Unless he appears in the finale (the only episode I haven’t seen yet) … no. I think they may refer to him once, but that’s it. The only real world person who’s a character on the show is Lenny Bruce.
Does a show like this have to get Lenny Bruce’s estate’s permission to use him as a character in the show?
I like the way they developed Joel because they didn’t chicken out and leave him as an inconstant douche. So often the cheater will excuse what they’ve done as “a mistake” and expect everyone will forgive them–and that’s lame. But as season 1 wore on, you get the idea that Midge was a handful all the time, and that maybe he thought he’d prefer his brainless secretary–theirs was a very patriarchal circle of friends, after all, and Joel was definitely not going to be the head of any household inhabited by Midge. Sure enough, he’s sorry right away but he also grows a pair of balls that you suspect weren’t there in ep 1. It’s like he saw every good thing in his life had been given to him, and that made him weak and complacent, and he set out to earn what he had and wanted. I ended up liking him a lot.
And this…
…makes some sense, but there is no doubt Joel and Midge had a meaningful bond that Midge and Benjamin did not have. Could not have, because Midge was too much for him. Doctor Ben was educated, but not really smart. He was familiar with culture, but couldn’t feel it as an artist does. At the end of season 2, Midge was making a huge decision, and she needed someone familiar and strong, and who would understand what she was doing, and why she needed to do it. And who would let her do it without trying to talk her out of it. That’s Joel. Benjamin might understand she wanted something, and permit it to happen. But Joel would grok and bless it.
I don’t think she’s cheating on anyone, I think she’s just doing what she does, which is to be Midge. She’s being true to herself.
Correction: In the episode where Midge’s time slot at the club keeps getting pushed back, and she’s treated rudely and condescendingly by the owner and other comics. One of the disruptions is because Jackie Vernon makes an unannounced visit – he was also a real-world comic of the time period.
Those two things are not mutually exclusive.
Being all-but-engaged to someone and then sleeping with your ex is *definitely *cheating.
Except the all-but-engaged isn’t really something she was seeking. She might eventually at some point have wanted to become engaged-then-married to Benjamin, but at that point she was still in “let’s have fun together” mode, while he was in “OMG finally a woman whose company I actually enjoy let’s get married” mode. She was being supportive of his nerves asking her dad for permission to ask her (:p) more because that behavior was ingrained so long as the guy wasn’t run-away-repelling, not so much because of personal enthusiasm.
I get the impression that a lot of them are a lot more patriarchal on the surface than inside. Many fall somewhere between “I make every decision (except those on stuff I don’t care about, which actually happens to be most daily stuff)” and “I make all important decisions, but there haven’t been any important ones since I got married”. I know quite a few rl couples where the husband lows “Iiiiii’m a buuuuuuulll! Iiiiiii’m the moooooost machoooooo!” while his quietly-smiling wife drives him like a toy car. But of course, to someone who doesn’t understand what those wives are doing, it absolutely looks like Mr. Bull is in charge.
Well, they’re still married, so… I can agree she’s treading a grey area that I’m not entirely comfortable with. In the storm of marital chaos Joel is getting his fill of unsatisfying bimbos, but he wants real Midge (not the “perfect Midge” he left), Midge is entertaining the possibility of Dr. Right who just isn’t right; but she wants her children’s father and the guy who will actively stand for her. And Dr. Right is ultimately meddling in an unresolved marriage–if he gets burned it his own fault. I’d hate to be involved in that mess, but nobody is being deceived. As a story I think it’s important to remember ep 1 where Midge goes to great lengths to rock the mother/wife/daughter role she finds herself in. All self-sacrifice for the privilege it gets her. Until one day she gets cheated out of the life because someone else wants out. Life smacks her and tells her she can’t expect anyone else to put her happiness first, she’s got to take care of number one. She can come back to Joel if that’s what she thinks she wants, but self-preservation makes her do it on her own terms.
Which is a thread at every level of the show. You only get your way as long as everyone lets you.
from someone working in academia, the “take the sabbatical, Abe” line is spot-on…
She a fictional character so I’m not going to get all that spun up, but she’s cheating pure and simple. In 1959, if a guy is lobbying a woman’s father for permission to marry him, with her approval and support, than he has every expectation that she wasn’t sleeping with her soon to be ex-husband. Now that I type that, I think that same expectation would exist in 2019.
