The fifth and final season of The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel is a strange amalgam of the best things about the series (chiefly, its two leading ladies) and the most annoying (the characters, the uneven pacing) – along with the both interesting and frustrating new addition of copious time jumps throughout episodes. In short, if you’ve stuck with the series thus far, there’s enough here to keep you coming back for more, but if you’ve abandoned ship at any point in the past several seasons, this season doesn’t provide enough of a boost for me to recommend that you jump back in and catch up (although, for reasons I’ll lay out in a bit, catching up might not truly be necessary as the series comes to a close).
In my review of season four, I noted that Maisel had, officially, hit the point of diminishing returns, with the series needing to keep Midge (a still excellent Rachel Brosnahan, who manages to turn the faced-paced dialogue that is the hallmark of the series into an art form) toiling in relative obscurity so that the series didn’t stray too far away from her home base.* Season five allows for a bit of a stretch in terms of Midge’s career aspirations, as we are offered various time jumps throughout the season letting us know just where people ended up 10, 15, 20, and 30 years into the future. But those time jumps are mostly minor diversions from the action in 1961, where Midge has a new full-time job that she (and Susie) hope will be her ticket to the big time. Now, I enjoyed seeing what’s to come for the characters – well, I enjoyed seeing it for Midge and Susie, as they remain the only real reason to watch this series, largely thanks to the chemistry between Brosnahan and Alex Borstein (who, in turn, proves that she is the heart of the series as Susie in this final series, turning in a truly exceptional performance) – but breaking up the surprisingly interesting storyline of Midge’s new job with these time jumps, well, it takes a lot of the momentum away when the series could really use it. It’s an odd choice as well just when the jumps are implemented (there’s an entire episode smack dab in the middle of the season that exists in 1990, but periodically jumps back in time as characters tell stories about the trajectory of Midge and Susie’s professional relationship over the years).
*While the cast is uniformly strong – Tony Shaloub is given a sensational speech late in season five that is certainly going to be his Emmy submission and he’s just wonderful in his delivery of it – the one thing that stood out the most this season is something that many Gilmore Girls (another series from creators Amy Sherman-Palladino and Daniel Palladino) fans discovered upon returning to that series over the pandemic: These characters are absolutely awful people. Like, truly awful. And when Midge is around her parents, former in-laws, or Joel, she’s exceptionally awful. She’s not particularly great away from them, but at least she has moments of introspection and understanding. But with her family? Oof. It makes me wonder just how much Midge might have truly grown and changed had she been able to make it big earlier and get away from them and see the world. Sure, she still would have potentially screwed up her kids by never being around, but she also might have gained some perspective. But alas, we will never know.
Time jumps aside, the real story of The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel is the relationship between Midge and Susie, what a character within the season refers to as a true love story. The series is at its best when the pair are bouncing off one another, getting into tiffs, working through them, and figuring out a way to make it in a man’s world. And with the focus of season five turned much more insular as the season kicks off (seriously, the season premiere is more about shedding excess storylines from seasons’ past than starting to kick off the season properly), Midge and Susie are clearly the focal point. Which is the best aspect of this final go-round.
But aside from some strong character work with our leading ladies, there’s not all that much going on this time around. The supporting characters spend most of the season running in circles, not doing all that much. As I’ve often said, the biggest sign of a well-written show is how its characters manage to grow and change over the course of a series and well, we don’t really get much of that from anyone outside of Midge and Susie – and even they, as we see in some of the flash-forwards, remain stubbornly resistant to admitting errors and healing scars. Now, critics were not provided with the series finale, so I can’t say if some of these criticisms might be tempered upon seeing that final installment, but after eight episodes with very little development amongst the supporting cast of characters I think I can be pretty secure in this assessment. After all, if mountains move in the series finale to provide character development well, that’s also not a sign of great writing, is it?
So, aside from some interesting beats with Midge and Susie (it’s her storyline that I desperately wish we’d gotten more of as the story draws to a close, both because of Borstein’s excellent nuanced performance and because the interesting character development we receive with Susie comes far too late to feel truly earned), the final season of The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel doesn’t hit the highs of its initial promise. The acting remains strong, but the story falters when it should present a sure path to the final moments with these characters. The season provides a host of guest stars – if you’re a fan of past Palladino programs, you’ll see a who’s who of cast members from those series grace the screen – but it still isn’t able to capture the excitement, joy, and fun of the early days of the series.
The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel’s final season premieres on April 14 on Amazon Prime Video. Eight of the season’s nine episodes were provided for review.
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