The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel: The Mid-Century-Modern Standup Heroine Returns, Reasonably Marvelously
By Liam Lacey
Rating: B-minus
After a two-year COVID hiatus, The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, the Prime Video series about a 1950s privileged New York housewife finding her way in the world of stand-up comedy after finding herself suddenly single, is back for its fourth season.
The show, which was created by Gilmore Girls’ Amy Sherman-Palladino and her husband, Daniel Palladino, was last screened in 2019, a year after it swept the 2018 Emmys. Celebrated as a series about “a woman who’s finding her voice anew”, as star Rachel Brosnahan put it, the show had a moment.
But does it still hold up?
Susie (Alex Borstein, right) has some ‘splaining to do to her client Midge Maisel (Rachel Brosnahan).
When we last saw her, Miriam (Midge) Maisel (Brosnahan), had just suffered a career setback after being on the verge of a breakthrough as the opening act for star singer, Shy Baldwin (LeRoy McClain). On the eve of a European tour, Midge was fired when she made jokes about the gay singer onstage at The Apollo. Her career has crash-landed. Adding to her troubles, her manager Susie (Alex Borstein) has secretly gambled away Midge’s earnings from her tour with Shy.
Thus, Season 4 loops back to the past: Midge is back where she started with the odds stacked against her. Her firing was apparently headline news, and in the opening scene, we see her in The Gaslight Club in the Village, riffing about her desire for revenge: “Once again a man has stepped in and fucked up my life.”
In a ranking of importance, the show is about: (1) Appealing actors, especially the ever-enthusiastic Brosnahan and Tony Shalhoub as her sardonic father, (2) The remarkably detailed vintage fashion and production design, and (3) The rapid-fire banter, a proportion of which is funny.
Apart from the dialogue, the writing is uneven, both in the digressive plotting, and in Midge’s standup sequences, which though energetically delivered, sound unconvincing, like colourful rants with the punchlines left out.
There are other problems, most of which would require a firmware update on the series: Midge repeatedly fails to recognize her own privilege and insensitivity: She feels persecuted after outing a gay black entertainer in 1960. The show leans too hard on broad Jewish and (in a subplot about Joel’s new club) Chinese-American caricatures. And Midge’s moxie tends to sound borderline pathological.
“You know what's great about me?” she tells her manager, Susie. “It's when I'm me!”
Perhaps Luke Kirby’s Lenny Bruce, who returns this season and who functioned in early episodes as Midge’s mentor, potential romance and all-around spirit guide, might help her with a course correction, without losing the sense of playfulness.
Much of the appeal of Mrs. Maisel is its atmosphere of heightened superficiality. The visual team of cinematography by M. David Mullen, the production design by Bill Groom (Boardwalk Empire) and costume designer, Donna Zakowska, build a Manhattan that pops with style and the markers of mid-century transformation.
You can feel it in the long-finned, two-toned vintage cars under lamplight on a night street, in the mustard-coloured wingback chairs and checkerboard floors in Midge’s apartment, and especially in her apparently inexhaustible marvelous wardrobe.
The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, Season 4. Created by Amy Sherman-Palladino. Cast; Rachel Brosnahan, Alex Borstein, Michael Zegen, Marin Hinkle, Tony Shalhoub, Kevin Pollak, Caroline Aaron. The fourth season debuts on Friday, Feb. 18, with two new episodes each Friday for the four weeks.