The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel: Doink

November 30, 2017 2:54 AM - Season 1, Episode 5

Midge dives into a new line of work and makes some quirky friends along the way. Susie continues her emphatic quest to keep Midge's career moving forward, but gets hit with a couple setbacks. Both Midge and Joel experience the downsides of their new lifestyles.
posted by A4 (8 comments total)

It's a surprise Wallace Shawn!

I get worried when Joel Maisel is on screen because I don't want them to get back together. At all. Not even as a fake-out before she finds her true calling. But Kevin Pollak is great as Moishe so that makes those scenes worthwhile.
posted by Gary at 11:36 PM on December 14, 2017 [3 favorites]

too much cringing this episode!
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 9:43 PM on December 17, 2017 [2 favorites]

The two hardest things for me to watch on screen are people getting injections and people bombing comedy routines on stage. Any show about standup has got to cover it, but man, that was a rough watch.
posted by subocoyne at 9:58 AM on December 18, 2017 [3 favorites]

The bombings were hard to watch, not because she was bombing, but because she acted so out of character. She's been built up as a smart, quick-witted Bryn Mawr grad, and she gets on stage with index cards she's never seen, and proceeds to read through them fumblingly. She's way smarter than that. Then she is supposed to have though she was great, and blames the audience? I didn't buy it for a second. Her husband's earlier bombing was much more subtly and believably done.

I haven't watched past this episode, so maybe she turns out to have crippling stage fright when not drunk/stoned, which leads to terrible judgement. But that would seem a stretch from everything we've seen of her up til now.

That said, Wallace Shawn was a treat.
posted by jetsetsc at 11:18 AM on December 20, 2017 [4 favorites]

Yeah, that was pretty bizarre to not even read the cards before getting up on stage, but my generous interpretation is that improv comedy came so easily to her that she never had to practice and didn't have any concept of how to come up with a scripted routine, thinking it was just a matter of having a bunch of jokes ready to go. Later she learned that she actually had to workshop and refine her routine at the parties instead of taking shortcuts. It did seem shoehorned, but I can think I see why it might have been important for her to try shortcuts and fail. If only she'd just listen to Susie, jeez.

Wallace Shawn was a treat, and I'm glad he stayed a goofy well-meaning doof instead of just being revealed as a huckster who preyed on new comics. He really thought it was good stuff!
posted by subocoyne at 11:15 AM on December 22, 2017 [2 favorites]

> I haven't watched past this episode, so maybe she turns out to have crippling stage fright when not drunk/stoned, which leads to terrible judgement.

Yeah no, though, because we've seen her on stage when she's not drunk, a couple of times now (if you include the Jane Jacobs rally).
posted by desuetude at 6:56 AM on January 19, 2018

If you've never done stand-up it's hard to imagine how devastating and soul/confidence-crushing bombing it. It's believable to me that she would turn to a ghost writer and lose her groove, and the show goes pretty far to show how busy she was that day so that she didn't have time to read them in advance.
posted by cosmic owl at 3:40 PM on January 25, 2018 [1 favorite]

Every time she bombs it's largely because she's trying to be someone she's not, down to trying on fake names and reading from cue cards. They're trying to show the arc of her accepting who she is and growing into the Marvelous Mrs. Maisel. This was telegraphed in the early episode by Susie who said she needs to find her voice, learn about technique, etc.
posted by iamkimiam at 11:03 AM on March 30, 2020