Yahoo News The Marvelous Mrs Maisel season three review – potty-mouthed pizzazz
Some viewers felt let down by season two of The Marvelous Mrs Maisel (Amazon Prime). It had lost impetus, they said. It was drifting, leaning too much on the fantasy aesthetic of mid-century New York. Too sweet, too lazy, no political nous, not enough story.
Well, I got bad news for ya. The third run of Maisel makes season two look like Line of Duty. It’s one pound of plot in an eight-pound bag. But my, what a bag! Did you get it from Bergdorf’s? It’s terrific!
To bring you up to speed: Miriam “Midge” Maisel, a pin-sharp housewife and mother on the just-so Jewish Upper East Side in 1959, found out her husband was cheating on her. So she dumped him and began a standup comedy career, performing on the burgeoning Greenwich Village boho scene, where her decision not to alter her signature look – precise hairdo, cinched waist, merciless high heels – made her a hot novelty.
That really is about it so far. As season three shimmers in, we’re into the 60s and Midge’s unlikely career has moved up a level: she’s off on tour, doing gigs across America and Europe. So we’re going on holiday. Creator-writer-director Amy Sherman-Palladino and her husband and collaborator Daniel Palladino have clearly looked at season two’s sojourns in Paris and the Catskills and thought: they worked – let’s make them the show.
Mrs Maisel is one of those series you want to step inside, to spend just a little longer in, and the Sherman-Palladinos know this. You like this casino in Vegas, perfectly evoking the city at its gold-and-velvet peak? Let’s have a long scene where Midge and her manager Susie (Alex Borstein) play slots. You’re enjoying this musical number featuring Leroy McClain as Midge’s touring partner Shy Baldwin, a fictional amalgam of Johnny Mathis, Harry Belafonte and Sam Cooke? Instead of cutting away after a few bars and getting on with the action, here, have the whole song.
As for the characters, the focus is more than ever on Midge and Susie, the friends from absurdly mismatched backgrounds who share both a potty mouth – the styling is early Mad Men but the profanity is almost at Deadwood level – and a total lack of experience in their new jobs. Many of season three’s laugh-out-loud set pieces revolve around Scrappy-Doo hustler Susie winging it when confronted by a gangster hotel boss, or by Shy’s mercurial manager (a delicious comic turn from Sterling K Brown), or with her nightmare second client Sophie Lennon (Jane Lynch), whose vast self-regard has led her to try exchanging lowbrow comedy for serious drama. Keeping a performer like Lynch in reserve – so Sophie can pop up to gripe about her theatre director (“I haven’t had anyone look at me that coldly since I had my mother deported”) then melt away again – shows that Marvelous Mrs Maisel is living in creative luxury and loving it.
At the centre, as Mrs Maisel herself, is Rachel Brosnahan, whose energy and exact comic timing still make the whole confection fizz. Brosnahan’s magnetism leads to a glut of scenes where Midge and the men in her life indulge in romance in its purest old-fashioned form, expressed via screwball putdowns and slow dances. Once again the show wisely limits the interactions between Brosnahan and Luke Kirby’s Lenny Bruce, because their chemistry is so good. The mid-season episode where Midge and Lenny communicate how much they adore each other without ever mentioning it is painfully lovely, and reflects the fact that when we disappear into The Marvelous Mrs Maisel, we’re longing for something that’s always out of reach. If it went on for ever without going anywhere, that would be just fine.
