"The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel," in its fifth and final season (oy gevalt!), is proof that even for a clever idea, like Mrs. Adler's Gefilte fish, there is no such thing as an unlimited shelf-life. What began six years ago as a nostalgic trip to the halcyon fifties and a housewife's unlikely rise in stand-up, harking back to those early days of Borscht Belt comedy, has now reverted to type: a potpourri of Jewish jokes as as stale as week-old challah.
Reuniting the team of Brosnahan and Borstein, in their Emmy-winning roles as comic and agent, the series resumes Amy Sherman-Palladino's feminist fantasy that poses a what-if story about a Joan Rivers type and the actual Lenny Bruce, who meet cute (in lockup for indecency, of course) and become fast friends and lovers. Granted, an improbable premise, yet a promising one that delivers at first, but soon goes trite and forced, and so unconvincing as to be less fiction than science fiction.
Rivers was, arguably, a trailblazing performer, like Bruce, but far more mainstream and middle-America acceptable than he (at least in early days). After all, one doesn't become Ed Sullivan's favorite, as Rivers was proud to admit, with off-color humor and an arsenal of f-bombs like that of Pallidino's dream girl. The salty gal from Larchmont in Channel suits and pearls is reimagined here as an upper east-side JAP with children and brisket, who assumes her husband's unsuccessful sideline in stand-up one night in a drunken free-for-all, expletives not deleted. It's a lark with schtick that sets her on a path to moderate success. (Although Rivers is apparently the inspiration, the more likely one would be Jewish actress and screenwriter Gertrude Berg, of the Park Avenue Bergs, who never hung a wash out a window.) With her inveterate cap-wearing sidekick in tow, Mrs. Maisel, as she's billed, sets out on a series of improbable--yet comically hopeful and emancipating--adventures in show biz, in pristine period sets and clothes, the way a fantasist always remembers the past. Her humor doles out slices of life, more indoctrinating than self-effacing like Rivers, and always seems filtered through a contemporary, me-too sensibility, as if to suggest a routine of a comic transported backward in time (hence, science fiction). Unfortunately, the jokes fall flat, as they usually do in movies about stand-up comics (compare "This Is My Life," "Punchline," and "Lenny"), where only the on-screen audience provides laughter, on cue.
Palladino, a cockeyed visionary, and a likely student of screwball comedy, especially its sharp-witted, snappy banter, has taken great pains to make her dialogue swing in true screwball spirit; however, her wisecracking comes off not so much as effortlessly as labored, and more imposed for effect than natural (compare Mark Sandrich, Ernst Lubitsch, Billy Wilder, and Leo McCarey).
After six seasons, tedium has set in like rigor mortise. If you suspend credulity, as the series has done, you might watch just to enjoy the scenery, the mid-century decor and couture (apparently, everyone in the fifties followed the latest trends), as well as the popular tunes on the hit parade. After all, chopped liver ain't chopped liver without some schmaltz.
Reuniting the team of Brosnahan and Borstein, in their Emmy-winning roles as comic and agent, the series resumes Amy Sherman-Palladino's feminist fantasy that poses a what-if story about a Joan Rivers type and the actual Lenny Bruce, who meet cute (in lockup for indecency, of course) and become fast friends and lovers. Granted, an improbable premise, yet a promising one that delivers at first, but soon goes trite and forced, and so unconvincing as to be less fiction than science fiction.
Rivers was, arguably, a trailblazing performer, like Bruce, but far more mainstream and middle-America acceptable than he (at least in early days). After all, one doesn't become Ed Sullivan's favorite, as Rivers was proud to admit, with off-color humor and an arsenal of f-bombs like that of Pallidino's dream girl. The salty gal from Larchmont in Channel suits and pearls is reimagined here as an upper east-side JAP with children and brisket, who assumes her husband's unsuccessful sideline in stand-up one night in a drunken free-for-all, expletives not deleted. It's a lark with schtick that sets her on a path to moderate success. (Although Rivers is apparently the inspiration, the more likely one would be Jewish actress and screenwriter Gertrude Berg, of the Park Avenue Bergs, who never hung a wash out a window.) With her inveterate cap-wearing sidekick in tow, Mrs. Maisel, as she's billed, sets out on a series of improbable--yet comically hopeful and emancipating--adventures in show biz, in pristine period sets and clothes, the way a fantasist always remembers the past. Her humor doles out slices of life, more indoctrinating than self-effacing like Rivers, and always seems filtered through a contemporary, me-too sensibility, as if to suggest a routine of a comic transported backward in time (hence, science fiction). Unfortunately, the jokes fall flat, as they usually do in movies about stand-up comics (compare "This Is My Life," "Punchline," and "Lenny"), where only the on-screen audience provides laughter, on cue.
Palladino, a cockeyed visionary, and a likely student of screwball comedy, especially its sharp-witted, snappy banter, has taken great pains to make her dialogue swing in true screwball spirit; however, her wisecracking comes off not so much as effortlessly as labored, and more imposed for effect than natural (compare Mark Sandrich, Ernst Lubitsch, Billy Wilder, and Leo McCarey).
After six seasons, tedium has set in like rigor mortise. If you suspend credulity, as the series has done, you might watch just to enjoy the scenery, the mid-century decor and couture (apparently, everyone in the fifties followed the latest trends), as well as the popular tunes on the hit parade. After all, chopped liver ain't chopped liver without some schmaltz.