The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel is a period-comedy drama that began airing in 2018, and Amazon studios confirmed a final fifth season on February 2022. The series is the creation of Amy Sherman Palladino and stars Rachel Brosnahan in the lead role.
The series received positive responses from critics and went on to win many prestigious awards, including The primetime Emmy for outstanding Comedy series and the golden globe for best television series: comedy or musical in the year 2018.
Rachel Brosnahan also won the Golden Globe for Best Actress: Television series or musicals two times in a row in the years 2018 and 2019; and a primetime Emmy award for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Comedy Series in 2018. Many other actors who worked in the series as supporting characters also won awards for their performances. You can catch the four seasons of The Marvelous Mrs.Maisel on Amazon Prime.
The fifth season of the series is anticipated to air soon, with fans anticipating the return of the great series. If you haven’t watched the series yet, then please be cautious as you keep reading because this review contains spoilers for the previous seasons.
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The Plot: Summary and Review
In the first season of the show, set in 1958 in New York City, we are introduced to Mrs. Maisly, a young American-Jew wife and mother. She lives a satisfying life with her husband and kids, but this doesn’t last long.
Her husband Joel has an interest in doing stand-ups at The Gaslight cafe, and Miriam thinks of this as a hobby, unaware that Joel is planning on making it his career, despite the fact that he is untalented. But nothing goes as planned, but after an incident where Joel performs badly on the stage, he leaves Mirian for his secretary.
This obviously upsets Mirian. She gets drunk and reaches The Gaslight Cafe in her nightgown, and starts performing stand-up. She drunkenly vents everything in her mind to the audience. This results in her getting arrested for obscenity.
At the same time, another comedian named Leeny Bruce is also arrested for the same reason. They meet each other and become acquaintances. The manager of The Gaslight Cafe, Susie Meyerson, played by Alex Borstein, bails Miriam out, who in turn bails Lenny out of jail. Susie also recognizes her talent in Miriam and trains her to become a stand-up comic. Thus, season one lays out the beginning of Midge’s Stand-up career.
In season two, we further the journey of Midge’s career. She is developing her skill as a comedian while dealing with sexist remarks from a large misogynist audience. Though she is developing her skills as a comedian, she is hiding her career from her daily. Susie works in a way as her manager; she books the gigs for Midge.
And later, Susie and Midge start doing a short tour for the latter’s stand-up act. It is during this that they realize touring is not easy, especially for female acts who have to face extreme discrimination from other male comics. During this, Midge also gets into the wrong side of another female comic, Sophie Lennon, who, in order to compete in the field, made up the persona of an uncouth housewife from Queens.
Sophie also advises Midge to create a persona so that she can withstand the competition, but Midge refuses to do so. Midge, later in her stand-up act, also pokes fun at Sophie’s performance. This incident is what causes Midge to be on Sophie’s wrong side.
Sophie, angered by this, also manages to blacklist Midge from many clubs. But she soon gets a saving grace in the form of Shy Baldwin, a celebrity who hires Midge to perform in his upcoming tour.
In season three, we get to see Midge slowly climbing toward fame by touring with Shy Baldwin. But we see her having difficulty managing her stand-up career and family. We see changes in relationship dynamics. She stays in contact with Joel even though they are getting a divorce.
There occurs a slight strain in her relationship when she realizes that Susie agreed to manage Sophie Lennon, the other female comic who got her blacklisted from clubs in the previous season.
But soon enough, she understands that in order to earn a living, Susie needs multiple clients and not just one. Then we see that Joel managed to give up his dreams of becoming a stand-up comic and instead takes a different route.
He opened up a nightclub in China Town, but what he did not know at the time was that his landlord was running illegal gambling downstairs. Meanwhile, Midge gets into trouble and is fired for carelessly outing Shy Baldwin’s sexuality.
In the fourth season, the latest aired season, we see how Midge is dealing with the fact that she got fired. She is, as expected, humiliated, ashamed, and even enraged. This incident acts as a block for Midge as she struggles with her career forward and is determined that she will only do headliner acts.
To add to it, she is constantly reviewed negatively by a reporter of the Daily News. Meanwhile, her arch nemesis, Sophie Lannon, appears to hinder her success once more. Similarly, we see Joel is also having a hard time.
His landlord is having trouble conducting his illegal business due to the popularity of Joel’s club, his girlfriend gets pregnant, his mother is being nosy in his life, and his father suffers from a heart attack. All in all, Joel and Midge are having a really hard time this season.
Midge finally manages to restart her career by working as a comic emcee in a strip club, but unfortunately, the club gets raided. In the end, Lenny bruce bails Midge out and helps her restart her career.
It is quite refreshing to see that creators of TV series are coming out with new and innovative ideas. The plot, the dialogues, everything about this movie is worthy of every praise that come it’s way.
According to many viewers, it is an absolute treat to watch. Every second of the series is interesting and thought-provoking. The story of a heartbroken woman making her career in a field dominated by men is not new, but it is the field that is important, and this is what makes the show refreshing to watch too.
The season always ends on a positive note, but considering the pattern of the other seasons, there will be conflicts to be resolved in the fifth season too. We see Midget succeed in the end, and then in the next season, she will definitely face some troubles. I think this, in a way, depicts the uncertainty of Midget’s career, especially in a misogynist society.
Coming to the pace of the movie, it seems that the movie has a fast pace. This could be one of the reasons why you won’t get bored while watching it. There is no unnecessary lingering or dragging of any particular storyline.
The performance by the actors
The performance by the actors need not be specifically pointed out or analyzed because we already know that they did a great job from the accolades they received for their performance.
The main reason why the actors were able to do justice to their characters was the way the creators characterized the characters. The side characters were important to the show, and they all have a personality of their own.
Our Verdict
Marvelous Mrs. Maisel is a sitcom that you can watch no matter what your preferred genre is. The series and its dialogue have the ability to make us glued to our seats and watch it from finish to end. Based on the dialogue, performance, and plot of the series, we can give Marvelous Mrs. Maisel a marvelous rating of 4.1 out of 5 stars.
Our Rating: ⭐ (4.1/5).
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