[8.0/10] I like that after getting an episode that’s basically an origin story for Midge, we get an episode to spread the focus around a bit and show how everyone else in the Maisels’ orbit is reacting to the break-up. Particularly at the parent level, it’s interesting to see how the various folks who fostered this match feel about where it’s headed.
One of the most interesting is Midge’s father, Abe. There’s the sense of him as a very serious man (no pun intended). He’s a professor. He’s an intellectual. He likes things the way he likes them: steady and predictable. This is, to paraphrase him in reference to his lecture to his students, an unpredictable variable. It disrupts what he thought his life and the life of his children would be. But most of all, I like the push and pull between the sense in which he is frustrated with his daughter for not “rectifying” the situation in some way, but also worried for her, because he thought he’d had someone who could take care of her even when he wasn’t around, and angry on her behalf at the shlemiel who left her for some nudnik of a secretary.
I like the response of her mother too. She goes to her psychic, seeking reassurance form any source she can get it. THeir conversation is funny and mercenary, and I like how the episode focuses on how she too is supportive but concerned for her daughter, thinking that this “perfect life” would protect and preserve her.
Joel’s mom is a hoot too. There’s a certain brand of dramatic yente that’s well-represented there. Her very intense response to the news, her efforts to cook a different dish at the in-laws’ house because parisian food is too salty, and so on and so on is such a hoot. She doesn’t get as much depth as the other characters, but it’s such a recognizable type that it works.
But my favorite of them is Joel’s dad, played with such panache by Kevin Pollack. The notion of a bloviating papa who runs a tailoring concern in New York City is itself a bit of a trope. But Pollak plays the character with such great comic energy, chastising his son, making events about him, and even sniffing out the situation with Joel and his secretary with an enjoyable comic bent. I hope we see more of him.
We even get a little more insight into Joel. The realization that he is not, in any way shape or form a self-made man is an interesting one. As his own father lords over him, he got his home from his dad, his job from his uncle, and thus has made nothing of himself or provided for anyone else on his own. It’s a shock to Midge, who didn’t realize that she and her husband were near-broke (especially given how she flings money at Lenny Bruce and Susie). It adds a new viewer, and a lower station, for Joel to occupy.
What I like most though is the way that, true to form, Amy Sherman-Palladino winds all these different characters up and then sets them against one another in a dinner table scene. In keeping with the Friday night dinners of Gilmore Girls, there’s such a great result to be had from spinning each of the parents (and Joel) up and then letting them loose to play out their resentments and hopes and frustrations against one another all at once. Each scene big and small, from big family blow-ups, to debates about the maid, to Mr. Maisel’s speech about the thirteen Jews he pulled from Germany are such a hoot.
At the same time, it all comes nicely back to Midge. She initially pulls back from her plain stand-up comedy brilliance. Midge’s reaction to the veritable castle she lives in by comparison is a great comic scene, but it’s also important because you get the sense of Midge wanting to return to her normal life. She knows that it’ll be rockier given the fear that she’ll be relegated to the back corner with the rest of the divorcees, but she wants to give it an honest go.
Then she gets one more rug pulled out from under her. The necessary impetus for her to return to the stage of the Gaslighter, the nudge she needs to realize that she has more material she needs to work through in what has become a makeshift sort of therapy is the realization that her husband has not only been cheating on her, but keeping the state of their family’s finances from her, revealing even more that her “perfect life” was a farce and just for pretend, rather than the rock solid institution she thought she was occupying.
The opening flashback at the diner is sweet and sad in the right sort of way, but it’s a great contrast for how, when Midge started this journey, she was full of hope and optimism, thinking that their future and love together was bright. When she’s up on stage, playing the crowd like a fiddle, she knows that was all a lie from the beginning, with each level of social nicety and expectation revealing just another fabrication. It doesn’t stop all of this from being hilarious. To the contrary, Midge uses this all as fuel for great comic catharsis. But it’s also a story of epiphany and growing understanding, which matches nicely with the funny and poignant scenes that Amy Sherman-Palladino writes and directs at every turn.
