I like to think that TV, as a medium, has come a long way from what it was about a decade ago, where network TV was still dominant. Now we love that TV is every little bit as good as movies, there are real stories, characters that act like real people (as opposed to characters that act like tv characters), and you wouldn't find it hard to believe that what you're watching is real or could be real (unless the separation from reality is intentional).
Obviously, network TV is still around and despite their best efforts to keep up with the times, this type of content is still being made there, but rarely elsewhere. Plus, the entrance of Netflix and other streaming platforms, including *Mrs Maisel*'s Amazon, has pushed the needle on this front, to the extent that you'd find it hard to believe that a show could be made, netowrk-style, somewhere that is not network TV.
Enter **The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel**, a show that is set 1958 but could've been litterally on air in 1958 and it would fit right in, a show so network TV it's hard to believe that it's on Amazon.
It's not a bad show, per se, it's not doing anything new, really. Amy Sherman Palladino is just doing a period Gilmore Girls with one chick in the lead instead of two. You know, too much dialogue, walk and talk to give the illusion of something is happening when it's not really, and everyone is a cartoonish version of what they're supposed to be (e.g. overly jewish parents), and everything is rosy and nothing is grim about the world that the characters live in.
It's all fine, maybe you like this kind of stuff (which is okay), but I always felt like we have left this stuff behind to real stories with real people with real problems that might not go away magically just like that, which is not the case here, you can always count on the fact that the eponymous Mrs. Maisel would come out on top in almost every episode, which -- frankly -- starts to get annoying real quick.
It's a good show, maybe in 2005. Right now? it's just another brick in the wall.
@redouaaane if you want real people, real problems and real stories; I would suggest you to turn off your TV and step out of your house and start taking walks around your city, meet and talk to people (real ones) about their life, their desires, their problems. Go to the source.<br />
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Don’t forget, TV any kind of TV is Entertaiment Business. It’s not very wise to let TV shape your idea of how the real live, because everything in it is just a product of fiction.
@abetancort really, man? I can just wak out of my house to '50s New York and talk to upper middle class jewish folks about how they lived their lives? Brilliant!<br />
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And I get to meet Lenny Bruce too? Oh, man! This is dope!<br />
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Way to miss the point, buddy. TV as a medium has evolved beyond what **Mrs. Maisel** has to offer, although this doesn't necessarily mean the viewers evolved with it too. Which is why this show exists and is loved by many, many people who aren't me, which is a good thing.<br />
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I never said it's a bad show, it's just so _Passé_.
@redouaaane That’s why, you have to take it for what it is fictional portrayal, full of stereotypes, of New York‘s upper middle class jewish families of '50s. Like shows about set in the present time are still a fictional portrayal full of stereotypes. <br />
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Take them for their face value, entertainment, you either like the story, setting, acting, photography or whatever or not. But neither, shows set in past or present, are “real”. <br />
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Nothing to be surprised anyways, when even most of today’s tv news programs don’t actually care about facts, they’re in the entertainment and not in the News business.
@abetancort Sir, I invite you to watch shows like The Wire, The Sopranos, Six Feet Under and Rectify, you'll find that there's nothing stereotypical about them. Only bad writers write in stereotypes, it's lazy, unoriginal, and very boring.<br />
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I know that **Mrs. Maisel** aims only to entertain, it's not a bad thing to aim for, but entertaining is the bare minimum you expect from a TV show, which makes it a low bar to aim for. You can entertain and have a story/characters grounded in reality, and the more real it is, the more I'm likely to relate to it.<br />
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I repeat, I'm not against the show, I'm only against it in these times of #PeakTV.
@redouaaane I have watched the Sopranos and Six Feet Under, The Wire is in the queue and I didn’t knew about Rectify and in each of the first two there are as many stereotypes as you can expect in any work of fiction, there are many episodes that shouldn’t have made the cut as there are master pieces. <br />
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It’s unfair to compare anything to the Sopranos, probably the best tv series ever, and also to a masterpiece as Six Feet Under. The charm of **Mrs. Maisel** comes from the fact that it doesn’t aim to develop a “realistic” fictional portrayal of life but the simplistic fictional portrayal of life that in the late 50s was the common wisdom, was what society expected your live ought to be. Is it mocking about that era?
@abetancort <br />
My good sir, I did not compare **Mrs. Maisel** with any of the aforementioned shows, I was merely presenting them as examples of non-stereotypical shows, and so I disagree with you labeling them as stereotypical, but going into that argument shall take us on a longer discussion than I would like, and so I shall not say any more on that front.<br />
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I'm not sure if my rating does appear on my review, I have given **Mrs. Maisel** a rating of 7, which does at least indicate that I do appreciate what the show did, whilst my review/rant was more about what the show didn't do. It would be a lie to say the show gave me the experience of the life in '50s New York in a jewish family, but rather a stereotypical experience of a stereotypical housewife and her steretypical jewish family in stereotypical '50s New York, there is a big difference.<br />
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Stereotypes aren't necessarily bad, a writer writes stereotypes even without intending to do so, but if you're writing a formulaic show that is mainly comprised of stereotypes, I think that warrants a different kind of discussion.<br />
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To sum up what I'm trying to say: **The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel** is basically **Gilmore Girls** in a period garb. GG was good, but doing the same show with a different shtick is hardly progress.<br />
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I remember a saying that goes something like "When the steamroller of progress rolls in, if you're not on the steamroller, you're part of the road".
@redouaaane "I repeat, I'm not against the show, I'm only against it in these times of #PeakTV." <br />
Why are you against the show? it's not like the show is polluting airtime and squeezing out something better? People are choosing what they want to watch and when they watch it. <br />
There are multiple types of enjoyment one can find in watching TV shows or movies, and even though you're arguing that this show has no value other than pure entertainment (which I disagree with) , why should that be a bad thing? Sometimes I don't want to watch something that will make me think about real world problems. Sometimes I just want to relax with something more simple and lighthearted. <br />
I joked that this is the perfect companion to The Handmaid's Tale, since both shows are approaching feminism from totally different angles.
@chronosus _The Handmaid's Tale_ is torture porn, _Maisel_ is stereotype porn... well, at least _Handmaid_ is trying to say something (although, not doing a very good job of it as of late), which gives it value. _Maisel_ has no value, and serves no purpose beyond passing the time. I don't see it as feminist, at least not any way that's significant. One of the many things that feminism fights is stereotypes, while _Maisel_ embraces them.<br />
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It's a rant, you don't have to agree, I shouldn't have put this rant on here because what I wrote goes beyond _Maisel_, but I'm gonna leave it up here for those of us who are still looking to watch things of value in these times of neverending content.
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