Less-Than-Marvelous Mrs. Maisel

Show Hole

We don’t watch much television. We like a few nerdy YouTube videos (usually Mark Rober or Dude Perfect), and the occasional lecture or Ted Talk. But other than that, passive entertainment is not something we make a lot of time for. So it’s a real bummer for me when a show I previously enjoyed gets “cut,” for whatever reason.

One week when Adam was traveling I decided to try out a new show. I watched a few episodes of The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel and got hooked. I loved the quirky characters and the production value: the colors, the setting, the music, costumes, the whole package. We watched the season together and were not disappointed. The show was a nice blend of goofy, light-hearted un-realism with a smidge of suspense thrown in. Tony Shaloub is as hilarious as he ever was.

So when I heard about season 2, I was excited to see how the writers and directors would take the show. After a few awards and a decent following, some shows do well and others get too ambitious or try to ride the popularity wave too hard and end up tanking. Bingeable TV is proof that more likes and bigger budgets do not equate with bigger success.

Roll Season 2, Episode 1

Roll Episode 1. . . Immediately I was on guard due to the obviously increased quantity and severity of profanity on the show. The language was a reflection of many ways in which the show seemed to push the edges it was on, and the nostalgic and cuteness of Season 1 vanished. By the time the closing credits rolled, I was left with a particular icky taste in my mouth.

In Season 1, we get to know the colorful contrasts that make main character Midge’s parents so charming. Rose and Abe Weissman balance each other’s neuroses through their daughter’s harrowing life transitions. With loads of funny forbearance and hilarity, they were clearly unified in philosophy, if not execution. However, in a disjointed whirlwind of discontented bitterness that opens season 2, Rose explains to an inattentive Abe that she’s not happy and is leaving. He, engrossed in his newspaper, fails to respond. Although the writers are conveying his habitual inattentiveness to his wife’s words, I expected Abe and Rose to push their twin beds together and make up by the close of the episode. Maybe that is my old fashioned sense of commitment showing there. I felt that while the writers may have been trying to get us to cheer for the characters, they took it too far. Instead of the classic love story of separation, realization, and reconciliation, the focus on self blazed front and center.

The First Lie

The first selfish lie on display was Rose’s. Her “true self” (Parisienne) is displayed as detached from her “real life” (wife, mother, servant “glue” uniting her family) in the face of her own individual desires. Without flinching, she believes her essence to be completely apart in every way (she even literally speaks another language) from her life on the Upper West Side. Abe and Midge go after her in Paris. Her husband’s scoffing and disapproving appeals to “stop this charade” have no effect.

The Second Lie

For Midge Maisel, episode 1 brings her to a sharply defined crossroad: she must choose between a fragile marriage and family and her own constructed fulfillment through the gift of comedy. Yes, she has talent. In Season 1, she clearly serves and loves her husband, which ironically, becomes the way her own success as a comedienne manifests. But instead of pursuing their success together, Season 2 Midge Maisel takes the lie to heart, forsakes her husband and 2 children, and pursues her own career. It feels sexy and edgy, looking into the recent past, and seeing a woman walking with confidence into a world dominated by men. But does this lie truly deliver?

Gaining rapid momentum during the sexual revolution of the 1960’s, Biblical gender roles and the Judeo-Christian idea of marriage as “one man, one woman, for life” has eroded beyond repair in our mainstream culture. American television consistently shouts progressive messages at women through many angles: from subtle caricatures that say “they (men) don’t care, so why bother?” to “we are better off without men,” to the coining of phrases like “toxic masculinity.”

Our culture divides gender while blurring the lines between genders. Why point out the differences if sex is a cultural construct instead of biological fact? Sadly, the caricatures that could be remedied with healthy communication and humility are instead propagated and become a self-fulfilling prophecy. I remember the television shows of my childhood that conveyed these messages: The Cosby Show, Family Ties, Growing Pains. These were the precursor to the momentum increase displayed in Married with Children and The Simpsons.

Lie #3

The portrayal of immature, visionless, oafish men as husbands is a deadly lie. God made men to be productive providers, nourishers and lovers of their wives and children. Instead of husbands loving their wives and wives respecting their husbands (a la Ephesians 5), women are depicted with superior intellect, social skills, and even breadwinning. It’s no wonder my generation and our children are so messed up and confused about gender roles.

There were just too many lies and foibles in the first episode to make me want to come back. The reality is that I occasionally struggle with these very same lies: that my “true, fulfilled self” is somehow detached from my life as a wife and mother; that it would be better to execute a massive upheaval rather than wait out the small changes that come with sanctification; that my promises, vows, and relationships matter less than satisfying my own personal desires for worldly success.

Life is too short to waste on twaddle and poison. I don’t want my own mind or my family’s minds to be infected with these glamorized lies. Because in the end, idols of the heart always promise what they can never deliver: long term and eternally meaningful satisfaction. I am working hard to love my family in accordance with the way God ordained the family. Every time I make a choice to do so, it has brought me closer to my husband and to my God.

So long, less-than-marvelous Mrs. Maisel.