“The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel” is back for a second season that’s just as captivating, whimsical, and, yes, marvelous as the first. But this season is also something more. It’s honest. Scrape off the gilding of frosting and fondant, and you’ll find something a bit more hearty than cake. Think more along the lines of Midge’s brisket — savory, but with plenty to chew on.
While season one sketches the contours of housewife-turned-comic Miriam “Midge” Maisel’s double life, season two leans into the tensions of her identity crisis with greater force and narrative realism. Midge (Emmy winner Rachel Brosnahan) finds herself pulled between two very different worlds, straddling that imaginary demarcation between uptown and downtown life. On top of all that, she paces back and forth between two distinct ideals: Will she embody the kind of domestic perfection her mother has always demanded, or will she embrace the emergent feminist independence she has uncovered on stage?
I myself grew up with a pretty marvelous mother. To my knowledge, she never slunk off in the night to perform at seedy comedy clubs. But, similar to Midge, she did grow up a Jew on the Upper West Side, raised by a mother who lovingly, but firmly, admonished that women must “suffer for beauty.” She, too, has a successful, demanding career and has always expected the same of me.
But just as slouching was never tolerated in my home, neither was delusion. My mother is the sort of feminist who’ll look you in the eye and laugh in your face if you tell her that women in our generation are going to have it all. Long before Michelle Obama got real about the shortcomings of Lean In-style feminism, my mother taught me that the idea that women can do it all, and well, is a schoolgirl’s daydream. Women, even the marvelous ones, are human.
The great strength of this season is watching Midge grapple with that reality. In the span of 10 episodes, she acts as mother, daughter, lover, employee, performer, and friend. Her inability to be all these things simultaneously, but still trying, creates small, simmering rifts with the people she cares about.
As with the first season, motherhood takes a back seat to comedy; Midge is often unaware or unconcerned with who is watching her children.
This season, friendship is likewise sidelined, as when Midge throws a baby shower for her heavily pregnant best friend, only to miss it entirely because she’s on the road touring. She neglects her responsibilities as a daughter, the most obvious example being when, by happenstance, her father discovers her hitherto-secret comedy career. After spying him in the audience during a particularly blue set, a visibly flustered Midge reacts by joking about intimate details of his and her mother’s sex life.
In the season’s finale, she jumps at the chance to go on a monthslong international tour; it’s only later she realizes this means abandoning her planned engagement to Benjamin (Zachary Levi); she then sleeps with her estranged husband in an attempt to find solace. Season two continually presents Midge with hard choices, each requiring her to sacrifice certain roles and responsibilities in favor of another. Marvelous she may be, but chasing dreams still comes at a price.
Season two also makes a point to showcase the price of comedy itself. While today, we may look back and imagine some halcyon day of comedy yore, when liberals actually supported comedians’ right to be offensive, “Mrs. Maisel” presents a more turbulent landscape of social and legal consequences. After one of his shows, seasoned comedian Lenny Bruce (Luke Kirby) tells Midge he’s once again “out on bail.” In a later episode, he bemoans his inability to travel to Chicago, the latest city to issue a warrant for his arrest because of jokes he told.
Midge runs into problems of her own when she is pulled off stage for daring to talk about something related to pregnancy. And as payback for her polemic against a well-known comedian, Midge’s manager and reluctant friend, Susie Myserson (Alex Borstein), is hounded by goons looking to rough her up.
The honest second season of “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel” dares to tell a realistic, complex, and sometimes distressing tale, aided by an incredible cast, impressive array of costumes, and constant supply of witty repartee. If a spoonful of sugar makes the medicine go down, showrunner Amy Sherman-Palladino and her husband and writing partner Dan Palladino use every bit of the show’s considerable charm to hit home the ever-important, oft-unwelcome message of this season that you can’t have it all. But it’s hilarious to watch Midge try.
Daniella Greenbaum Davis is a writer living in New York.
