Why to watch The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel

Amy Sherman-Palladino's The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel (Season 1, starring the great Rachel Brosnahan in the title role - who knew, from what we saw of her in House of Cards that she had such tremendous comic flair? - and perfect sidekick Alex Borstein is a pleasure to watch start to finish, it's many strengths far outweighing a few clunky performances and plot points. In short, the narrative - which will surely carry on for at least another season on Amazon Prime - involves a young mom living in splendour on the upper West Side in NYC in 1958, living too close to her domineering parents, hangs at comedy clubs w/ her husband, a handsome young businessman (set up by his dominating father) who aspires to be a stand-up comic but who does not have the chops. The marriage breaks up (he goes off with his hilariously dimwitted secretary after he embarrassingly flops at an audition) and, strangely, she finds herself drawn into the comic milieu and finds she has smashing talent. But she has to keep this double life a secret not only from humiliated ex but from her socially ambitious parents. For me, the subplots involving the parents of both she (Midge Maisel) and he (Joel Maisel) are way over-acted and cliched, and I was on the verge of giving up on the series in episode 1 - until Brosnahan did her stand-up routine, at which point I realized there were special talents at work here. Not only to we watch Midge/Brosnahan do some great standup (and improv) routines, but through these we watch not only her development as a character but also as a strong, independent woman; the comedy isn't an add-on schtick - as it often was in Seinfeld, for ex., - but it's completely integrated into the plot: her change and growth is part of the arc of her character and of the narrative (in one clever late episode we see her work variants on a punch line until she gets it just right, as measured by audience reaction). From personal experience I can say that Sherman-Palladino gets the aspiring comic scene down right, at least to a degree - though I would say that aspiring comics are generally quite supportive of one another (laughing generously at one another's lines, regardless of quality) and would note that no comic in his right mind would do an entire Bob Newhart sketch on stage and try to pass it off as his own. All told, though, a really good series that's leaving a lot of people waiting for Season 2.