she’d have to work hard at hiding since it was another world entirely. A lesser show more into plot machinations over character would have made an entire thing about that the entire season and it would have been tedious. And Joel discovering her stand up at the end was pretty logical in terms of how and in terms of him being the one to do so.

Her bombing scenes were convincingly awkward and her stand up was convincingly good, both showing the fine and yet clearly delineated difference between a good set and a terrible one. I thought Jane Lynch as the extremely successful hack comedian was extremely good and she was actually unrecognizable to me when she was in character. I liked the Lenny Bruce stuff, too.

A musical without songs is otm.

I watched the first season in a few sittings. To go back to the first post, I loved Gilmore Girls. I think this is better (especially the performances of Rachel Brosnahan, Tony Shalhoub, and especially Alex Borstein, as well as the hilarious/painful stand-up sequences), and I really enjoyed it, but at this point it doesn't have as much of an accumulated weight of meaning to me. Going forward though I could change my opinion, am looking forward to the second season

Really dug season 2. I started to get a little disappointed that it didn't focus more on her comedy career, but ultimately it was more rewarding that other relationships were explored, and characters (especially her parents) fleshed out. It still bugs me that they -- the writers -- periodically forget about the kids, who are presumably being taken care of by someone, somewhere.

I had never heard the song that ends this season before, and I've listened to it now maybe 30 times in the last two days. Such a perfect choice.

I thought season 2, while still strong, wasn't quite as good as the first. It seemed to meander quite a bit plotwise, spent a bit too long on Abe's breakdown, made Midge just a bit too perfect too much of the time. There were several episodes that substituted an unusual location, and the wacky things that might happen there, for actual plot development.

Also, I think the writers are aware that they neglect the children, and have turned it into a bit of a running gag.

The Madame Alexander joke in Ep 3!

I'm with Moodles. I had a good time watching S2, but I just wasn't as invested in everything happening as much as in S1. I really enjoyed her parents in Paris, though... they will likely never revisit that, but imo they should've stayed. Once they came back to the states, the story got flattened out (Shaloub was fantastic all season, but I no longer cared why he was doing what he was doing after a while).

This show will never have a joke funner than Susie's tossed off Nichols & May line in S1 ("they even fuck funny"), but they keep trying.

I enjoyed S2 but it did feel a little more unfocused & meandering than S1. Loved all the Catskills stuff, and Zachari Levi slotted in so nicely, the first “date” on the non-rowing boat was so funny.

God I love Luke Kirby’s Lenny. Def romanticized to hell & gone but man. SO good.

I kind of don’t give a crap about Joel but I also kinda like him & i like that he looks out for Midge so idk.

Someone else mentioned it on twitter but I had a passing thought that John Mulaney would be a great casting choice as a standup or a love interest or a (?) - his whole style is like a screwball movie waiting to happen.

I watched the first two episodes of s2 last night. I am so happy with the Paris scenes and that they are keeping on the various shades of green.

there was a piece in the NYT about how they insisted on shooting in NYC... but the city has changed enormously in 60 years, which is why Mad Men didn't need to.

I mean the NYT had a pic of 8th Street in 1965, and by the time I got there in 1980, not much more than the movie theater was still there.

were Joel’s parents such horrible characters bordering on and often passing into stereotypes in the first season? i didn’t remember them like that. i’m usually down for a little kevin pollack but they are really getting on my nerves in season 2 (i’ve watched up to the yom kippur episode).

Also it was cool to read that some of the scenes at the Maisel and Roth factory were shot at Martian Greenfield’s. And some of the extras are real employees.

haha whoops Martin Greenfield

xxpost yeah Joe’s parents seemed to have the crazy turned way up this season. I love Pollack & even I was like dude give it a rest

I've spent too much time today looking at hats because of this show.

Did Lenny Bruce really sing a song with Steve Allen? Seemed a little out of character, but I don't know a ton about him.

yup

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G3QgxmiBfNY&t=

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G3QgxmiBfNY

Wow, they really recreated it!

binged all of season one and 6/8 of season two over the weekend - this show is real good

i could watch tony shalhoub wander around parisian beauty spots wearing a beret and a battered leather jacket forever tbh

totally agree!

did you think Lenny Bruce kept food on the table solely by saying "cocksucker" in clubs?

