After a treacly, uneven third season, The Marvelous Mrs Maisel (Amazon Prime) appears to have found its fangs again. “Revenge … I crave it. I am completely consumed by the need for it,” purrs Midge/Miriam (nobody seems to call her Midge any more), rediscovering her sharp edges, now back on a small stage in a dingy nightclub, with an act that is heavy on the F-word. This show is never better than when Miriam is having to fight tooth and nail for her spot in the limelight, and it is a welcome relief to see her having to do it again. “That’s life. Shit happens,” she declares, ending the routine on a surprisingly acerbic note.
I say surprising because, while the first two seasons were a lot of fun, Mrs Maisel found herself in a rut during the third, which paired huge set pieces with a meandering plot and episodes that felt far longer than they were. Season three all-but guaranteed that Miriam was going to make it big, until her seemingly certain path to stardom and home ownership hit not so much a road block as a solid brick wall, when she accidentally(ish) outed the biggest star in the world to his adoring audience. It appears that few picked up on the Judy Garland references that felt a little ahead of their time, but it was enough to get her fired from her fame-making tour, and bring her back to where it all started.
This down-in-the-dirt, underdog position suits Mrs Maisel far more than the big-bucks razzle-dazzle of a dance troupe performing on a huge stage for a massive audience of soldiers, for example. We pick up precisely where we left off, with Miriam on the runway, pleading for her job back, and Susie – whose financial entanglements make losing the opportunity of a lifetime one of the least stressful parts of the episode – lamenting the fact that she left her client alone for four hours, “and you blow your career and buy an apartment”.
The stakes are relatively low in this world, though, even when it comes to outing closeted superstars, or insurance fraud and theft on a grand scale. The resolutions come quickly and neatly. This is partly why I find it hard to love this series, despite frequently admiring it. While the balance between domesticity and ambition is part of its fabric – this is a female stand-up comedian with two children in 1960, after all – it is tricky to muster up the same amount of enthusiasm for a sequence about how Miriam will balance her various store credits and what happens when the milk delivery fails to turn up, as it is for a fearsome standup set that showcases the best of Rachel Brosnahan’s magnificent, mesmerising performance. Here, Brosnahan makes light work of a woman reduced once again to the lowly status of “girl comic”, albeit a girl comic who has made more enemies than she realises.
That said, the zip and bounce really are back, whether that’s Susie and Joel having a characteristically quick and fiery conversation about money, or Susie and Miriam drunkenly bitching about mediocre male comics who make a living from punchlines that are visible from a mile away. The smoother edges have been roughed up, scoured away, and there’s an intriguing conflict emerging between the importance of financial security and the pursuit of art and satisfaction. This time, Amazon is releasing two episodes per week, rather than the whole season at once, and for a show that can be rich, it proves to be a clever act of moderation.
