3x08 A Jewish Girl Walks Into the Apollo…

[8.0/10] When Midge got her big break with Shy Baldwin at the end of last season, my wife and I thought it was too much too fast. Amy Sherman-Palladino’s shows veer toward wish-fulfillment, and this seemed like a genie had popped out of some B. Altman handbag and granted Midge hers. “But it’s okay!” I said, “So long as the tour sucks for her.” That’s the trade-off for good storytelling. Your characters can get the things they want, even when it’s too soon, but there has to be a cost to it.

But the tour didn’t suck. Sure, Midge took a little bit to find her sea legs after a shaky first performance. She felt a little lonely on the road to the point of making a big mistake with Joel and nearly making one with Lenny. She had to hustle for radio work during Shy’s “exhaustion.” Despite all that, the first leg of the tour was still what you would term a big success for a new comic. It wasn’t always a bed of roses, but it was at least a bed of teddy bears.

And yet, what we get here is far worse than life on the road being tough. As Midge told her mother in one of the episode’s best scenes, Joel blew her life up. Slowly but surely, Midge has been getting it back, finding her footing as a comic, feeling confidence in her craft and ability to climb the ladder. Here, it seems like she’ll complete that journey, using the proceeds from (or, more accurately, borrow on the prospect of) her tour to buy her old apartment back, reinstall her children and her parents on the Upper West Side, and reclaim the existence that was taken from her, while doing it on her own terms.

That’s gone now. It was in her grasp, and it slipped away, for reasons that are the result of her actions, but more of a misunderstanding or, at worst, some recklessness, than something that is her fault. That is tragedy, the sort of tragedy that makes up, at least a bit, for the primrose path Midge has been walking this season.

The Shy situation is the perfect storm. Midge is nervous about having to follow a legend like Moms Mabley, especially as a pale woman performing at the Apollo. Reggie tells her to use her expert riffing skills to talk about Shy, using him as common ground between her and the audience. And Susie isn’t there, because she has to burn down her mother’s house for the insurance money to (partly) cover her gambling losses.

That’s the one part of this episode that really didn’t agree with me. I’m on record as enjoying the flip for Susie between not knowing the rules of craps to yelling at newbies to stay off the table in the Vegas episode. But her having a gambling problem feels like something the episode didn’t explore enough for it to be meaningful. It played the issue for laughs in prior episodes, which makes playing it for drama, amid such escalation that it’ll take a house fire and insurance proceeds to save her, feel unearned.

That said, Alex Borstein does a great job with it. Her aghast look when she hears the news about the fight sells the seriousness of it. Her tears when she gets back to her apartment does it one better. And her coming to Joel for help goes a step beyond that. I suspect that’s the point of all this -- an excuse to keep Joel involved in Midge’s career, or at least set up a bomb to explode later, where Midge thinks she’s cast off the yoke of her ex-husband only to discover that he’s in charge of her money. Whatever the reason, it’s the one part of this that doesn’t click.

And yet, money is soon to be a big issue in the Mrs. Maisel household. The tour ends for Midge when her comments on the Apollo stage make Shy think that she was making fun of his sexuality, maybe even outing him. For the record, I think she was oblivious and just speaking too loosely about someone she thought of as a friend to an audience that she thought was friendly to the man of the hour. As her lack of signal from Shy earlier indicated, she’s not exactly on the level in terms of the code here.

At the same time, you can understand why Shy and Reggie would perceive it that way, knowing what she knows. You can see how it would be embarrassing, and feel particularly like a violation to Shy after he confided in her, trusted her with one of his most dangerous secrets, only to watch her seemingly hint at it to a crowd full of hundreds of people.

It’s not the only dressing down Midge gets here. Benjamin shows up! And he finally has the confrontation that I was practically demanding from the show in the season premiere! We get more Midge’s psychology over the whole thing, which I appreciate. She admits that despite her poise in front of a crowd, she couldn’t bear the stage fright of telling him these things in person. She talks about how the tour would mean they’d be constantly separated. She explains how her personal life candor on stage was something that Joel couldn’t handle, which spooked her on imposing the same thing on him.

But Benjamin rightly retorts that he is not Joel. It’s a fantastic scene for him and for the show. Not only do you have the catharsis of him giving Midge the tongue-lashing she deserves, not only do you have the well-observed comedy of Benjamin declaring that tall people can’t get mad and describing himself as an “angry building,” but you have his measured, totally legitimate responses to Midge.