I'm really disgusted with Midge this season. The emphasis on her family's wealth and her privilege, her repeatedly telling Suzie how hard she has it when Suzie is risking her life and practically sleeping on the street and eating out of garbage cans. The Catskills thing made it so broad and obvious as to be purposeful, but there still don't seem to be any consequences or any realization dawning on Midge's tender brow. I have 2 or 3 eps to go yet so I guess vamos a ver.

I wish the mom had stayed in Paris tbh and dumped the whole lot of them.

I had no clue why the mother didn't stay in Paris either.

I kept wondering if Alex Borstein (Suzie) is part asian and then realized she was Ms Swan on Mad TV.

I'm really disgusted with Midge this season.

yeah, she's notably more... self-absorbed in s2 while joel is doing a lot of unexpectedly affecting growing-up

like you, still got a couple of episodes to go so maybe they'll address it directly but it'd be interesting if midge ends up turning into jane lynch's character over the course of a few seasons - the stuff about having to leave your family behind in order to be successful kinda hinted at that mebbes?

i did v much enjoy suzie winning over the rockaway hitmen and using the power of the plunger to get a roof over her head and make friends tho

I kept wondering if Alex Borstein (Suzie) is part asian and then realized she was Ms Swan on Mad TV.

also lois in family guy but let's not hold that against her - she is so good in this show

I can't lie, I'm exactly the audience for the quick, overly clever dialogue and the back-and-forth frenetic scenes. ("Which ones are your special socks?" " They're the ones with the little martini glasses." "NO

Sorry, typo. Anyway, you know the scene with the bathrooms and the socks. So I find it amazing that they can't make her actual stand-up routines funny AT ALL. They're terrible! Is this a nod to the humor of that time?

(also i love that morbs ended up watching the show. rereading this thread makes me miss that bitchy old grouch <3)

Cute John Waters cameo in s3 e4.
i dont care, i still love this show, will never stop loving this show

s4 e4 i meant

the strip club stuff is really charming imo

spoilers for end of season 03

End of last season she outed a famous black man and, much as I love her, got what she deserved. I'd thought the show understood that.

S04e01 this is now being cast as yet another unfair setback that Midge will raise up from, via one of her worst stand up performances yet.

Does she get called out on this as the season progresses?

no
but also it’s not that kind of show
there are consequences for midge to a point, but how much calling out can you really expect when the main character is inherently “marvellous” yknow

Yeah I'm all for the show being frothy and consequence free but then they didn't have to have her do that in s3 lol. Could've gotten some setback that actually wasn't her fault.

Maisel Goys podcast makes a valid point - the start of this season is basically a reset: Midge is back in NY, and back with her parents (well, they're back with her, but ya know). There's going to be one more season after this - feels like very little time to catapult her into superstardom, which you'd think the series was gearing towards?

The needledrops in this series are great, they always have been really. Bought Barbara Streisand's first album recently for "Come To The Supermarket (In Old Peking)".

Something struck me as anachronistic on one of this season's episodes: Abe was watching tv and said something like, "I wish there was a way to pause it, or rewind it." One problem I had with that is the hackiness of it ("Get it? They're in olden times technology!"), but would anyone in 1961 have used "pause" in reference to a tv show, film, or even a sound recording? Reel-to-reel tape machines were (I think?) the only consumer product at the time that had a pause (or, for that matter, rewind) function, and those were mostly only used by audiophiles.

that moment was purely eye-rolly wink wink to the camera, something they don't usually do, and it was a bit annoying

I listened to a little bit of the actual Lenny Bruce Carnegie Hall concert after watching the final episode, and it's remarkable how much they've had to change just to make him comprehensible to a modern audience. His references and language are so of their time, it's difficult to follow him. You sort of don't notice it as much in the interviews and the books, I guess.

yeah i got quite into him in high school & somehow got a tape & i was like HUH 🙃 lol

i do really love this fictionalized version of Bruce though, its the best part of the series for me. it retains the air of sadness without making too much of a meal out of it.

and all those shots they did in the irl carnegie hall, looks so incredible

I'm assuming that next season we will be able to tick off more people on our Sherman-Palladino associate bingo cards, too.

i think this is the final season.

oh I guess there is one more

The clothes, the buttons, the chairs, the lamps. I almost missed the point of the very important conversation between Mae and Joel because I was trying to work out how I could get their dining table light fitting. That aubergine colour that Abe and Rose both wear. Their kitchen phone. And then poor Lenny on his way to LA. It's all too much.

so excited to watch the new eps!

i rewatched s4 last week & cried in so many parts, i had forgotten so many key moments!

so many great Abe moments but my favorite was when the woman had her hand on Abe’s thigh
Waiter: How are you liking it?
Abe, stricken: Liking WHAT!?

