TV

No a-Gruyese bargain: "The Wonderful Mrs. Meisel" fell too in love with her own sticks

The colorfulness, the impressive production and the spectacular dresses are still there, but one of the funniest comedies of recent years on TV, forgets at home the plot in the first half of its current season.

In the absence of content, it is repeatedly dragged into its own clichés and also makes them much less successful than before.

Ilan Kaprov

20/02/2022

Sunday, 20 February 2022, 08:57 Updated: 09:06

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Trailer for the fourth season of "The Wonderful Mrs. Meisel" (Amazon Prime Video)

In one of the subplots in the fourth season of "The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel", Midge's father, Abe (Tony Schlaub), begins a new career as a theater critic.

This is a plot detail we were already exposed to in the final episode of the previous season.

The opinionated and stubborn professor from Columbia University who left the pampering conditions of the academy, only to find his destiny in the modest halls of the written word.

Given the new season, it's hard not to wonder what he would have chosen to write the authentic and uncompromising Abe Weissman, about a popular work that falls too much in love with its sticks and forgets everything around.

In fact, he faces this very challenge in the plot itself - but without spoilers.

The way the third season ended more than two years ago, actually promised a lot about the future of one of the most beloved and successful comedies of recent years.

Midge (Rachel Brussenhan) and Susie (Alex Burstein) are abandoned on the runway, after the first insulted in her show at the legendary Apollo Hall the esteemed singer Shay Baldwin, with whom she was to go on a tour around Europe.

Midge is unaware that Susie has burned all of her gambling savings, and Susie is unaware that Midge has used her round contract as a guarantee to purchase her childhood home.

At the same time, as mentioned, both Abe and Rose (Marine Hinkel) are embarking on a new career.

In Rose's case, it's matchmaking.

Joel (Michael Zigan) successfully opens a nightclub and tries to start a new couple episode with Mae (Stephanie Shaw), the tough realtor of the club owners.

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As if packed quickly and sent off.

"The Wonderful Mrs. Meisel" Season 4 (Photo: Amazon Prime Video)

The thing is that even half a season later from all these events (for the sake of criticism four episodes out of the eight have been sent), it is difficult to provide significant updates on the plots.

Simply because there are none.

If other series took advantage of the long corona break to hone and refine their characters and stories, this season of "The Wonderful Mrs. Meisel" - whose two episodes air every Friday on Amazon Prime Plus - looks like it was packed in a flash and sent off.

This is a disadvantage we have already seen occurring in the previous and successful seasons of the series as well: the feeling that she is too in love with her own musicals, beautiful sets, one shot shots of passersby on the crowded Village streets, dresses, hats (so many hats).

This feeling that she is far away at any given moment from cracking a song and dancing.

But then she always knew how to fix, deliver content that would contain the impressive color and the tendency to speak at a speed that looked like x4 on a regular basis.

This time, this part is just forgotten behind.

This ambiguity also touches on the plot lines that the series does bother to promote.

Midge, for example, is naturally in a difficult financial situation to the point of inability to pay the various neighborhood providers.

Her parents work in jobs that earn pennies (a matter the series itself bothers to laugh at, in a joint scene with Midge and Abe on the living room floor), and yet, somehow, nothing in their lives changes.

They still live in a fancy apartment with an attached maid, still drink from expensive bottles, still dine at expensive restaurants, Midge still changes designer dresses at a dizzying pace.

And the hats, so many hats.

And all this, when Midge herself, is forced to degenerate into performances at a strip club after Shay Baldwin's story became public domain.

If survival was supposed to be the theme of the current season, it is hardly reflected in anything.

And that, as they say among the Jews, is a little crazy.

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Her heroes are stuck in place.

"The Wonderful Mrs. Meisel" Season 4 (Photo: Amazon Prime Video)

And when none of the plot lines experience a significant change, the "wonderful Mrs. Meisel" goes addicted to those sticks that made her enjoyable in measured doses, and starts drinking them in bottles.

The Jewishness so present of previous seasons, receives absurd doses in the form of a shouting conversation between the characters on a Ferris wheel (though there is no urgency in it), the extremely fast speech becomes oppressive when all the characters cling to it, and Midge herself stretches her tendency to crack a monologue Get up in any situation to the end - including one held in a detention center.

Even an episode entirely dedicated to the memory of Brian Trentina (who played Susie, Jackie's sidekick, and passed away in 2019), seems full of hot air and has a hard time justifying the great emotion that was seemingly built inside him.

In general, relative to a character who is so confident in her immense talent and twists her nose at others, Mrs. Meisel's performances are far less funny than before.

It was as if the creator, Amy-Sherman Paldino, had the same arrogance of the protagonist, confident that every word that came out of her hands was bursting with laughter.

Even for great comedic writers this difficulty of repeat stand-up performances poses a great challenge of meeting the bar they have set for themselves, but Sherman Paldino's choice to make Midge be the nail of the show even when there is no need for it, also makes it cumbersome.

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Lack of clarity.

"The Wonderful Mrs. Meisel" Season 4 (Photo: Amazon Prime Video)

Half a season in TV series is a significant time for a turnaround, "The Wonderful Mrs. Meisel" also used to make up for weak starts with a successful ending - whether in the Catskills or Shay Baldwin's plot line - as well as other recent successful series (the most notable example being the heirs' amazing ending "For a season that began with a big shuffle).

And while all of these can certainly happen this time as well, something in the balance of "The Wonderful Mrs. Meisel" seems to have been violated.

If in her first three seasons she has exhibited restraint from falling into the cliché of exhausting and empty grace, it seems that this season she has arrived without a real plan to promote her characters.

As if their very presence, combined with stand-up bursts, fast speech and a few words in Yiddish will suffice.

Well, they are not.

Certainly when we already know that next season will be the last of the series, and its protagonists seem stuck in place.

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