Roush Review: A Mostly Marvelous Final Act for ‘Mrs. Maisel’

The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel

Matt's Rating:

We’ve always known Midge Maisel (the electrifying Rachel Brosnahan) would make it big in comedy. It’s right there in the title: The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel. Not miserable.

What we’ve been impatient to learn for four seasons is how. And, most important, when? (Last season, as fun as it was to watch Midge work in a rowdy burlesque club circa 1960, it began to feel like the show was treading water, delaying the inevitable for too long.)

Happily, all is revealed in the mostly delightful and at times unabashedly poignant fifth and final season. In smartly crafted flash-forwards that open many of the nine remaining episodes, we discover just how giant a superstar Midge becomes, along with several shocking details of her roller-coaster personal and professional life that will be explained in due course.

Most of the season, though, is planted firmly in the early 1960s, with suitably fabulous costumes and production design, when trailblazing Midge and her relentless manager Susie (the hilariously volcanic Alex Borstein) are still waiting impatiently for that big break. They think they’ve made it when Midge gets a job on a Tonight Show–style talk show (with Veep’s Reid Scott the handsome but patronizing host), though it’s not exactly the gig she was hoping for.

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While they endure more frustrating hurdles of their sexist times, the series stalls whenever the focus veers too heavily toward Midge’s neurotic parents (the gifted Tony Shalhoub and Marin Hinkle) and, even more annoying, her buffoonish ex in-laws (Kevin Pollak and Caroline Aaron), all of whose shtick too often becomes tiresomely cartoonish. Shalhoub earned an Emmy as the lovably exasperated Abe Weissman, but the show does him no favors by sending Abe into a spiral for an entire episode because he misspelled a name in print.

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Still, no one writes sparkling banter like Amy Sherman-Palladino and Daniel Palladino (Gilmore Girls), most evident in the season’s finest episode, built around a Friars Club roast of the sensational Susie Myerson — not a bad name for a series, come to think of it — whose fame as a talent manager rises with Midge’s. (That episode also reminds us of the Palladinos’ generosity toward those they’ve worked with before, with cameos by former Gilmore players Sean Gunn and Danny Strong.)

Say this about Midge and Susie: These women are not ashamed of their ambition. As Midge puts it: “Being a coward is only cute in The Wizard of Oz.”

When their moment finally comes, you can only marvel.

The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, Season 5 Premiere (three episodes), Friday, April 14, Prime Video