[8.5/10] I love Abe and Rose in Paris. For one thing, it’s just a treat. Seeing Abe in a beret, arguing with expat nihilists over the Bible, curling up in a trundle with Rose in their tiny Parisian apartment, is a trip, in the best way, after his uptight discomfort in the season premiere. Likewise, it’s a delight watching Rose snark along with her friend in an art history class, cook questionable food for the two of them, and take in the city. Their little indulgences: appreciating Rodin together, buying baguettes together, dancing by the Seine together, is just a lucious, gorgeous dose of wish-fulfillment and fantasy on the part of the show.
But what I love the most is that the show knows that. I knew something had to puncture this bubble of bliss. My assumption was that the elder Weissmans would learn that Midge is doing stand-up and decide they needed to rush back to New York to defend their daughter’s virtue. Instead, the reason for their return is more practical, more organic, more natural to the situation than anything so plot-heavy.
In brief, it’s simply that their lives are there. As lovely as all of this is, it can’t last. Abe knows that, despite how wondrous and dream-like it is to return to the days when he and his wife might share a slice of cake and dance spontaneously by the side of a waterway. They don’t leave Paris because of some narrative-heavy monkey wrench. They leave because you can only live in a dream for so long before you have to wake up. Only for the privileged few can an extended vacation be your life.
Rose doesn’t want to leave it behind though, not just because of the art and the food and the dancing, but because that life in New York City doesn’t seem like it has a place for her anymore. Her daughter doesn’t need her. Her husband keeps things from her. She thought she knew where she stood -- how she mattered -- only to have the rug pulled out from under her almost as much as it was for Midge. There’s an appropriately mournful tone to her long goodbye to the City of Lights.
You can feel that lugubriousness still weighing on her as she sits at the breakfast table back in their New York City apartment. But then Abe returns from his usual motor mouthed morning to remind her about their meeting with the dean so that she can audit the art history courses at the university, and they’re going to have dance lessons together, and to put a fine point on it, they can bring a piece of the life they had in Paris with them. (New York City isn’t exactly a podunk little burg, after all.)
When Rose tries to move them into a Parisian home, and Abe demurs, she communicates why she doesn’t want to return to their life as it was. Abe tells her that they can’t linger in this fantasy for the long haul, but promises to make things different back home, that he will foster that energy and joie de vivre that they’ve so enjoyed here, the purpose and place that Rose has felt here, back in their actual home. It’s one scene, but Abe seems poised to make good on that promise, and it’s profoundly affirming.
We also get a nice Midge story, featuring her first paid gig! It ends up being at a nigh-literal boys club on West 15th, where the other comics intimate that she slept with Lenny Bruce to get where she is, make sexist jokes about her in their sets, show preference to the guys for time slots, and the emcee even gets her damn name wrong. It’s a nice presentation of the sexism of the era (which has been surprisingly low-key in the show up to this point), and leads to plenty of great comic banter between Midge and Susie.
But then, Midge finally gets on stage and does her set, and she turns the tables on them. There’s a nice trajectory to the tension, where at first it seems like Midge is going to bomb, but then even in the dark she finds herself and uses her frustrations to fuel a great comic routine. The lines she spits about the way women are treated in comedy are not only trenchant and true, but they’re really damn funny! It’s a great way to vindicate both the hurdles that Midge and Susie will face as women in a male-dominated space, but the talent she has that can help her scrape out a space of her own.
It’s less rousing or poignant, but god help me, I love the sequences of Susie just bumming around the Weissmans’ apartment. Her paling around with Ethan, comparing Imogene to a yelling flower, and forging a minor bond with Zelda is just tops. Even there, you get a tinge of sadness as she’s sleeping at the Gaslight to avoid Harry’s goons. But mostly, it’s just comic gold.
We also get...more Joel. I gotta admit, I don’t know why we’re still spending this much time with him. I know he’s Midge’s ex-husband and so can never go away completely, but I don’t know why he needs his own storylines. That said, this is fine. There’s something to the idea of him striving to make it on his own, while really being propped up by his father, and the poetry of him instead returning to actually make a life decision on his own in order to help prop up his father.
There’s a lot of comedy in how the elder Mr. Maisel runs his business (it’s always a plus to get more Kevin Pollak(, Shirely’s insane bookkeeping system, and the blessed return of Mrs. Moskowitz! It’s nice, in principle, for the show to do a little rehabilitation of Joel and give him the chance to succeed on his own terms (even if his well-intentioned but utterly misguided effort to still direct Midge’s life goes about as well as you’d expert), but I’m just not very invested in the character, which makes a lot of the material here less engrossing by default, especially compared to the outstanding Midge/elder Weissmans stories.
Overall though, this is a fantastic episode, which is to be expected with Amy Sherman-Palladino both writing and directing. It’s full of gorgeous imagery, a rousing semi-success for Midge, and at a time when pop culture is obsessed with new love, a beautiful story of a mature long-standing couple still growing and changing together.
