Instead of piling on I’ll relay the fact that I struggled through the first episode too and thought this show wasn’t for me. By the end of the first episode I was coming around and shortly after the first episode I was totally sold.
I confess, I was too quick to judge it properly. Maybe I’ll give it another whirl at some point :)
I think the pushback you’re getting is because you stated your opinion in a voice that felt more absolute than subjective. Which is fine! Lots of us do that (guilty!), and a lot of the time. But when you do that, depending on the thing you’re critiquing with in that voice, and the way a large number of folks feel about it…well, you probably want to don a flame-retardant suit for what ensues. :)
Thank God this show has Susie to express astonishment over the standard two month vacations, household servants, and other parts of most characters lifestyle in this. It grounds the show just enough.
That’s hilarious!
I was skeptical when my wife told me I should watch this show with her, but boy is it smart and funny. Their trip to the Catskills is my version of a living hell.
So the wife and I binge-watched both seasons in the last week. Really liking the show (we both are).
What surprised me about season two though was that they focused more on Abe and Rose and I actually enjoyed that more than I did Midge’s story line. The show could have been centered around them and probably still have been successful (and possibly better?). Shalhoub and Hinkle are fantastic.
The laughs in this show for me are also definitely being generated more by Midges’ parents and in-laws than Midge. Alex Borstein’s character is hilarious as well (loved her on Mad TV).
I guess what I’m saying is Midge is my least favorite part of the show. Rachel Brosnahan is a talented actress, she has shown quite the range between this and her character on House of Cards, so this isn’t a criticism of her performance, she deserved an Emmy. And she holds her own against the other actors on the shoe. But her character is just not all that interesting to me. Hoping they make her more interesting on season 3.
I had a bit of this reaction too, along with the sinking realization that it’s because I’m a lot closer to Abe’s and Rose’s stage of life than I am to Midge’s.
I find her hilarious and enrapturing… just not when she’s on-stage doing stand-up.
That’s a good point, now that I think about it, it’s Stage Midge I don’t enjoy and the problem is there is just too much of her performing. We know she’s a comic, we don’t need to see her entire routine (or most of it, anyway). I still prefer everyone else, but I would like the character/show more without the stage routines.
On another note, Midge wins absentee parent of the year; she is rarely at home with her children.
I mean, leaving a baby in a car and sort of forgetting about it? Or expecting someone else to grab it?
And when we do see her with her son, she isn’t the most affectionate parent, is she?
You ever see Hazel? Family Affair? Consider both the year and her social class. This is not at all unusual.
Yeah, the show’s approach to kids—“What? Oh, they’re… somewhere…”—is interesting. They’re a necessary part of the scenery: “3 by 30” is the life track Midge was on before the train derailed. But they’re quite deliberately sidelined.
Partly it’s a reflection of the period and Midge’s social class. Partly it’s Amy Sherman-Palladino simply not being interested in little kids, or even wanting them in the story at all. So they’re left lying around for the help to attend to, which at least has some comic value.
I’m curious to see if they might feature more prominently, as an issue for Midge at least, in S3.
Her performance when she’s on stage is her best stuff IMO. I will agree the supporting cast is what puts the show over the top. Even Kevin Pollack who plays a totally stereotypical role is still a hoot to watch.
Oh, no doubt, the supporting cast is spectacular. But I much prefer Miriam and Susie’s banter or Miriam and her parents than her stand-up routine. Nevermind that they like to present her act as best when it’s totally extemporized, pouring out of her circumstances at the moment. To me this seems like a false portrayal of stand-up, when a show about what it was really like to be part of the stand-up world at the time as a woman could be really fascinating (and still funny). Absolutely adore the show, but her act is the weakest part for me.
Ftfy5
The show is a fantasy, and a surreal one at that. It is rooted in certain aspect of the times, certainly, but it shouldn’t be viewed as a gritty, realistic portrayal of anything.
Yea I don’t get the “The stand-up routines ain’t real complaint” So what? The whole show is like that. Do complainers believe all the shows conversations with that dialog represent real people of the time talking to each other? This isn’t a history its entertainment first and foremost.
Yeah, yeah. I didn’t mean to say the show was historical or flatly realistic, but I guess I said “really like,” so now you can all take me to task for thinking that any human being could be as quippy as Sherman-Palladino can write. It’s not what I meant.
Look, the show can be stylized and colorful and even surreal (though I’m not sure that’s the word for it) and yet it can–and, at least in some aspect of another, ought to–still portray with truth. So I think the show would be better if the portrayal of stand-up comedy felt more truthful.
The presence of Lenny Bruce seems to me to imply that they want to cast Miriam as a female Bruce. But if you listen to his performances in the show (many of which are straight from his historical act), they’re actually quite different from Miriam’s venting, confessional style. If they’re not trying to set her up as a new Lenny Bruce, and instead trying to cast her as having a style all her own, then they have no excuse for her style not being more entertaining. Somehow Miriam’s delicious wit turns into a penchant for bitching about family and cursing in ways that were bold then and are boring now.
But to be clear, it might be my favorite show on television, so the stand-up doesn’t ruin the rest of the experience, which is so amazing.
For me, it’s a twofold question: does Midge’s act believably work for her audience, and is it interesting or entertaining for us to watch? I buy that it works, because we’re shown Midge building her routine—putting together her inital “tight ten minutes,” trying out new material, etc.—and I’m willing to accept that it pays off and her audience likes it.
The show is so highly stylized—sets, costumes, dialogue, they’re all impossibly vivid—that it’s actually limited in terms of Midge’s act. An authentic, correspondingly vivid stand-up comedy routine would be an impossibly tall order. So the representation of her act is made in service to the story. We mainly see the specific bits that reflect and flesh out Midge’s character and experience. And as long as it does that job, I find the “taking risks and processing life onstage” schtick doesn’t actually need to be insanely funny.
It would be better if her material and performance were stronger, sure, but it doesn’t bother me much that it isn’t.