GETTING HER DUE
Amy Sherman-Palladino has proved she belongs with the likes of Aaron Sorkin,
Mile-a-minute: that’s how fast the pop-culture references whirl in the just-out second season of The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel.
From Doris Day to Salvador Dali, Sylvia Plath to John Wayne, the gang is all out. In only the first half of the 10-part series, I also fly-trapped references to Sammy Davis Jr., Tony Curtis, Robert Moses, Harold and the Purple Crayon (published in 1955!) and Lizzie Borden.
Also name-checked: Lenny Bruce, who actually appeared as a real-life icon in this madeup world on the first goaround, and returns again now.
For a show that took home five Emmys this past September for its maiden season — people like me falling hard for this Beats-era tale of an Upper West Side Jewish home-maker-turned-stand-up-comedienne, all of it conjured up with a palette right out of a goldenage MGM musical, and a gumball-machine full of allusions to Joan Rivers — the extreme specificity of Mrs. Maisel reminded some viewers of Mad Men.
For others (me) … it was nothing if not, well, Gilmoreian. Which only makes sense given that its creator, Amy Sherman-Palladino, was also the women behind the longrunning show Gilmore Girls, which also distinguished itself with a bullet-fast, screwball patter. Catching up with all seven seasons of her magnum opus (2000-2007, not counting the modest 2016 sequel) not long ago, it was also its girth of references there that struck me: between Rory and Lorelai Gilmore — the winsome mother-daughter duo — you have to work fast to keep up with their nods to everything from Grey Gardens to Showgirls to Janis Joplin.
It was a show in which the meta-ness extended so far that Norman Mailer, the late, megawatt macho writer, actually appeared in an episode, as did Christiane Amanpour.
By one count, there were over 200 books alone mentioned on Gilmore Girls — titles from Atonement to The Art of War, by everyone from Ayn Rand to Judy Blume. Even wilder: in a too-true dash of zeitgeist forecasting, Rory, in the final episode of the series, actually headed out to work on the presidential campaign of a then-barely-known Barack Obama.
Part of the appeal of Mrs. Maisel now — specifically for us avid alums of the Academy of Sherman-Palladino Arts & Sciences — is how neat it is for the zippy, always mad-hatted (in real life) showrunner to be getting both accolades for her work now, and to be doing a show for Amazon Prime that has actual major budget heft behind it.
Though Gilmore Girls always was generationally formative for many, and continues to have its diehards — two dudes even started a two-year podcast project called Gilmore Guys, more than a decade after its run, doing a deep-dive into every one of its 153 episodes, a podcast that now ranks as one of the most downloaded of all time — because the original show ran on the CW and, most saliently, because it was girl-scentric (and about relationships), it was often dismissed as fluff at the time. Or at least put in a certain box. Certainly, Sherman-Palladino never got the credit that one of her peers at the time, Aaron Sorkin, got for The West Wing, because ... well, boys.
Me, I have long thought of her as the female rat-a-tat-tat counterpart to Sorkin. And in terms of one of the true auteurs of the small screen — in the sense that you could recognize her work from even one minute of her dialogue — she is certainly one.
Moreover, she belongs with not only with Sorkin, but David Chase, Matthew Weiner and those other dudes who sit on the Mount Rushmore of prestige TV.
To watch Mrs. Maisel now, as a Gilmore buff, is a strange sensation — and not only because, here again, we have an assemblage of kooks, but also a meaningful depiction of granular family dynamics, led by a sassy brunette (the title character played by Rachel Brosnahan is arguably both Rory and Lorelai).
The only thing markedly different? The glorious Jewishness that is almost a central character in Mrs. Maisel —a specifically lox-loving, Yiddish-honed New York fantasy-land of Jewishness (the Gilmores were nothing if not emblems of WASPdom). That, and its meticulous mid-century setting, of course.
See, finally: the big-leagues production value — exemplified, this season, by a detour the show makes quite early on (featuring street cinematography that echoes classics like The Umbrellas of Cherbourg), as well as another, midway through, to the Catskills (ground zero for summering Jews at the time, as well as for burgeoning Jewish comedy).
It’s unbelievable after so many years, as Sherman-Palladino has said, reflecting on doing on a show with money versus the stepsister budget she had with her most famous show, that of “of two girls walking around a backlot in Burbank.”
But I can’t help bring those two girls with me: watching the glorious scenes in Paris, in Mrs. Maisel, I was reminded about the time Lorelai Gilmore went to Paris (on a backlot!) with her first love, Christopher, who makes reservations at a romantic restaurant for them, but due to jet lag, they both fall asleep until 4 a.m., waking to find that everything is closed. Likewise, the scenes now in the Catskills — which include a wonder of an aerial shot showing a gaggle of ladies working hula hoops — gave me a glorious, insular summer-camp feel that reminded me of so many madcap moments amongst the townsfolk of Star’s Hollow, the setting of Gilmore.
With the liberal use of Barbra Streisand tracks in the first season of the Mrs. Maisel, for instance — including one used in the cold open of an episode involving a truly stunning montage to “Happy Days Are Here Again” — I could not help but think that there were more than a few references to Babs in Gilmore, including one in Season Five, Episode 14, when Lorelai gives an elongated The Way We Were soliloquy.
“I don’t license my songs very often, but I was impressed with how the show digs deep into the song catalogues of the era and doesn’t just go with the obvious hits,” the legend told The Hollywood Reporter.
And if it is good enough for Babs …
All hail Sherman-Palladino!
Shinan Govani has long thought of Amy Sherman-Palladino as the female rat-a-tat-tat counterpart to Aaron Sorkin