Will They / Won’t They
Episode 5 of Marvelous Mrs Maisel begins with Susie and Midge checking in to a hotel in Florida while Rose returns home to find Zelda and Shirley watching TV together. Back at the hotel though, Midge teaches Susie how to swim before she receives a call from Sophie regarding Gavin, and how she doesn’t want to work with him. Susie stands firm though and tells her it will work. Unfortunately she’s having none of it and as a sunburnt Susie marches back to the hotel, she packs her things and prepares to leave Florida to be with Sophie. Before she leaves, Midge tells her to be tough with Sophie and goes on to compliment her for the work she’s done. A stressed Abe is kicked out of Moishe and Shirley’s house as he looks over the paper and sees a litany of spelling errors and issues in the article the group have had published. As they ride the subway together, he questions their commitment and seriousness, severing ties for now as Abe continues to pursue this. Meanwhile though, Joel heads back to Chinatown and gets closer to Mei, where they kiss after eating buns. Susie arrives and sees an erratic Sophie first-hand but remains tough with her as she continues her rehearsals. Meanwhile, Rose continues to lament her situation as Shirley heads outside and shouts for Ethan to come inside, prompting Rose to interject and begin shouting too. Lenny arrives in Florida and speaks to Midge, before we cut forward 24 hours to see her walk down the fabled staircase as all eyes turn to her, sporting a dashing black dress. However as she soon realizes, Abe and Rose have arrived at the same hotel. As they settle in, Midge puts on a great show riffing about their arrival for Shy’s opening, before watching the band from afar. Lenny pulls her away and invites her to a work proposition instead, refusing to disclose whether he liked the act or not. After an impromptu stop on live TV, Midge and Lenny get up and dance through the night before they arrive at his hotel room. She walks away though before anything happens where we leave the episode, and this romantically implied subplot with massive question marks hanging over it. More than most of the other episodes in this season, Marvelous Mrs Maisel delivers some beautiful scene composition this time around. The static camera fixated in one place as characters arrive on and off-screen is a great touch and all of this plays into the stylistic feel to the entire season. Lenny and Midge flirting and getting closer also makes her marrying Joel in Vegas all the more inconsequential given it’s barely mentioned here, giving the impression it was done for shocks and laughs rather than plot progression. Still, despite all this the show continues to deliver the goods with another strong, stylish episode here, even if all this fails to match the same quality we’ve seen before in previous seasons.
