The Marvelous Mrs Maisel and the Choices We Make
*Spoilers for Seasons 1 and 2 of the Marvelous Mrs. Maisel.
I, like many others, binged the second season of The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel pretty much as soon as it came out. And there are many things one could talk about with the show, regarding the plot, the characters, the portrayal of Jewish-American culture, and treatment of class and race (or lack thereof). The clothes alone deserve an article. But rather than discuss any of that - even though I really love the clothes – I want to talk about what I saw as the core theme of the second season, the consequences that come from the choices we make.
One criticism of the titular Mrs. Maisel, aka Midge, I ran across was that everything was a bit too easy for her - one person referred to it as Rory Gilmore Syndrome. She got a job quickly, was told she was brilliant at comedy over and over again and all her problems seemed to be resolved quickly and favorably for her. That there weren’t enough trade-offs, aka consequences for the choices she makes.
Well, Season 2 might be just as full of fluffy, 50s goodness, but it is all about her choices and their consequences, from the very first scene to the very last one.
I had to include a picture of this dress
At the end of season one, it looks like Midge and Joel are going to get back together when Joel’s girlfriend/mistress finds Midge at the department store where she works and makes a huge scene, finally screaming for the entire store to hear that Midge is a tramp. Moving forward to the very first scene in Season 2 we see that as a result of this, Midge was demoted to working in the basement as a phone operator. Consequences.
The kerfuffle in Season 1 with Sophie Lennon (played to perfection by Jane Lynch), despite having been seemingly circumvented at the end of that season, continues to play out, on and off, in Season 2. Midge, regardless of her marvelousness, didn’t conquer her problems from the first season, those consequences were merely delayed.
Beyond the plot bumps, though, this season focuses on the personal cost of being a comedian, what this career path will cost Midge if she pursues it. And as the show makes it clear, it does and will cost her a lot.
We find out at the very end of the first episode that the reason Midge and Joel don’t get back together after Season 1 is not because they don’t love each other, and not even because he doesn’t support her decision to become a comedian - he supports her throughout the season – but because he doesn’t want to be a punchline. Midge’s comedy comes from her life and he doesn’t want to be fodder for her jokes. Which, honestly, is fair. I probably wouldn’t want that either.
This theme comes from an artist in the seventh episode, who talked about pouring his entire self into a piece until there was nothing left. It’s repeated in the eighth episode both when Midge misses her BFF’s baby shower because she was on a tour instead and when she’s worried that her children have forgotten her because she hasn’t seen them in an admittedly short while. And it is hammered home in the final episode of the series.
At the start of the finale, Midge is about to become engaged to a lovely man who not only supports her comedy aspirations, but is also an attractive doctor. Then – in the most TV way possible - she gets the opportunity to go on a six-month tour as an opening act for a famous musician. And she says yes, even before the musician finishes asking the question. He even asks if she needs to, presumably, think about it and she cuts him off with a “No.” This is a woman with a day job, two kids, and a potential fiancé but in that moment of choice none of them matter as much as her burgeoning career as a comic. Nor does that fact even occur to her until her father gives his permission for her to marry the nice doctor. And the look on her face, the shock and dismay that she’d literally forgotten about that, explain the certain end of that romantic relationship.
But if you, the viewer, hadn’t picked up on that theme yet (Amy Sherman-Palladino isn’t known for subtlety), there was the sad-rather-than-funny Lenny Bruce routine at the end of the finale where he literally sings that he’ll be “all alone.” Famous but all alone, and not in an ironically funny Spamalot kind of way. Midge finally realizes that the path she’s chosen, the path she wants, will cost her dearly. It will leave her not the adored and perfect upper-middle class wife, or the impressively functional in-between person she has happily inhabited in much of the show, but a single person, doing her own thing but without the people, relationships, and even, potentially, the social structures on which she has relied. Her choice, but her cost.
The famous saying is that when God closes a door, he opens a window. But what that saying ignores is that, for every doorway you go through, a different one slams shut. The very act of choosing cuts off other options in life, that’s why it’s called choice. Season 2 of The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel is all about the titular character coping with that reality. Going through one door doesn’t mean all other ones will still be there and open. It means others will close, sometimes before you realize it. And at the end, she accepts that, she accepts that touring mean leaving her family for months at a time, likely no marriage to the nice doctor, and a future of being alone. And the Marvelous Mrs. Maisel consciously decides it’s worth it.
