by Pa Rock
Entertainment Junkie
For the past couple of weeks Rosie and I have been enjoying Amazon's award-winning new television series, The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, and we have both come to the conclusion that the new comedy (two seasons, nineteen episodes - so far) is indeed marvelous! The one show alone is worth the price of a year's membership in Amazon's Prime - a $120 annual expenditure that delivers a bounty of fine television programming along with free shipping on most Amazon purchases.
The show is set in New York City in the late 1950's.
Midge Maisel is a young housewife and mother of two small children who lives in a fashionable apartment in New York's Upper East Side. She is very supportive of her husband, Joel, who works by day as an executive in a company that his uncle owns - and by night tries to break into the local nightclub scene as a stand-up comic. Joel experiences a disastrous performance at one of his free gigs during the first episode, and blames Midge for his failure. During the ensuring argument he informs her that he has been having an affair - and then he walks out on his family.
Midge, who has the luxury of living in the same apartment house as her parents, delivers the kids upstairs to their grandparents, has a couple of drinks, and then stumbles out in the New York City night air in her nightgown. She winds up at the same comedy club where Joel had bombed earlier in the evening, and, clad in her nightgown, she barges onto the stage and delivers an impromptu routine focusing on the breakup of her marriage. It was a howling success that ended in Midge's arrest by the New York City Police Department.
While at the police station Midge meets and becomes friends with fellow-arrested comedian, the infamous Lenny Bruce. She bails Lenny out and pays for his cab ride home. Days later, following her second arrest, Lenny is able to return the favors.
The other indispensable friend that Midge makes during her debut comedy performance is Susie Myerson, the club manager where the performance takes place. Susie, a rough-and-tumble New Yorker who is often mistaken for a man, recognizes Midge's comedy gift and quickly insinuates herself into the picture as Midge's personal manager.
The remaining eighteen episodes focus on Midge's slow rise through the male-dominated field of stand-up comedy, with lots of attention paid to pressures that her career places on friends and family as well as a doses of pop culture and political and social commentary from the 1950's.
Rachel Brosnahan stars as the irrepressible Midge, a role that has won her "best actress" awards at the past two Golden Globe award shows. Alex Borstein is the in-your-face personal manager, Susie Myerson, a woman who will go to the mat - literally - for her client. Two other familiar faces in the show are Tony Shaloub (TV's "Monk") who plays Midge's uptight father and mathematician, Abe Weissman, and Jane Lynch (the evil cheerleading coach, Sue Sylvester, from Glee) who portrays a nationally known female comedian who is reluctantly stuck in the persona of a poor, fat housewife from Queens who has had eight or nine husbands.
Almost all of the characters are Jewish, particularly those on the higher end of the social order, and the religion transcends the culture of the program. A couple of episodes in the second season take place at a Jewish holiday retreat in the Catskills - in a hotel by a lake that conjures memories of Patrick Swayze and Jennifer Grey.
The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel rolls back the decades. It is a beautifully written and acted, with some of the most stunning photographic effects ever to grace the small screen. The old cars alone, with their mighty fins and two-tone paint jobs, make the show worth seeing. The music, too, is wonderful and seamlessly connects viewers to the 1950's, and the comedy, though often vulgar, is hilarious and shows the challenges that society and comedians like Lenny Bruce faced as post-World War II America was growing up.
Five stars can't begin to define The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel. This is one helluva fine show. I can't wait to see where the third season takes Midge and her friends and family!
Entertainment Junkie
For the past couple of weeks Rosie and I have been enjoying Amazon's award-winning new television series, The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, and we have both come to the conclusion that the new comedy (two seasons, nineteen episodes - so far) is indeed marvelous! The one show alone is worth the price of a year's membership in Amazon's Prime - a $120 annual expenditure that delivers a bounty of fine television programming along with free shipping on most Amazon purchases.
The show is set in New York City in the late 1950's.
Midge Maisel is a young housewife and mother of two small children who lives in a fashionable apartment in New York's Upper East Side. She is very supportive of her husband, Joel, who works by day as an executive in a company that his uncle owns - and by night tries to break into the local nightclub scene as a stand-up comic. Joel experiences a disastrous performance at one of his free gigs during the first episode, and blames Midge for his failure. During the ensuring argument he informs her that he has been having an affair - and then he walks out on his family.
Midge, who has the luxury of living in the same apartment house as her parents, delivers the kids upstairs to their grandparents, has a couple of drinks, and then stumbles out in the New York City night air in her nightgown. She winds up at the same comedy club where Joel had bombed earlier in the evening, and, clad in her nightgown, she barges onto the stage and delivers an impromptu routine focusing on the breakup of her marriage. It was a howling success that ended in Midge's arrest by the New York City Police Department.
While at the police station Midge meets and becomes friends with fellow-arrested comedian, the infamous Lenny Bruce. She bails Lenny out and pays for his cab ride home. Days later, following her second arrest, Lenny is able to return the favors.
The other indispensable friend that Midge makes during her debut comedy performance is Susie Myerson, the club manager where the performance takes place. Susie, a rough-and-tumble New Yorker who is often mistaken for a man, recognizes Midge's comedy gift and quickly insinuates herself into the picture as Midge's personal manager.
The remaining eighteen episodes focus on Midge's slow rise through the male-dominated field of stand-up comedy, with lots of attention paid to pressures that her career places on friends and family as well as a doses of pop culture and political and social commentary from the 1950's.
Rachel Brosnahan stars as the irrepressible Midge, a role that has won her "best actress" awards at the past two Golden Globe award shows. Alex Borstein is the in-your-face personal manager, Susie Myerson, a woman who will go to the mat - literally - for her client. Two other familiar faces in the show are Tony Shaloub (TV's "Monk") who plays Midge's uptight father and mathematician, Abe Weissman, and Jane Lynch (the evil cheerleading coach, Sue Sylvester, from Glee) who portrays a nationally known female comedian who is reluctantly stuck in the persona of a poor, fat housewife from Queens who has had eight or nine husbands.
Almost all of the characters are Jewish, particularly those on the higher end of the social order, and the religion transcends the culture of the program. A couple of episodes in the second season take place at a Jewish holiday retreat in the Catskills - in a hotel by a lake that conjures memories of Patrick Swayze and Jennifer Grey.
The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel rolls back the decades. It is a beautifully written and acted, with some of the most stunning photographic effects ever to grace the small screen. The old cars alone, with their mighty fins and two-tone paint jobs, make the show worth seeing. The music, too, is wonderful and seamlessly connects viewers to the 1950's, and the comedy, though often vulgar, is hilarious and shows the challenges that society and comedians like Lenny Bruce faced as post-World War II America was growing up.
Five stars can't begin to define The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel. This is one helluva fine show. I can't wait to see where the third season takes Midge and her friends and family!
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