And as I stated up thread, if the sexes were reversed, the male Maisel character would be getting killed here. But the pretty, fun female Maisel is getting a pass.
this is 90 percent of every marriage ive ever seen unless the wife has proclaimed charge of everything …….
ive never seen the show but it seems to have a pre feminist bent of " om got going to wait for people to let me do anything im going to do it like it or not without permission from anyone
erm im not
Sort of. A bit more like, “I performed the duties of my various stations as daughter, wife, and mother and got shafted anyway. So since The System doesn’t shield me despite doing my part, I’m going to do what I want and everyone else can adjust to me for a change.” More eloquently put, but that’s kind of it. More humanist than feminist though, I’d say. It’s just that in that era, any woman making her own way would be noteworthy. It’s not really a Girlpower show, although there’s some of that.
fGetting back to Jane Lynch’s character: She seems to be equal parts Totie Fields and Phyllis Diller, with a little bit of Elsa Lanchester thrown in. Elsa Lanchester, famous as a Music Hall entertainer and as the Bride of Frankenstein, was mentioned in Tony Hendra’s Going Too Far as a really hacky comedienne. She would end her sets with “a moment of silence for the boys who died at Dunkirk,” which endeared her to a really specific generation of London pub habitues, and the lifelong enmity of anyone who had to come onstage after her. Yeah, she was a different decade and country, but I think she was part of the composite.
There is also a lot of Minnie Pearl in the character. Born Sarah Colley, the youngest daughter of well-off parents, she was a college graduate where she studied to be a serious actress.
I’m finally watching this (just finished the first season) and there are other terms that seem anachronistic - “perp walk” is another one that I recall.
Everyone in the family loves the show — nonetheless, we do make a habit of calling out verbal anachronisms when they appear. There are usually 3 or 4 per episode.
I don’t see the problem with “fat suit,” though. It’s the name of a piece of theatrical equipment, and given that the fat suit has probably been around for 100 years or more, I don’t see any reason why the term “fat suit” would be any newer.
Here’s my take on the season 2 ending: Midge got the offer to tour with what’s-his-name and went off on a tear — calling Susie, making plans, figuring logistics, shopping — for what must have been several hours or more. Then came the conversation with her father.
“I’ve made a decision”
“About what?”
“About you marrying Benjamin.”
And at that moment, she realized that she hadn’t thought about Benjamin once in that entire time. Which made her realize that he — or any man — would never be as important a part of her life as her career is.
It’s not that she made a conscious decision to place career above marriage; it’s that she stopped to realize what her unconscious thoughts and actions were telling her about herself.
And as to whether spending the night with Joel was cheating on Benjamin or not, I’d say that the question is academic because she’d already decided, kneeling on the floor of the closet, to break off the proto-engagement. (Yes, I realize she probably hadn’t told Benjamin that yet. So maybe the question is technical one rather than an academic one.)
And as much as I loathe Joel (by which I mean I groan every time he appears on the screen and sincerely hope he’ll be written out come season 3), I totally understand why she did what she did. She was terrified — of being away from home for the next six months, of going to new places and doing new things without the support of friends and family, of maybe achieving a level of success she’d only dreamed of before, of being single for the rest of her life … and keep in mind that all of this had come about in the past few hours — she was terrified and needed comforting for a little while. And even if she doesn’t want to be married to Joel any more (she doesn’t), and even if she doesn’t love Joel any more (she does), he is the only person with whom she has had a relationship long enough and close enough that he could provide comfort.
I assume you realize that you linked to the video of the Tonight Show appearance that was recreated in the season 2 finale.
So Sherman-Palladino took a sixty-year-old Lenny Bruce routine and turned it into the impetus for a major turning point for her lead character. Freakin’ brilliant!
As long as I’m spewing here (Sorry — I only just found this thread today): It took us a while to get the office/dining room thing as well. We finally figured out that Abe’s office is what was intended to be the dining room, and the dining table is set up in what is basically an area between the foyer and the living room. When Rose got mad at Abe (I forget why), she made him give up his office so she could have her dining room back, and he had to move all his furniture/books/etc. into the area where the dining table had been.