My wife and I have great enjoyed all the seasons of Mrs Maisel, give or take the odd below-par episode, and found Season 5 excellent (apart from the weird 'Susan" episode). In the last before last episode the makers appeared be setting up even more loose ends that would need to be resolved in the final installment, not least how Midge would actually be getting her big break. So we had high hopes for the final, only to be left feeling totally let down.
The section about the Gordon Ford show and how Midge took her big break instead of it being given to her was well-played and very satisfying. But the rest was a godawful mess. First of all, there are all the many loose ends that are not resolved. Why and how exactly did Joel end up in prison? How long did he stay there? Did Midge and he ever get back together? In an interview in early May of this year, actor Michael Zegen says that even he does not know the answer. Midge blows him a kiss on the Gordon Ford show and touches a photograph of them together in the 2005 scene. But what does this mean?
Moreover, what happens to Midge's kids, and her relationship with them? We finally got to hear the backstory of Susie and Hedy, but what's the relationship between Hedy and Gordon Ford? Why does he owe her enough for her to be able to demand that Midge gets on the show? And how could Ford weasel his way out of this? How did Susie get herself out of the hands of the mob? Until the final episode, Shirley and Moise Maisel couldn't take in that Midge did something of any importance on the Gordon Ford show. How could Shirley suddenly be urging Rose to go and see Midge on the show? What was the point of the opening scene with Lenny Bruce? What was the point of the second scene with Lenny Bruce? Why, the moment Midge has finally got her break, go back half a year earlier to Midge and Lenny having lunch? What was the point? I appreciate the makers didn't want to do a stereotypical Hollywood ending, but to not give viewers any moment of gratification at all after five seasons was just willfully obtuse. The list goes on and on. It's very sloppy writing.
The worst was the final section playing in 2005. First of all, while we understood and liked the shift in Midge that came from that phrase "Don't," which then was repeated by Hedy, and which pushed her into no longer being apologetic about her talents and ambitions, her sudden shift right at the end into naked ambition purely for the sake of fame and success, as she expressed towards the end of her four minutes, was out of character. It suddenly made her unlikable. It was another bit messy bit of writing that an audience that has only just been introduced to her would enthusiastically lap this up. Midge's strength and charm always lay in the combination of her wit and intelligence, and her underlying vulnerability. Successful people also remain vulnerable. Yet all that suddenly disappeared.
In the 2005 section it seemed like she was completely alone (and looking far younger than the 74 years old she's supposed to be) Presumably she either never got together with Joel, or he had died, again we have no idea, her parents had presumably passed away, again there was no sign of her kids, or any of the other people that had populated by the series, and so on. In the end there were just Midge and Susie, reduced to being lonely in their own homes, surrounded by servants, and only connecting long-distance. Did the writers want to illustrate the price people pay for major success? Or was it a celebration of major success? The laughter at the end seems to suggest that the writers thought they were serving up a happy ending. Perhaps living alone in the lap of luxury surrounded by servants is what people living in Hollywood see as the epitome of achievement. To the non-Hollywood viewer it comes across as desperately sad. So perhaps it was some kind of comment on the human condition after all? Who knows. It all felt depressing and at odds with the witty, optimistic, playful tone of the rest of the series.
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