It takes a lot for a show to make me laugh. I love comedies but I very rarely laugh out loud to them. From the endless sitcoms and comedy shows I have watched, the Marvelous Mrs Maisel is one of the only shows that regularly makes me laugh, which is saying a lot!
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The Marvelous Mrs Maisel was pushed so heavily by Amazon Prime that pretty much every Youtube video for a solid month had the trailer play as an ad, eventually forcing me to watch the show. Three years later and its third season has just premiered, and it is just as good as any of the previous two seasons, if not more jam-packed full of laughs and vibrant characters in its ridiculously fast-paced dialogue. Of course, it should be expected that the show makes the audience laugh, as it is literally about a comedian and features several of her stand-up skits. However, these aren’t the only parts of the script that get a laugh, almost every punch-line is pure genius.Â
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A lot of the comedy is supported by the supporting characters around Miriam, something which executive producer Amy Sherman-Palladino has excelled at in her previous works such as Gilmore Girls (as we all know the supporting characters are way better than Lorelai and Rory). Sherman-Palladino has a remarkable way of showing how unfair and messy life can be by putting her main characters through endless difficulties and challenges, something which is annoying to watch but allows for a more realistic appearance of the characters. The only real difference in the Marvelous Mrs Maisel in comparison to her other shows is that every character (apart from Joel) is so well fleshed out and allowed to progress that it almost builds on the mistakes that Sherman-Palladino made on her older projects. Instead of feeling angry at the main characters’ mistakes you understand where they went wrong, something which she had introduced in Gilmore Girls but has now mastered.
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Not to be the one to bring up feminism, but this show is oozing powerful woman. Set in the 1950/60s, women weren’t even able to get their own credit card. Yet, there’s Miriam and her manager Susie doing their own thing and making their own money doing what they love (which is a career in stand-up comedy, a male-dominated sphere) despite what judgement is thrown at them. The powerful and self-driven focus that Miriam has soon, inspires other female characters – by the end of the third season there’s a real sense that the women in the show are learning how to fight for themselves.
However, a part of me finds it difficult to accept the success of Miriam being from the ground up, as she couldn’t be more privileged. The sheer shock on her face when she faces any block in the road to success often causes me to roll my eyes, an issue which also annoyed me in Gilmore Girls. If you break either show down to its core, it is essentially privileged women who are slightly less privileged than their counterparts, which I find difficult to ignore in some moments. Specifically, the end of the new season couldn’t have ended worse for Miriam after she basically outed Shy Baldwin (who she was the opening act for) as being gay in front of thousands of people. I don’t think this was intentional, but after being fired from the tour she doesn’t exactly take responsibility for her act, but instead blames Baldwin’s manager for telling her what to say (which he didn’t). Similar issues appeared in Gilmore Girls in storylines such as Lorelai running away to avoid marrying Max and Rory getting with Dean whilst he was still married. They all reflect the same obnoxious and ignorant traits that Miriam seems to show hints of, however, they were continuous in Gilmore Girls and the characters seemed to never learn from their mistakes, whereas Miriam often adapts herself to overcome new challenges.
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If you love a show based on strong women, you will love The Marvelous Mrs Maisel. Despite its faults, the overall watching experience created by the mise-en-scene (thank you to my first-year film course for that term) is almost hypnotising at some points. The soundtrack and sets are so era-specific that it almost feels nostalgic to those of us who weren’t hopping around department stores in New York City in the 1950s. Whenever I see 1950s fashion or homeware I now automatically think of this show, showing just how powerful the 1950s aesthetic is. There is a reason this show continuously sweeps the Emmy Awards every year, it’s a true masterpiece and a must-watch for anyone who likes television.