The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel

were Joel’s parents such horrible characters bordering on and often passing into stereotypes in the first season? i didn’t remember them like that. i’m usually down for a little kevin pollack but they are really getting on my nerves in season 2 (i’ve watched up to the yom kippur episode).

Also it was cool to read that some of the scenes at the Maisel and Roth factory were shot at Martian Greenfield’s. And some of the extras are real employees.

haha whoops Martin Greenfield

xxpost yeah Joe’s parents seemed to have the crazy turned way up this season. I love Pollack & even I was like dude give it a rest

I've spent too much time today looking at hats because of this show.

Did Lenny Bruce really sing a song with Steve Allen? Seemed a little out of character, but I don't know a ton about him.

yup

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G3QgxmiBfNY&t=

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G3QgxmiBfNY

Wow, they really recreated it!

binged all of season one and 6/8 of season two over the weekend - this show is real good

i could watch tony shalhoub wander around parisian beauty spots wearing a beret and a battered leather jacket forever tbh

totally agree!

did you think Lenny Bruce kept food on the table solely by saying "cocksucker" in clubs?

I'm really disgusted with Midge this season. The emphasis on her family's wealth and her privilege, her repeatedly telling Suzie how hard she has it when Suzie is risking her life and practically sleeping on the street and eating out of garbage cans. The Catskills thing made it so broad and obvious as to be purposeful, but there still don't seem to be any consequences or any realization dawning on Midge's tender brow. I have 2 or 3 eps to go yet so I guess vamos a ver.

I wish the mom had stayed in Paris tbh and dumped the whole lot of them.

I had no clue why the mother didn't stay in Paris either.

I kept wondering if Alex Borstein (Suzie) is part asian and then realized she was Ms Swan on Mad TV.

I'm really disgusted with Midge this season.

yeah, she's notably more... self-absorbed in s2 while joel is doing a lot of unexpectedly affecting growing-up

like you, still got a couple of episodes to go so maybe they'll address it directly but it'd be interesting if midge ends up turning into jane lynch's character over the course of a few seasons - the stuff about having to leave your family behind in order to be successful kinda hinted at that mebbes?

i did v much enjoy suzie winning over the rockaway hitmen and using the power of the plunger to get a roof over her head and make friends tho

I kept wondering if Alex Borstein (Suzie) is part asian and then realized she was Ms Swan on Mad TV.

also lois in family guy but let's not hold that against her - she is so good in this show

I can't lie, I'm exactly the audience for the quick, overly clever dialogue and the back-and-forth frenetic scenes. ("Which ones are your special socks?" " They're the ones with the little martini glasses." "NO

Sorry, typo. Anyway, you know the scene with the bathrooms and the socks. So I find it amazing that they can't make her actual stand-up routines funny AT ALL. They're terrible! Is this a nod to the humor of that time?

oh yeah, me too xp

the number of long-ass tracking shots with dozens of moving parts in each episode is like the visual counterpoint of the rat-a-tat dialogue - i've rewound some scenes a bunch of times just to marvel at the choreography of scenes like joel's first long walk into the maisel & roth factory, or the dance sequence at the end of one of the catskills episodes, or the long (albeit static) shot outside their catskills house as people open doors and windows and walk back in and out, all while delivering dialogue

it's a really phenomenally-produced show, just gorgeous to look at a lot of the time

i like her standup! if anything it seems a bit too 2018 to me

I just find them horribly unfunny. The situational humor that the writers apply to the show itself is 100x more appealing to me (the Yom Kippur dinner scenes are a highlight here). Maybe I'm not a good audience for stand-up.

xxp

That static shot brought to mind those long static shots that Cheech & Chong liked to do where they're sitting around the welfare office waiting room and weird shit is happening all around them and Michael Winslow is making a bunch of sound effects.

I don't find the stand-up funny at all either, but I can see how it's supposed to be funny in the context of show. So it doesn't really bother me

I thought her stand-up was better in the first season

I thought S1's standup was marginally better, but S2 was fine -- it's more focused (apart from her Catskills set), and she's more confident in her timing and delivery. It works for 1959/the show (as NumberNone noted). I never get the impression that it's fundamentally unfunny, or that the audiences would never in a million years laugh at her routines. Of course, it also helps that her sets are frequently set against far more dated and intentionally unfunny comedians.