Meet my new friends...
Whatshisface and... Whatsherface...
They come from... Somewhere
And they're out tonight to celebrate... Something

#Frostcrotch

i also enjoyed Moishe/Kevin Pollak heckling Midge’s set at the Button Club for the sheer meta delight of it

Just started episode 2 of the new season, and...I feel like it's getting away (or has already gotten away from) the writers. It's predictable in ways that previous seasons weren't, and leaning into this Forrest Gump shit about "I got muddy at Woodstock!" and being involved with Quincy Jones and Paul Simon, and performing with Bob Hope in Vietnam feels extremely hacky. Also, souvenir concert t-shirts were not a thing in 1969. No one would have made a "Midge Maisel College Tour 1969" shirt with the tour dates on the back.

But at least the drum hardware and other music gear is period-correct, so it's got that going for it. I'll keep watching till the end, in part because I enjoy the performances, and I wanna see how other plot lines shake out, but yeesh.

I'm behind on this show, mostly because shows in which the lead character constantly gets in their own way in colossally destructive ways (like the Shy Baldwin incident) actually causes me anxiety to watch, which is why I've delayed starting this season. but I'll get over it and eventually catch up - that's my thing, and not the show's fault.

my folks have it on constantly, so the scene I did see from this year was pretty hilarious (the airport scene - "the flight is not cancelled, they cancelled US!").

But at least the drum hardware and other music gear is period-correct, so it's got that going for it.

Scratch that. OK, yes, technically a Vox AC30 is period-correct...but it's monumentally unlikely that a bathhouse in New York would go through the trouble of having one imported from the UK in 1961. It would be prohibitively expensive to the point that the cost would be twice that of a comparable Fender amp that could be purchased within a few blocks of said bathhouse.

(I probably should have posted this in the IA thread instead of here. Season is actually decent so far.)

Only 2 eps in but this second flash forward is a lot much.

Oh, this episode annoyed me. I mean, it was fine and all, Suzy's stuff was good, but the whole jacket/piracy business was irritating even by the standards of this show.

Plus I've realized that I'm becoming obsessed with how time works on television programmes. The whole time I was watching Midge and Joel on the fire escape, and it was getting dark out, I was thinking "don't you have a gig on a boat at 7pm? What time is it now? Isn't this the summer? Are the buildings that tall that the sun is completely gone by 6pm?"

Very satisfying ending, well done everyone.

agree!! I got kind of emotional towards the end with the Gordon Ford stuff

that last scene was so weird and YET perfect? just a lovely way to go out.

sidebar: Amy Sherman-Palladino is on Maron this week & it’s a great conversation!
Even the stuff about her parents, i could listen to her talk about them for hours

Oh, good to know.

that last scene was so weird and YET perfect? just a lovely way to go out.

Yeah, husband pointed out that they did a lovely bait and switch -- they set you up to think she's isolated and all alone, but she isn't. And I liked that they didn't over do the Lenny scenes. No need to when people can just Google. Overall I liked that this whole season was a long wrap-up, with no one episode having to carry all the "here's where everybody ended up" stuff. And it's a good sign when I have that little tingle at the end of aw, don't go, you guys.

Selfishly I wanted more Lenny; but the way they handled it was respectful to his legacy & his family. To spend more time with him would have been to see how far adrift he really was then, which the SF standup gig did a good job of giving a snapshot of that; and truthfully to spend more time at that point in his life would inevitably = using & it’s not that kind of show

Please tell me where i can buy suzy’s gold clogs!

Oh … and Suzy’s scene in the automat where she talks more about Heddy? … give Borstein every award, she’s so goddamn good. The sheer pain in her eyes KILLED me. And her line to Midge, were you ever a blonde? Perfect without putting a bow on it.

