Originally Posted by Baby Lee
I can see how Maisel might not be for everyone, but it is exceedingly difficult to argue that it isn't expertly made.
If I were to try to generate what complaints against it would be, it would be that it's twee, busy and talky. But that's Amy Sherman-Palladino's style, and it's a great way to efficiently and movingly tell a story, in the night hands.
It's very 50s, very New York. It's Capra-esque and also quite old-school Howard Hawkes with the rapid-fire dialog of His Girl Friday. If you've seen Gilmore Girls, you are ready for it [GG scripts were notoriously twice as long as most 42 minute dramas]. Sorkin tries to do it on occasion [walk and talks], but rarely as elegantly.
It's decidedly 'white' aspiring Jewish, with a lot of 'privilege' on display. I mean, it's the story of a pampered and sheltered young wife moving back home with mommy and daddy [and servants], who leaves the kids with the help to slink out and try to become a standup comic on the sly. Papa is a professor. Mama is a 50s housewife with the attendant obsession with society standing and wistful dreams of spending her life studying art in Paris.
And the entire thing kind of walks a line between perfectly perfect and too perfect. Period details are visually stunning and engrossing, but all the peripheral characters are there to serve the narrative. It's very 'broadway play' in that way [the butcher, the baker, the beat cop, . . . everyone knows the central characters and interacts with them to propel the story forward. . . Tidy].
But it's also dizzyingly constructed so that you only notice if you are of a mind to gripe. Kind of like you can simply enjoy a musical, or sit and stew wondering 'why are people singing all their dialog?!?!'
Brosnahan is the undisputed center of the show, but all the central characters are well constructed. Tony Shalhoub as her father and Kevin Pollack as her father-in-law are particularly good and get meaty moments aplenty.
And perhaps the best part of the entire show is, Maisel is a comedienne who is actually written FUNNY. She's not the fake stilted funny of the usual dramatization of a comedian, written by a non-standup. Her standup bits hold up against actual standups, whether of that era or even today. By the time you're through the episodes, you believe this is a person who could 'make it' in actual showbiz.
Also, when her family vacationed in the Catskills, there was an outfit that was so jaw-droppingly hot I had to screencap it for posterity. So, if nothing else, it's worth watching for the eye-candy.
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