They're terrible! Is this a nod to the humor of that time?

No idea, but as we know, comedy was infinitely better before the '70s.

(goes back to making a compilation of ethnic / mother-in-law jokes for in orbit)

The Catskills resort plot is FASCINATING to me because I worked in its Midwestern analog for years and years, as a maid, a kitchen serf, and finally as a line cook. It had happily shabby cabins, a main house with the dining room (where space was reserved, so your party had "your" regular table), pool, tennis, shuffleboard, beach access, cheesy family activities, rustic staff cottages, and a weekly "variety show" in which staff were required to sing and act out the same skits every week. (I played the piano accompaniment.) Wealthy guests from Midwestern cities returned every year for multiple generations and whole extended families took over "their" expected cabins and lodges.

I had NO idea that it was based on the Catskills region, and even less idea that it was a world formed by Jewishness. Even when I finally saw Dirty Dancing sometime in high school, I still didn't understand the religious and class contrasts onscreen. It would be another 20 years before I gathered bits and bobs of history & geography to put it all in context, and I feel like Season 2 of this show is finally showing it back to me all in one piece, in all its ridiculous glory.

When I was a child, I had the opportunity to spend a weekend at a giant Catskills hotel with my grandparents who went for a family reunion. It was well past its prime by that point, not unlike the "after" version of the Grand Budapest Hotel, huge and cavernous, and kind of scary. It didn't help that I was reading The Shining around that time. It's hard to imagine such a place being an exciting getaway in the 50s/60s.

it looks both v beautiful and utterly awful

xp Wow that sounds amazing actually. I envy your mental images!

Yeah, I'm talking about the late '80s and all of the '90s, so obv it was WAY past the expiration date for a style of recreation that went out with the advent of air travel. But it was a very nostalgic thing: people from St Louis, Chicago, Milwaukee, and the wealthy suburbs of Detroit were paying a lot for genteelly shabby accommodations, stone fireplaces, and worse weather than they could have had on a southern beach somewhere. The place is gone now--it changed hands, business waned, and eventually there was a fire. 40 or so years later than its East Coast counterpart it finally gave up the ghost and was replaced by 100 beach-front Air BnB options, where each family can be alone in their rented house with no intention of interacting with their neighbors.

apparently the thing that killed the Catskills was home air conditioners.

So I find it amazing that they can't make her actual stand-up routines funny AT ALL. They're terrible! Is this a nod to the humor of that time?

― There's more Italy than necessary. (in orbit), Monday, December 17, 2018 10:12 AM (one hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yeah, it almost seems like clever dinner party banter than standup

Though I've watched Lenny Bruce clips on YouTube and I usually have no idea what's supposed to be funny about it

Overall, I like the show and s2, def agree w.upthread that Joel's arc was very good and also the posts that said the Paris stuff was great....

some of you guys liked The State and that bunch, right? so comedy has to be funny now?

Nothing ages a person faster than what they think is funny.

I can't remember much about her season 1 routines except I did LOL when someone heckled "you bitch!" and she said "ohhhh, who told you?!?" or something

I think possibly you meant "dates" there but it works either way xp

Well, I mean, people can choose to accept things being funny in the here and now too, but point taken.

(makes fart sound)

https://media.giphy.com/media/lGClylJINhkc0/giphy.gif

I'd prefer to see the live comedy of the 1920s (and teens) more than anything

started in on season 1 of this last night. some interesting things (the setting, some of the characterizations, the music choices) and some not so interesting things (everyone is written *very* broadly, almost like caricatures), but it's possible my interest in this era and milieu will win out

It's odd that Tracer hasn't commented here. I remember him being a big Bunheads and GG fan.

personally I enjoy Midge’s standup on the show. the tone & the look is inspired by early Joan Rivers routines, which I really love:

ie: https://youtu.be/EpPCFoXXhF0

i mean i know that doesnt nec. make it funnier in the show, comedy is v subjective, and I dont think those bits have to make you personally laugh for a viewer to know she’s getting over & gettong more laughs as she progesses

But just feeling the spirit of Joan in some of Midge’s character beats makes me respond much more favorably to the standup scenes knowing how much the show loves the comedic history it’s drawing from

the tone & the look is inspired by early Joan Rivers routines

yeah this was my reaction as well, she's the clearest real-life analogue

well no wonder she's not funny then

*rimshot*

as bad as things have gotten the last few years... no Joan Rivers! woo hoo

It's very funny listening to Amy Sherman Palladino and Alex Borstein (separately) explaining to Marc Maron that women find Luke Kirby really attractive and charming. He is so unaware of it.