It's very funny listening to Amy Sherman Palladino and Alex Borstein (separately) explaining to Marc Maron that women find Luke Kirby really attractive and charming. He is so unaware of it.

I've been convinced from early on that Lenny's death would be a pivotal moment on the show but I guess it's true that might've been too dark for them.

OTOH, I thought that Joel getting his ass absolutely wrecked by Chinese gamblers was weirdly off tone with the rest of the show in terms of it's sheer brutality. Mei's departure was also very abrupt to the point where I wondered if it was handled that way due to other obligations Stephanie Hsu had after her big role in a multi oscar winning film.

It was interesting to see how the characters' lives turned out, although the flash forwards sometimes felt like we were stepping into another universe.

The thing I liked most about the finale was how Midge's big breakthrough set was a summary and summing up of the entire series while still feeling funny and triumphant. I also found it funny that it was absolutely Joel's peak: he got to cheer on Midge and see her be a success while dispatching his parents to Florida at the same time.

the flash forwards & backwards this season, and this final episode especially started to give me vertigo! lol like i started to forget what timeperiod the bulk of the series was set

Also, that was the longest 4 minutes ever.

I thought/hoped more of the loose ends would be tied up. This season gave more time and attention to the kids, but they're forgotten by the end (and maybe that bit in Midge's set on Gordon's show was something of a meta joke). In a way, it makes sense: the kids had no character development and very little screen time, and shoehorning in decades of their backstory at the end would've been cumbersome at best. I thought the ending mostly worked; I'm not sure how else it could have ended. And while I was happy with her triumphant TV appearance, the reception to it by the audience, the band, and Ford was so over-the-top that I thought it might end up being a dream or a hallucination.

The neglect of the kids has been a running gag since the first season.

The neglect of the kids by their parents? Sure, that was a running gag. The neglect of the kids by the writers? Eh, I don't think that became a gag until this season. I always got the impression that the writers wished they'd never written kids into the story, but had no way of plausibly (or easily) writing them out of the show. And as soon as they started to flesh out who the kids were -- the flash-forwards at the beginning of this season -- they dropped it.

Kevin Pollak has a Maisel podcast w cast members etc, it’s v good!

It’s called My Mrs Maisel Pod

in other sort of related news

i was talking to my friend’s mother about Mrs Maisel because we both love the show. She is a wonderful 80-year woman who grew up in Brooklyn. I was laughing with her about Miriam’s bedtime routine in the first episode, going to bed & waking up in full makeup etc & no shit, she said that she did the EXACT same thing. Her husband never saw her without makeup! She even puts on mascara when she gets up in the morning because she hates looking at her face in the mirror without it. Incredible.

Way late on this, we just started watching this a few weeks ago and we're about 2/3rds through Season 2. Really enjoying this so far, much more than I expected to - the description way upthread (haven't read much further than the first handful of posts) of a musical without songs is pretty otm.

My wife and son are also in the midst of a Gilmore Girls binge, so the similarities between the shows feel a little more glaring in that context.

I watched Down With Love over the weekend and it gave a strong Maisel vibe.

Down with Love is a little gem.

sitting through the final episode

as always, the question i have is how can a show and a star be so, so funny and sharp and well written until the stand up scene each episode which is as flat and weighty and awkward as anything youll see

like how the worst part of every mad men was the fucking ad pitch

in fact i blame.sex and the city

There's a fundamental problem there, right, because in universe Midge is hilarious and as with a show where there's a song or a movie everyone finds amazing that already raises expectations in an unhelpful way. But also they seem to have no idea how stand-up actually works, she's constantly doing "off the cuff material I just came up with" and killing with it.

I don't know if I'd call the last season sharp and well written tho, I enjoyed it but mostly due to a combination of actor's charmingness + gorgeous setpieces + period popcult porn. Final scene worked tho.

The acting is bad in the stand up routines, not just the writing. She’s delivering it like a monologue, not standup. Her accent is dire, too.

maybe its an entire meta comment on the "my friend is incredibly funny go see their stand up"

I don't think it explains or forgives the stand up scenes for not being great, but fwiw Amy Sherman-Palladino was talking on Maron's podcast about how it was an intentional choice for Midge's act to not sound at all like a stand-up act from that era.