Is Mrs. Maisel Marvelous?

So I binged-watched the Marvelous Mrs. Maisel.

[did you just come out? -Ed]

No but the Man-Police have ticketed me.

Anyhoo, this is a show about a lot of things:

-a busted marriage
-a husband's character arc
-a daughter's relationship with her parents
-New York in 1958
-Comedy

The Marvelous Mrs Maizel is produced and written by Amy Sherman Palladino of Gilmore Girls fame and much of the dialogue here has the same airy, flighty,  rat-a-tat-tat feel.

Rachel Brosnahan plays Miriam Maizel, a 26 year old housewife who supports and stands by her husband, Joel. Joel is your typical post-war company man but he is also a wanna-be comic. I say wannna-be because he's not very good. Miriam dotingly comes to his shows at the seedy Gaslight Cafe and takes notes and bribes the Gaslight's stage manager, Susie Meyerson, played brilliantly by Alex Borstein.

Miriam is cute, mousy, flighty, sexy and we see early on that she has better comedic timing than her husband.

In the first episode Joel leaves Miriam and goes about ruining his life. When Joel walks out, on a whim Miriam goes down to the Gaslight and does an improvised stream of consciousness bit. Miriam kills it. From there we follow Miriam as she tries to get a comedy career going.

Meyerson likes Miriam and agrees to manage her. She also knows a certain avant-guard NYC comic who makes several cameos. Think REM lyrics, folks....

We loved this show until the end of episode seven. Here Miriam does a bit and kills it once again. But her bit is not really funny, its affirms the crowd's prejudices. The crowd doesn't laugh, they hoot, clap, holler...one hipster douche even snaps her fingers, god help us. That's right, the audience at the Gaslight responds like the trained seals at a Samantha Bee show. Clapter...we hate clapter...

But don't panic, at least not yet. There are severe consequences for that bit and we think/hope that Sherman-Palladino is trying to teach a lesson about simply projecting the audience's likes back on itself. It isn't funny.

In the last episode Miriam goes back to doing actual comedy that draws laughs, not clapter. Though we don't think this material is as funny as her earlier stuff.

Regarding the last episode, frankly, we didn't like we're it ended up. But this flaw is not show killing, merely disappointing.

There are some other great performances here, viewers will love Kevin Pollack as Joel's textile salesman father and Tony Sholoub as Miriam's Columbia professor dad.