I've been convinced from early on that Lenny's death would be a pivotal moment on the show but I guess it's true that might've been too dark for them.

OTOH, I thought that Joel getting his ass absolutely wrecked by Chinese gamblers was weirdly off tone with the rest of the show in terms of it's sheer brutality. Mei's departure was also very abrupt to the point where I wondered if it was handled that way due to other obligations Stephanie Hsu had after her big role in a multi oscar winning film.

It was interesting to see how the characters' lives turned out, although the flash forwards sometimes felt like we were stepping into another universe.

The thing I liked most about the finale was how Midge's big breakthrough set was a summary and summing up of the entire series while still feeling funny and triumphant. I also found it funny that it was absolutely Joel's peak: he got to cheer on Midge and see her be a success while dispatching his parents to Florida at the same time.

the flash forwards & backwards this season, and this final episode especially started to give me vertigo! lol like i started to forget what timeperiod the bulk of the series was set

Also, that was the longest 4 minutes ever.

I thought/hoped more of the loose ends would be tied up. This season gave more time and attention to the kids, but they're forgotten by the end (and maybe that bit in Midge's set on Gordon's show was something of a meta joke). In a way, it makes sense: the kids had no character development and very little screen time, and shoehorning in decades of their backstory at the end would've been cumbersome at best. I thought the ending mostly worked; I'm not sure how else it could have ended. And while I was happy with her triumphant TV appearance, the reception to it by the audience, the band, and Ford was so over-the-top that I thought it might end up being a dream or a hallucination.

The neglect of the kids has been a running gag since the first season.

The neglect of the kids by their parents? Sure, that was a running gag. The neglect of the kids by the writers? Eh, I don't think that became a gag until this season. I always got the impression that the writers wished they'd never written kids into the story, but had no way of plausibly (or easily) writing them out of the show. And as soon as they started to flesh out who the kids were -- the flash-forwards at the beginning of this season -- they dropped it.

Kevin Pollak has a Maisel podcast w cast members etc, it’s v good!

It’s called My Mrs Maisel Pod

in other sort of related news

i was talking to my friend’s mother about Mrs Maisel because we both love the show. She is a wonderful 80-year woman who grew up in Brooklyn. I was laughing with her about Miriam’s bedtime routine in the first episode, going to bed & waking up in full makeup etc & no shit, she said that she did the EXACT same thing. Her husband never saw her without makeup! She even puts on mascara when she gets up in the morning because she hates looking at her face in the mirror without it. Incredible.

Way late on this, we just started watching this a few weeks ago and we're about 2/3rds through Season 2. Really enjoying this so far, much more than I expected to - the description way upthread (haven't read much further than the first handful of posts) of a musical without songs is pretty otm.

My wife and son are also in the midst of a Gilmore Girls binge, so the similarities between the shows feel a little more glaring in that context.

I watched Down With Love over the weekend and it gave a strong Maisel vibe.

Down with Love is a little gem.

sitting through the final episode

as always, the question i have is how can a show and a star be so, so funny and sharp and well written until the stand up scene each episode which is as flat and weighty and awkward as anything youll see

like how the worst part of every mad men was the fucking ad pitch

in fact i blame.sex and the city

There's a fundamental problem there, right, because in universe Midge is hilarious and as with a show where there's a song or a movie everyone finds amazing that already raises expectations in an unhelpful way. But also they seem to have no idea how stand-up actually works, she's constantly doing "off the cuff material I just came up with" and killing with it.

I don't know if I'd call the last season sharp and well written tho, I enjoyed it but mostly due to a combination of actor's charmingness + gorgeous setpieces + period popcult porn. Final scene worked tho.

The acting is bad in the stand up routines, not just the writing. She’s delivering it like a monologue, not standup. Her accent is dire, too.

maybe its an entire meta comment on the "my friend is incredibly funny go see their stand up"

I don't think it explains or forgives the stand up scenes for not being great, but fwiw Amy Sherman-Palladino was talking on Maron's podcast about how it was an intentional choice for Midge's act to not sound at all like a stand-up act from that era.