Review by Andrew BloomVIP 9BlockedParentSpoilers2020-11-28T23:24:12Z
[8.0/10] I like that after getting an episode that’s basically an origin story for Midge, we get an episode to spread the focus around a bit and show how everyone else in the Maisels’ orbit is reacting to the break-up. Particularly at the parent level, it’s interesting to see how the various folks who fostered this match feel about where it’s headed.
One of the most interesting is Midge’s father, Abe. There’s the sense of him as a very serious man (no pun intended). He’s a professor. He’s an intellectual. He likes things the way he likes them: steady and predictable. This is, to paraphrase him in reference to his lecture to his students, an unpredictable variable. It disrupts what he thought his life and the life of his children would be. But most of all, I like the push and pull between the sense in which he is frustrated with his daughter for not “rectifying” the situation in some way, but also worried for her, because he thought he’d had someone who could take care of her even when he wasn’t around, and angry on her behalf at the shlemiel who left her for some nudnik of a secretary.
I like the response of her mother too. She goes to her psychic, seeking reassurance form any source she can get it. THeir conversation is funny and mercenary, and I like how the episode focuses on how she too is supportive but concerned for her daughter, thinking that this “perfect life” would protect and preserve her.
Joel’s mom is a hoot too. There’s a certain brand of dramatic yente that’s well-represented there. Her very intense response to the news, her efforts to cook a different dish at the in-laws’ house because parisian food is too salty, and so on and so on is such a hoot. She doesn’t get as much depth as the other characters, but it’s such a recognizable type that it works.
But my favorite of them is Joel’s dad, played with such panache by Kevin Pollack. The notion of a bloviating papa who runs a tailoring concern in New York City is itself a bit of a trope. But Pollak plays the character with such great comic energy, chastising his son, making events about him, and even sniffing out the situation with Joel and his secretary with an enjoyable comic bent. I hope we see more of him.
We even get a little more insight into Joel. The realization that he is not, in any way shape or form a self-made man is an interesting one. As his own father lords over him, he got his home from his dad, his job from his uncle, and thus has made nothing of himself or provided for anyone else on his own. It’s a shock to Midge, who didn’t realize that she and her husband were near-broke (especially given how she flings money at Lenny Bruce and Susie). It adds a new viewer, and a lower station, for Joel to occupy.
What I like most though is the way that, true to form, Amy Sherman-Palladino winds all these different characters up and then sets them against one another in a dinner table scene. In keeping with the Friday night dinners of Gilmore Girls, there’s such a great result to be had from spinning each of the parents (and Joel) up and then letting them loose to play out their resentments and hopes and frustrations against one another all at once. Each scene big and small, from big family blow-ups, to debates about the maid, to Mr. Maisel’s speech about the thirteen Jews he pulled from Germany are such a hoot.
At the same time, it all comes nicely back to Midge. She initially pulls back from her plain stand-up comedy brilliance. Midge’s reaction to the veritable castle she lives in by comparison is a great comic scene, but it’s also important because you get the sense of Midge wanting to return to her normal life. She knows that it’ll be rockier given the fear that she’ll be relegated to the back corner with the rest of the divorcees, but she wants to give it an honest go.
Then she gets one more rug pulled out from under her. The necessary impetus for her to return to the stage of the Gaslighter, the nudge she needs to realize that she has more material she needs to work through in what has become a makeshift sort of therapy is the realization that her husband has not only been cheating on her, but keeping the state of their family’s finances from her, revealing even more that her “perfect life” was a farce and just for pretend, rather than the rock solid institution she thought she was occupying.
The opening flashback at the diner is sweet and sad in the right sort of way, but it’s a great contrast for how, when Midge started this journey, she was full of hope and optimism, thinking that their future and love together was bright. When she’s up on stage, playing the crowd like a fiddle, she knows that was all a lie from the beginning, with each level of social nicety and expectation revealing just another fabrication. It doesn’t stop all of this from being hilarious. To the contrary, Midge uses this all as fuel for great comic catharsis. But it’s also a story of epiphany and growing understanding, which matches nicely with the funny and poignant scenes that Amy Sherman-Palladino writes and directs at every turn.