‘The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel’ is about the best streaming has to offer
Wednesday can’t come soon enough.
That’s the day Amazon Prime lets loose the second season of “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel,” arguably the best comedy streaming has produced to date.
Several things make “Mrs. Maisel” special, not the least of which is the superb and appropriately witty performance of Rachel Brosnahan is the title role.
One is the strong and sophisticated writing that has become a hallmark of off-network offerings and has created a new era in television that corresponds to a third Golden Age, the first two being the nascent period of the ‘50s, the second coming in the Norman Lear-Grant Tinker time in the ‘70s.
Another is how well the program, created by Amy Sherman-Palladino, takes its audience back to the late ‘50s, the time before the Kennedy assassination when the United States seemed to be on a happy and forwardly mobile path led by what Tom Brokaw dubbed “the greatest generation.”
Midge Maisel’s fashions are typical of the period, and they look so good next to the universal sloppiness, sometimes in expensive duds, of our time. You see adult sensibilities and responsibilities coupled with a sense of fun. Nothing is politicized to an irritating crisp. People are allowed to have flaws and think individually. It’s part of the comedy. It’s part of the charm.
Most of all is the story. In the context of the late Eisenhower, early JFK world, Midge, formally Miriam, is pretty well fixed. Established family businesses support her and her husband in comfortable Upper West Side manner. She has typical tiffs, but never rifts, with her parents, even when the idiotic NYPD of the time repeatedly take her to jail for using foul language that can be heard on television today. Her husband’s a jerk, and she is, uncommonly for the time, separated from him, but they can cooperate on some things. Midge manages to stay somewhat close to Joel’s family, and their children do not suffer from being from a split home.
Within this normality, serial arrests notwithstanding, Midge can get along without working. (It’s not only pre-JFK, but pre-Betty Friedan.) She doesn’t really intend to work. She can be content to shop with her mother, enjoys being a mother, parents well, and initially supports her husband in his quest to have a comedy career.
Midge, like all around her in a verbal Jewish New York, is outspoken. Speaking up to her mother and arguing with Joel, before and after their breakup are not enough.
Midge learns thing that frustrate her. Joel, rather than writing original material, cribs from Bob Newhart, one of the brighter lights of early ‘60s comedy. That is not the limit to his benign but active cheating. He is also not among the most faithful or honest of men.
In her first rage at Joel, Midge grabs the open mike at the comedy club where he’s plagiarizing Newhart. She is raw. She is perceptive. She is funny. She is brilliant.
The jaded club manager, who hears a lot of substandard crap from the acts that grab that open mike, takes notice. A star is born. Every time, Midge takes the stage, her talent, humor, and individuality are witnessed. As enjoyable as the rest of “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel” is, and much as it deserves appreciation, I find myself waiting and become gleeful when Midge enters the club and is about to spew her observant venom.
“Mrs. Maisel” is a show that has a central plot but radiates beyond it to show a milieu, changing era, and characters that would hold interest without it.
There’s even Lenny Bruce, the great maverick commentator, who mentors Midge and often joins or proceeds her in the police wagon.
Chuck Darrow, my colleague and host of WWDB (880 AM)’s Tuesday 3 p.m. program, “That’s Show Biz,” is less happy with “Mrs. Maisel’s” use of Bruce. He notes, correctly, that Bruce is well established by the time he is playing a seedy dump next to Midge and that he is a lot more controversial, insightful, and incisive that Amazon Prime depict him.
I agree with the criticism, but I have more toleration for the glitch/ anachronism. I have long held that television shows, movies, and plays, especially with fictional contexts, are under no compulsion to be accurate in portraying a time or a situation. Think of England’s Elizabeth I and Mary Queen of Scots. They never meet in life, but every dramatic rendering of their relationship, fatal to Mary, has them in each other’s company and sparring. The latest about-to-be-released version with Margot Robbie as Elizabeth and Saoirse Ronan as Mary is no different.
For a brilliant essay on art’s absolution from historical accuracy, read my favorite current writer, Julian Barnes’s, shrewdly dead-on piece about Gericault’s “Raft of the Medusa” in his book, “The History of the World in 10 ½ Chapters.”
Chuck’s cavil and my understanding of it aside, “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel” is one of the best series on television. I am thrilled to be at two days and counting for Season 2.
Although I too have a gripe about the show. One of its stars, the marvelous Tony Shalhoub, earned a 2018 Tony Award as Best Actor in a Musical for his performance in “The Band’s Visit.” Almost immediately after receiving it, he left the show to film the upcoming season of “Mrs. Maisel.” I had the misfortune of seeing “The Band’s Visit” without him. Natually, I cannot comment about whether the production would have been different with Mr. Shalhoub in the lead male role. I can’t imagine the part warranting a Tony, or the musical even running, unless he brought life to an admittedly inert and unexpressive character that didn’t register as being worthy of attention on the evening I saw “A Band’s Visit.” Co-star and coTony recipient Katrina Lenk did her best to give some animation to the show and sang her main number hauntingly, but I felt cheated by the production in general and have not been able to recommend it in spite of realizing some of its virtues.
Let’s face it boring is boring.
Luckily, “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel” has been far from boring, and I expect equally engaging fun in Season 2.