I watched S5E1 last night, and I’ll likely watch the rest. That said, I have to ask:
Didn’t this show used to be funny?
First 3 seasons were much better than last season and 1st 3 episodes of this season feel more like season 4. 
I still enjoy it as much as I did in the early seasons. I think Abe is one of the funniest characters on TV right now. His “crisis” in S5E3 had me in stitches. “Torsos!”
I also like how they are going to show just how badly that household messed up those kids who often disappeared for seasons at a time.
I like the flash forwards they’re doing this year, I think that is great.
Abe on the other hand I am very tired of, only exceeded by Joel.
I laughed a ton. YMMV.
I still think Abe is the funniest character on TV. His reaction to getting corrected in the Village Voice had me on the floor laughing.
Joel’s father is hilarious too… the scene where Joel comes to his parents home to find the “extraction team”! LOL!
Joel’s father is funny. Joel is mostly a distraction from the main story and not entertaining.
Joel’s a straight man. Things are mostly supposed to happen to him, and he does that pretty well IMO. I enjoy the nightclub B-plot.
One of the things that is very obvious is that he is just as little involved his kids lives as Midge is. I’m curious as to what happens to him.
That Mei would come back having had an abortion was an easy call, but I was a bit surprised by how quickly they wrote her out of the show.
FWIW I’m also enjoying this season so far.
I haven’t seen the new season yet but I actually got the opposite impression - that he spent more time with them than Midge did. I remember several scenes of them hanging around his office while he worked. It’s one of the reasons I’ve always liked Joel. That, and the fact that he and his father were the only characters in the show (other than Susie) with even occasional flashes of self-awareness.
Whatever anyone thinks of the show, the history of its seasonal release schedule has at least been an interesting procession.
Seasons 1-3 — Netflix-style whole-season-drop-at-once
Season 4 — Two episodes per week
Season 5 — Three episode drop first week, one a week thereafter
It’s as if Amazon is learning something.
Susie can skate!
I’m really enjoying this season so far. The flash forwards in the openings are interesting. And the depiction of a 1960s TV writers’ room, with a lone woman writer’s struggle to be accepted, is intriguing.
Really hoping Susie’s mafia guys get involved with Rose’s matchmakers!
It seemed implied that Frank and Nicky had Benedetta framed for burning down the tea room, but we don’t know for sure.
I was pretty sure that the matchmakers’ cabal was behind the firebombing of the tearoom, so not much framing seemed to have been necessary.
Could be. Benedetta seems pretty sincere when she says framing her for the tea room is bullshit and not going to work, but then Susie assumes that it was indeed the matchmakers who did it. That raises the question of how Frank and Nicky then knew it was them and dropped a dime. If it was them who dropped a dime, of course. They don’t seem like the dime-dropping type. So many unanswered questions. Someone should hire Monk to figure it out, make a crossover episode out of it.
I just figured that they (the matchmakers) hired a firebug, and Frank and Nicky used their unique underworld contacts to investigate on their own and passed the information along to one of their crooked crap buddies.
*crooked cop buddies.
Goddamn autocorrect
Just watched S5E4. How did Susie NOT know that her arrangement with Frank and Nicky was going to last as long as Frank and Nicky wanted it to?
Yeah, I don’t get it either. I thought at some point last season they addressed the fact that Frank and Nicky weren’t just being nice guys with all the favors, but I guess not. They sort of glided along like the show does for a lot longer than was reasonable even in a show that isn’t supposed to be anywhere close to realistic. I hate to say it, but I kind of enjoyed listening to them dress Susie down, threaten her, and I know I wasn’t supposed to. And unfortunately it’s probably all going to get resolved in some to-cool-for-school, smarmy kind of way.
There was a strong current of baffling naivete in this episode, from Susie about Frank and Nicky’s true nature, to Midge about ever being booked on the show.