“The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel” has cleaned up at awards shows the past couple of years, winning several important Emmy and Golden Globe awards, but we haven’t discussed it in this group. I finished the first season and it’s worth watching. Rachel Brosnahan plays the title character, a 1950s Upper West Side New York City housewife who gets plunged into stand-up comedy as a form of therapy. Miriam “Midge” Maisel is the perfect housewife and trained her whole life, it seems, to do that, going to college just to find a husband. In the arc of the first season, Miriam develops a feminist bent. Brosnahan deserves the accolades she receives. Alex Borstein, who I thought was good on “Mad TV” and as a voice actor, is also exceptional as the manager who sees greatness in Miriam, even if she doesn’t see it herself. Tony Shaloub is fantastic in a relatively minor role as Miriam’s father. Shaloub said on Marc Maron’s WTF podcast he has a bigger role in the second season. He can steal the scene with just a few words. Kevin Pollak is mostly good as Miriam’s father-in-law – he goes over the top a few times – but it’s clear he can’t hold his own against Shaloub. Maybe it’s intended that way. Shaloub has a few great scenes where he says almost nothing but steals the movie. If you watch Matthew Wiener’s DVD commentary on the first season of “Mad Men,” you could see how he broke down scenes and explained how they worked. I would love some DVD commentary on Shaloub. Is the script that good? Is it the directing? Is it Shaloub? Or is it all three? The writing is often great but uneven. Like in the sixth episode, there’s a celebratory dinner scene with an over-enthusiastic Jewish convert that is so good and so funny it’s worth watching twice. A few minutes later, there’s a screaming match between the characters of Brosnahan and Borstein that seems like it’s right out of scriptwriting 101. Almost amateurish. The show is beautifully photographed, especially the earlier episodes where they glamorize Greenwich Village. Again, it would be great to have a DVD commentary to say which are real shots and which are CGI. One other gripe is how the character interacts with Lenny Bruce. I don’t know much about Bruce but I don’t think he was a benevolent do-gooder. I recall stories of him borrowing money from lots of people *before* he got deeply involved in drugs and not paying it back. Some have ranked it as one of the best series ever. I wouldn’t rank it up there with “Breaking Bad” or “The Sopranos,” but it’s funny and smart and worth your time.
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