He’s seen her act and doesn’t have a problem with it. Their reunions would be spectacular. He knew her aspirations when he proposed. She broke his damn heart. And most of all, she never asked. Maybe this thing doesn’t work for the reasons Midge described. Maybe it wouldn’t have made sense. But to not even have the conversation, to not even talk about it, to just blow up somebody else’s life and love without so much as a discussion is arguably cruel. That’s a choice Midge definitely made, and right or wrong, those kinds of choices are always more satisfying when our heroes have to face the consequences of their actions, and the people they may have hurt in the process.

Appropriately enough, Rose has to do the same, when Midge storms home to not only read her mother the riot act over trying to set up Benjamin, but for her general unwillingness to understand or accept Midge’s new career. It’s a great monologue, one that sums up the hardships Midge has had to go through after Joel left her, the new life she’s tried to make for herself, the agency she’s tried to seize in the way that her male suitors get to unquestionably enjoy, and the frustration that her mom won’t cotton to it because it’s not the life Rose wanted for her child. That too is cathartic, and a sign that the show is at least equal opportunity on that front.

Rose returns with the truth of her own -- that she doesn’t accept any of this, except the fact that she knows what it’s like to have your life blown up by a man and want to seize your own agency amid the wreckage. (In fairness, she did help blow up that life by renouncing her trust fund, but that at least fits within the “seizing your agency” part.) It’s a nice sign of how even women with very different ideas about what’s right and what type of life is proper are taking similar approaches with similar goals of using their god-given talents to get their lives back.

For Rose, that’s apparently matchmaking, and it’s just one of the details here that, as in last season’s finale, seems to do more to point a way forward for the next season than put a capstone on this one. After nearly giving up the game, Abe gets an offer to become the Village Voice’s theater critic. Joel’s club opens, and he even gets a very sweet (albeit mildly contrived) benediction from Midge. He reunites with May and accepts his idiocy, which hey, is at least a good first step. This all feels a little slight, but in an extra-long episode with a hell of a lot going on, maybe that’s more forgivable.

The thrust of this episode seems to be an effort to draw a contrast between how much things have changed from the lives the Maisels and the Weissmans thought they’d be living when Midge told Joel she was pregnant, and the very different lives they’re all living now. It starts with Ethan’s school -- the expense, the location, the availability of family -- and how the paper-thin domestic bliss that was supposed to ensure its possibility has been torn to shreds and taped back together in a different shape.

But Midge thinks she can still get there, through his new route, her route. She kills at the Apollo. She’s earned a place on tour. She goes to her father-in-law as a peer with a business proposition not a jilted daughter-in-law looking for a handout. She looks through her old home, welcomed by the doorman, and gazes at what she’s regained through her own pluck and hard work and determination.

Then poof, it’s gone. This new business is a fickle one. Midge was late -- if only in signing her contract. Her goodwill and quick wit are no longer enough to save her; in fact, they’re the things that unwittingly damn her. So much went wrong for Midge at the beginning of the series, and it was uplifting to watch her persevere and find her way despite that. But the way from the first declaration of “I’m Mrs. Maisel” to now has been (deservedly) smoother, to the point that rapid success seems too easy.

Losing it all in an instant because you said the wrong thing at the wrong time in a way you never meant isn’t easy. Coming this close to reestablishing your version of the life you wanted and watching it evaporate isn't easy. Being left on the tarmac by someone you thought was a friend, because he thought you were a friend, isn’t easy. But it’s these sorts of costs that make for better stories, deeper characters, and more piercing truths about the lives we aspire to and make for ourselves, for good and for ill.

There's something kind of brilliant in how a sub-plot of a supporting character's best friend ends up being a mirror for the season itself. Imogene and Archie's turbulence showed the entire arc of Marvelous Mrs. Maisel subverted and reshuffled, giving just the tiniest tease of the finale here.

So many times during this show did I wonder if I was reading too heavily into things: I wondered if Shy was gay when we first met him, I wondered if I was misreading the date with Lenny as imperfect, I wondered if Susie's expansion taking on Sophie would be a mistake, and I was absolutely TERRIFIED when Midge got on stage at the Apollo (like basketball games in Uncut Gems terrified). And every time, a few moments later, I felt like the show had done a bit of a bait and switch on me by showing how things seemed to be working out. But also each time, given a little more time, those initial thoughts--which felt so fleeting in the moment--proved to be proper assumptions. And this is something absolutely stellar about how this show is made. It writes its characters and foreshadowing so well that it would make the audience feel like absolute geniuses for picking up on something that seemed so minute. And (although I'm sure all of you are very bright) in reality what we actually got is just really, really good writing.