2x07 Look, She Made a Hat

[7.2/10] This episode was kind of a letdown, especially for one positioned to be so momentous. Midge meets an artist with important commentary on what art requires. More importantly, she comes clean to her family about her new career. And if that weren’t enough, it’s the one year anniversary (in-universe, of course) of all this going down.

It’s not like what we get is bad exactly. It’s all fine. There’s some solid laughs and a few emotional moments. But the material just doesn’t rise with that lofty setup. The artists’ interlude strikes some sour notes. The anniversary material is a bit glancing. And the family confession is a bit too schtick-y. Let’s take them one-by-one.

I don’t know what to do with Midge’s adventures in art land. The purpose of the interlude seems to be (fictional prissy artist) Declan Howell’s speech to Midge once he unveils his rarely-seen masterpiece that basically boils down to -- achieving greatness and perfection means sacrificing other things in your life, with hints that he means family and a normal life.

Now look, Amy Sherman-Palladino is a better and more successful artist than I’ll ever be, so she very likely knows better as to what achieving such things takes from a person. But there’s something trite and reductive about the “family or greatness -- take your pick” tableau the episode paints, even when you dress it up with pretty words. It’s also a little too blunt in its relevance to Midge’s situation as a budding comic who only discovered her performing zeal when her ostensibly perfect family life was suddenly blown up.

There’s also something a little irksome about the way Midge nigh-instantly impresses this reclusive artist who won’t sell to anyone because he sees something in her taste and ability to appreciate art that just makes her special. As Gilmore Girls fans know, Amy Sherman-Palladino has a habit of making her protagonists the bestest most specialest people in the world, and it can easily become too much.

I like the fact that Midge is a natural savant at stand-up. It makes sense with her having scores of wry observations throughout her life and just needing the right audience and opportunity to unleash them. It fits with the character and the writing and the performance. But now she also has to have an eye for great underappreciated art in the “less important artists” wing that earns her a ticket to hangout and hear life lessons from the notoriously prickly and dismissive “most famous unknown artist in the world”? It verges on too much for me, and the situation itself feels a little stock.

The scene I did like was Susie with her dysfunctional family. They’re a little broad as well, but I like her trying to keep this collection of nuts together in an effort to drum some funds for her budding business. Susie’s sister lending her a car so that they can put together a tour is a lovely gesture, and the glimpse we get into Susie’s much-spoken-of but never-before-seen family life pulls you in. The sentiment of one member of the family deserving a “win” and some commiseration between the sisters are both welcome.

God help me, I felt for Joel here. I’ll continue to say that I don’t love the character and frankly I think the show should move on from him. But there’s something to the idea of him acknowledging that he made a mistake in the prelude to the Day of Atonement and wishing to be forgiven for it. To be honest, I don’t think we’ve ever gotten a clear view of the character, and I still don’t think I fully understand his inner life, but the guy trying earnestly to make good is sympathetic nonetheless.

For him the anniversary is a sad one, a commemoration of the end of something, but for Susie and Midge, it’s the start of something. Their little moment of celebration together at the end, after Midge impressed a major booker, is a well-earned one, and carries the most sentiment in this thing. You can feel the show reaching for bookends here, right down to Midge and Rose ordering a leg of lamb because “They got the rabbi!”, but again, the episode doesn’t really line up in terms of what it actually achieves relative to its stellar pilot episode.

The showpiece of the episode though, as it so often is in Amy Sherman-Palladino shows, is the family dinner scene, and it’s...OK? There’s a lot of broad shtick going on there. Moishe eats out of his grandson’s cereal box and wants to keep the prize. Ethan himself has stuffed his face with candy bars and declares that Yom Kippur is scary. Shirley is propping up her sleeping mother and passing out pickles. Abe is still giving his son the business over his secret life (and spilling the beans). And Midge is rambling on in an interminable wind-up to her announcement while a group of fasting Jews are waiting for their meal.

But once she makes the announcement, things pick up a bit. The reactions are better than the roll-out. I especially like Rose’s confusion as to why the plumber from the Steiner is Midge’s manager, and Abe’s overacting to try to communicate that he didn’t know about this ahead of time. Moishe’s “tell a joke” response and Shirley not even seeming to understand that Midge wants to be a stand-up is pretty amusing, and Astrid announcing her pregnancy is a really sweet way to close everything out.

I don’t know. Again, it’s not like this episode is bad. But it does feel off somehow, not quite calibrated to the profound message Sherman-Palladino seems to want to send, or with the full-circle, “how far we’ve come” energy that she seems to be invoking with the “It’s been a year since this all started” premise.