Dear Mrs Maisel:
Maybe it's a long layoff, or maybe it's partly because your act already felt like it was getting a little stale, but "The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel?" The new season of Not Your Best Stuff, at least based on the first few episodes. In fact, it sounds like you're hitting the same one-liners all over again.
Granted, that might be a minority opinion, considering all the major Emmys you collected in 2018 before "Fleabag" and that guy Ted Lasso came along. But season four—picking up after the left-back-on-the-tarmac moment that kicked off a strong third season more than two years ago—seems to have pretty much been reset, leaving you with that hungry-for-you. -Putting back in the stage -Time mode from which you seem to have graduated.
That's not to say that the cast (starting with Rachel Brosnahan, well, you) isn't great, or that there aren't some weird lines. It's also worth mentioning that your ex Joel (Michael Zegen) has actually blossomed into a fairly charming character, something that certainly wasn't obvious when the series premiered in 2017.
Obviously, the setback to your career causes plenty of headaches for your manager, Susie (Alex Borstein), who faces pressure to get you back on a stage.
"You know what's cool about me? When I am me," you tell him, referencing the thing when you throw away the playbook and just randomly lay out the stream-of-consciousness standup routine. Let's start extracting, which are really carefully written and rehearsed.
There are also amusing moments involving extended family, although even these have begun to yield diminishing returns. For example, there's the scene where everyone is yelling at each other at the Wonder Wheel in Coney Island, which starts off well and then just keeps going.
As a perfectionist, it would be nice to see how and where "Mrs. Maisel" reaches the end of her journey, which has held a mirror to the malaise faced by a female comic at the time and by extension exists to this day. issues have been escalated. , Fortunately, Amazon announced on the eve of this premiere that the upcoming season would be the fifth and final one, offering the possibility of a close in the not-too-distant future.
The show helped put Amazon Prime on the programming map, so congratulations to writer-producer Amy Sherman-Palladino on that.
Still, you know that little red light in the back of the house that tells comedians when their set is over? It's really good to see that even the makers realize it has arrived, an indicator that it's time to start wrapping things up.