The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel

[frelling_tralk]

I just finished watching the second season of The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel recently on Amazon. I’m not sure how many on my flist are watching this one though (you really should be!), at the moment it very much feels like a show that the critics adore, but the general public never watch :( In spite of all the awards attention, it’s not even Amazon’s

Comments

[hildemore]

I love everything about Mrs. Maisel: the characters, the writing, the costumes, the comedy. I think it's one of the best TV shows I've seen all year. It has, in fact, sparked me to investigate more comedy. More stand up. More of the great comics from the past.

Some pieces don't fit together so well (Joel? I just don't understand him or what they are trying to do with him), but I think it is hilarious.

Whoever said that the Catskills scenes are like Dirty Dancing--gotta love it.

[frelling_tralk]

I love the costumes! :D

I was more confused by Joel’s presence in season 1 actually, I get what they’re wanting to do with him a little more this year with him feeling dissatisfied and exploring what he wants to do with his life, but he still doesn’t feel interesting enough to be a main character to me. Her parents and Suzy are an important part of the narrative because they’re directly involved in Midge’s storyline, whereas Joel is kind of off in his own sideplot with the factory a lot of the time. The implication seems to be that he’s going to open some kind of comedy club for season 3 though, so I guess that’s how they’re going to have him crossing paths with Midge in the future?

And the Catskills episodes really were so fun, lol at Suzy and her plunger!

[hildemore]

OMG, Suzy and her plunger!

I guess I missed the part about Joel opening a comedy club. I tend to multitask when I watch TV and I think I miss stuff.

One thing that doesn't ring true: Nobody in the 50s said Fuck. If anybody did, the earth would stop spinning.

[frelling_tralk]

Joel mentioned in the finale that he wanted to open a club with the money his Dad gave him, so I’m assuming that that was set up for opening up a club with Midge as one of the main acts

And I have noticed that the language can be a bit anachronistic at times, some of the stuff that Midge jokes about would still be seen as shocking today even. That’s part of what seemed unrealistic to me at the wedding in episode 3, she would have been to enough events in her life surely to know what would be considered acceptable to joke about at a Catholic wedding

[hildemore]

Hmm. Joel--I must have missed him.

I agree about how she went off in front of the priest at the wedding. That was over the top. I got the impression that she knew it was inappropriate but didn't care, couldn't help herself.

I was born in 1950, so obviously I see the 50s through a child's eye. Maybe people were less repressed than I think. They certainly drank a lot. And comedians have always been way outside the mainstream. Maybe people were crazy and lewd when they were drunk. My mother kind of was.

[frelling_tralk]

Well and she was meant to be a little bit tipsy at the wedding as well, but even so! *g*

But yeah I guess it’s plausible that there was just a very different kind of atmosphere in those type of late night comedy clubs. We do see Lenny Bruce and Midge having to tone down their acts a lot for tv, so I assume they play up to the fact that audiences at the comedy clubs want the raunchier acts

[hildemore]

It does make me curious really about the time of my childhood. I know from things that I've read that pretty out there things were occurring at that time. Examples would be according to Michael Pollan that a lot of people were experimenting with psychedelics. Wasn't this the time. When the Kinsey's were very big and that their Inner Circle was a bunch of swingers? So the point is that maybe like in the Victorian age things looked one way until you got under the surface, where you found something very different. That's what I love about good TV. It always makes me curious to learn more about the actors that director and the subject.