2x01 Simone

[7.7/10] The opening twenty minutes of this one is straight farce, and I love it. The franticness of both Abe and Midge when they’re in shock over Rose having departed for Paris is an absolute hoot. There’s such a madcap energy to the whole thing, from them running around the apartment, to realizing all her clothes are gone, to getting the dirt from Zelda.

That same level of sweaty franticness continues in the city of lights itself. Watching them deal with locals who only speak French, try to navigate addresses and grousing landlords and currency with smart remarks and dry wit sees Amy Sherman-Palladino in top form.

It gets even better when they actually find Rose and discover that the uptight, staff-dependent woman they once knew has been replaced by a cosmopolitan Parisian who lives in a spartan apartment and feeds steak tartare to her dog. Rose has found that her wedded life no longer suits her, feeling that it no longer has a place for her, and so to the chagrin of her husband and her daughter, she’s reverted to her pre-marriage self. The repartee between the three of them at a little French bistro is just delightful. Nobody writes this kind of hilarious but emotionally incisive dialogue like AS-P.

On the other side of the pond, I really enjoy Susie getting abducted by a couple of local gangsters (presumably at the behest of Harry in retaliation for her brilliant stunt with Lenny Bruce), only to charm them with shared Rockaway heritage and end up dining with them, Goodfellas style. The comic exchanges between Susie and the goons are just as good as the bon mots from the Weissmans, and it sets up a nice element of danger as Susie reaches for her dreams here.

But then things get a little nuts. I don’t mind Midge stumbling into a drag show and being amazed at what she sees, but this is the part of the episode where things start to feel really contrived. The way she manages to get pulled up on stage, stumble into a translator, and end up doing her usual confessional act to a Parisian crowd strains by willing suspension of disbelief. It’s a writerly conceit that seems to violate even the heightened reality of the show.

That said, her routine is funny (particularly with how the French crowd is nonplussed about the infidelity and secretary challenge), and it’s a nice entree into revealing what happened after Midge’s set in last season’s finale. Her discovery that Joel was in the audience and eventual heart-to-heart with him on the stoops of his parents’ home does create a twinge of sadness to the whole thing, albeit not to the tear-jerking extent of the crowd’s reaction.

There’s more poignance, however, in Midge’s phone call to Joel after a disheartening walk through a bridge full of lovers. I’ve said this before, but it may be the most I’ve liked Joel. Midge wants to get back together, and he turns her down for a reason that is both comprehensible and a little insane.

He basically tells her that he can’t live with her doing stand-up, because his ego and dignity couldn’t take her going up there every night and mining their personal life for nuggets of comedy and fun to poke. But he doesn’t want her to stop, or at least doesn’t want to snuff out her light, because he knows she’s good; he knows it’s her honesty and the real place she gets the material from that makes her a star. He doesn’t so much say, “It’s me or your stand-up career” as he says, “There’s not room in your life for both, and you should pick stand-up.”

That’s more than a little nuts, but generously, I’ll take it as a moment of understanding from Joel that Midge has grown in the time they’ve been apart, that she’s doing something great and feeling more fulfilled in it, but that this new, better person doesn't fit with him anymore. It’s more maturity than we’ve ever seen from him before, even if poor Midge, seeing her parents separated and feeling lonely halfway across the world, takes it as hard as you’d imagine walking down that long corridor.

Apart from the story stuff, Sherman-Palladino and the camera crew do a stellar job with the visuals on this one. There’s so many picturesque scenes that are blocked within an inch of their lives. The initial rush through the department store (where Midge has been demoted to a phone operator now), the journey through the bunkhouse in Paris, a walk through a busy French street, the arrival at the drag club, and even the stroll over that lover’s walk each feel like an intricate music box, with wonderfully choreographed movements and energetic players each moving in sync with one another.

Overall, I’ll confess to preferring the zany comic tones of the first half of the episode to the more serious and contrived tones of the second half, but it’s still good stuff throughout, with plenty of promise and new storylines introduced or expanded to power the new season.