“The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel” was an excellent show in its first three seasons. It follows the story of Miriam “Midge” Maisel (Rachel Brosnahan), an aspiring comedian and her struggles to make it in comedy in 1950s America. However, episode five of the current season is the worst and most transformative episode in the entire series. In the span of an hour, the entire show was ruined for me and many other queer viewers.
Season three featured Midge’s growing popularity as a comic. She met Shy Baldwin (Leroy McClain), a famous Black singer, who offered her a job as an opening act on his worldwide tour, and she took that opportunity in a heartbeat. It was her big break. Throughout the tour, Shy and Midge grew closer; in episode six, Midge found Shy hiding and injured from a lover, who he admitted to be a man. After Shy confided in her, he insisted that she could not tell anyone. Midge is shocked, but reacts well for a straight white woman in the 50s.
Midge noticeably grew more prideful and immature over the course of this season. Whether it was her undermining other characters, or acting as though her comedy was infallible, she slowly became less sympathetic. This was easy to brush off due to the stresses she faced during the tour. But this all culminated in an atrocious act Midge committed in the season finale. To an entirely booked crowd in the Apollo (a famous venue for Black performers and audiences), she outed Shy.
This utter betrayal resulted in her getting kicked off Shy’s tour. The shot of her standing stunned on the tarmac as Shy’s plane took off in front of her marked the lowest point in her character arc. At least, that is how it seemed. Season four opens with Midge essentially having a tantrum—-childish, yes, but had she come to her senses and taken responsibility, it would’ve been an understandable breakdown. However, as the season continues, she does not reflect on her actions nor improve in any way. Instead she decides to become even worse.
In the most heinous scene of this episode, Midge corners and confronts Shy in a bathroom in order to resolve what the director of “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel,” Amy Sherman-Palladino (ASP), attempts to portray as a deep-set guilt. Instead, this scene is one of manipulation, condescension and victim blaming.
Midge’s actions are unforgivable. Her audacity to act as though her losing an opportunity was in any way comparable to the amount of emotional turmoil and potentially life-threatening damage she did to Shy is disgusting. Her entitled justifications were even worse: “I was desperate for that laugh. I was desperate to just go out there and kill. And I did kill, which was my job. But I never would have hurt you.” There is no alternate way to interpret her words, and her tacked-on claim at the end comes off as cheap. She already hurt him, caused irreparable harm, but still expects to be forgiven. And this obsessive need for an apology is the crux of the issue: She genuinely believes that she deserves to be apologized to.
Throughout the scene, she states that she thought they were friends and that Shy should have let her on the plane so she could apologize and acknowledge that she messed up. However nice these platitudes are, this does not make up for a season of pettiness. Her goal in attending Shy’s wedding in the first place was to ruin the night and take revenge. Had this been ASP’s attempt to demonstrate the lowest point of her character arc, where the bathroom scene forced her into a place of introspection and improvement, I would have applauded them. In fact, right as she entered that bathroom, I was excited in the hopes of seeing Shy yell at her, or even to quietly but firmly state that she was a bad person. However, to ASP, Midge is the main character and thus can do no wrong. One of the most infuriating aspects of this scene is her proposed moral superiority. She not only brings up what Shy should have done in order to cater to her feelings, but berates him for having fired his musicians and distancing himself from his friends. While watching this, I had to pause it midway through in order to fume.
As a queer person myself, this scene hit hard. When I was in high school, my closest friend at the time outed me. Thankfully, it did not spread far and did not endanger me, but the damage was done. Any queer person knows the terror of others knowing your gender or sexuality before you are ready, especially if it is not safe to come out. There is no comparable experience in my life—-and it marked the first and only time where I openly cried in front of a friend. Much like Midge, the person who outed me did not do so out of malice, but because of a dangerous obliviousness and ignorance. And that distinction could not matter in the slightest to me. I had hoped this scene could see Shy break through to her and make her understand how deeply she betrayed him, perhaps out of a personal need to see someone so much like my ex-friend express genuine regret. At least I got to yell at the person who outed me. Shy, on the other hand, was written to essentially beg for her friendship back. He suggests that they can meet up sometime, before being cut off by Midge who states that she’s: “[…] not falling for that again. [They’re] not friends.” And to make matters worse, this scene is followed by Midge white-knighting. She refuses to take a bribe from Shy’s PR team, in an attempt to defend his honor, despite having outed him.
This scene solidified Midge as an antagonist and made her impossible to relate to. The mere fact that Shy Baldwin’s actor is not set to be in any other episode this season is worrying, implying that ASP decided this was an end to any conflict Midge feels. In this one moment, the show sent the message that no matter what injustice you face, as long as the perpetrator apologizes then you have no right to feel upset.