Review by Andrew BloomVIP 9BlockedParentSpoilers2020-12-11T04:12:16Z
[8.5/10] I love Abe and Rose in Paris. For one thing, it’s just a treat. Seeing Abe in a beret, arguing with expat nihilists over the Bible, curling up in a trundle with Rose in their tiny Parisian apartment, is a trip, in the best way, after his uptight discomfort in the season premiere. Likewise, it’s a delight watching Rose snark along with her friend in an art history class, cook questionable food for the two of them, and take in the city. Their little indulgences: appreciating Rodin together, buying baguettes together, dancing by the Seine together, is just a lucious, gorgeous dose of wish-fulfillment and fantasy on the part of the show.
But what I love the most is that the show knows that. I knew something had to puncture this bubble of bliss. My assumption was that the elder Weissmans would learn that Midge is doing stand-up and decide they needed to rush back to New York to defend their daughter’s virtue. Instead, the reason for their return is more practical, more organic, more natural to the situation than anything so plot-heavy.
In brief, it’s simply that their lives are there. As lovely as all of this is, it can’t last. Abe knows that, despite how wondrous and dream-like it is to return to the days when he and his wife might share a slice of cake and dance spontaneously by the side of a waterway. They don’t leave Paris because of some narrative-heavy monkey wrench. They leave because you can only live in a dream for so long before you have to wake up. Only for the privileged few can an extended vacation be your life.
Rose doesn’t want to leave it behind though, not just because of the art and the food and the dancing, but because that life in New York City doesn’t seem like it has a place for her anymore. Her daughter doesn’t need her. Her husband keeps things from her. She thought she knew where she stood -- how she mattered -- only to have the rug pulled out from under her almost as much as it was for Midge. There’s an appropriately mournful tone to her long goodbye to the City of Lights.
You can feel that lugubriousness still weighing on her as she sits at the breakfast table back in their New York City apartment. But then Abe returns from his usual motor mouthed morning to remind her about their meeting with the dean so that she can audit the art history courses at the university, and they’re going to have dance lessons together, and to put a fine point on it, they can bring a piece of the life they had in Paris with them. (New York City isn’t exactly a podunk little burg, after all.)
When Rose tries to move them into a Parisian home, and Abe demurs, she communicates why she doesn’t want to return to their life as it was. Abe tells her that they can’t linger in this fantasy for the long haul, but promises to make things different back home, that he will foster that energy and joie de vivre that they’ve so enjoyed here, the purpose and place that Rose has felt here, back in their actual home. It’s one scene, but Abe seems poised to make good on that promise, and it’s profoundly affirming.
We also get a nice Midge story, featuring her first paid gig! It ends up being at a nigh-literal boys club on West 15th, where the other comics intimate that she slept with Lenny Bruce to get where she is, make sexist jokes about her in their sets, show preference to the guys for time slots, and the emcee even gets her damn name wrong. It’s a nice presentation of the sexism of the era (which has been surprisingly low-key in the show up to this point), and leads to plenty of great comic banter between Midge and Susie.
But then, Midge finally gets on stage and does her set, and she turns the tables on them. There’s a nice trajectory to the tension, where at first it seems like Midge is going to bomb, but then even in the dark she finds herself and uses her frustrations to fuel a great comic routine. The lines she spits about the way women are treated in comedy are not only trenchant and true, but they’re really damn funny! It’s a great way to vindicate both the hurdles that Midge and Susie will face as women in a male-dominated space, but the talent she has that can help her scrape out a space of her own.
It’s less rousing or poignant, but god help me, I love the sequences of Susie just bumming around the Weissmans’ apartment. Her paling around with Ethan, comparing Imogene to a yelling flower, and forging a minor bond with Zelda is just tops. Even there, you get a tinge of sadness as she’s sleeping at the Gaslight to avoid Harry’s goons. But mostly, it’s just comic gold.
We also get...more Joel. I gotta admit, I don’t know why we’re still spending this much time with him. I know he’s Midge’s ex-husband and so can never go away completely, but I don’t know why he needs his own storylines. That said, this is fine. There’s something to the idea of him striving to make it on his own, while really being propped up by his father, and the poetry of him instead returning to actually make a life decision on his own in order to help prop up his father.
There’s a lot of comedy in how the elder Mr. Maisel runs his business (it’s always a plus to get more Kevin Pollak(, Shirely’s insane bookkeeping system, and the blessed return of Mrs. Moskowitz! It’s nice, in principle, for the show to do a little rehabilitation of Joel and give him the chance to succeed on his own terms (even if his well-intentioned but utterly misguided effort to still direct Midge’s life goes about as well as you’d expert), but I’m just not very invested in the character, which makes a lot of the material here less engrossing by default, especially compared to the outstanding Midge/elder Weissmans stories.
Overall though, this is a fantastic episode, which is to be expected with Amy Sherman-Palladino both writing and directing. It’s full of gorgeous imagery, a rousing semi-success for Midge, and at a time when pop culture is obsessed with new love, a beautiful story of a mature long-standing couple still growing and changing together.