The Apollo
Marvelous Mrs Maisel bows out Season 3 with a 75 minute season finale, beginning with Joel and Midge talking about their life together in the diner; a throwback to a time in the past. We then cut forward to present day in a slick, smooth transition as Joel and Midge talk about arrangements with the kids. Joel suggests putting Ethan in a school in Queens but Midge doesn’t take kindly to this idea. Sophie’s performance causes outrage in the papers as Jackie reads this out in Susie’s apartment while she tries to get rid of the birds. Before she does however, Tessie phones and informs her their Mum is dead. In her will, she’s left her their house. Meanwhile, Zelda returns to the fold and serves food as Moishe sits with Midge’s parents and talks about goats. While they do, Abe discusses the article in the Times before deciding that he’s going to become a tutor instead. Joel’s opening night at the club attracts a pretty big crowd, including Mei who gets Joel’s message after he speaks to the Chinese under their club. As the band play, Midge arrives and Joel introduces her to Mei. As the electrics go out and the patrons grow restless, Midge takes the opportunity to jump on stage while Joel frantically tries to get the electrics to work again. After salvaging the night, Midge closes out her impromptu set by calling him a great Father. For now at least, they appear to be on the same page. This brings her to Moishe where she asks to buy the apartment he originally bought her and Joel, with the added bonus that her parents would be moved out. He tells her he doesn’t understand why Joel treated her the way he did, before giving her his answer. Before we find out though, we cut to Reggie who speaks to Susie about Midge. There’s a brilliant similarity here between the two as they share common ground around managing people. As the results of the boxing come in, Susie clutches her head in shock as it soon becomes apparent she’s lost a lot of money on this fight. Susie arrives at Joel’s club and asks him for a favour – to look after Midge’s money. Given he still loves her he’s the only person who can do it as Susie’s recognizes her gambling issues and tries to make things right. Back at the local hang-out spot, Rose is approached by Corrine who gives her a lavish gift after her matchmaking skills. It’s something that may just change her fortunes going forward and also works to inject some enthusiasm into her life, as she sets about matchmaking for others too, including Midge’s ex Benjamin. After Rose’s matchmaking fiasco earlier in the episode, Benjamin arrives at the diner and immediately goes after Midge. Eventually they sit down together and she tells him the truth about her comedy career and why she wrote him the letter. It’s a difficult conversation and one that brings her storming back to Rose. Both of them lay it on the table. While Susie heads off to take care of “an issue” (which happens to be burning her Mum’s house in a bid to get insurance money to repay Midge’s portion of the money she spent), Midge goes backstage at the Apollo and sits with Shy before speaking to Moms Mabley…where it turns out she’s actually warming up for Midge. It gives her the real jitters and as Reggie confronts her, he puts his foot down and tells her not to fail and to talk about Shy in her set. As she takes to the stage, she immediately wins the crowd over, riffing about Shy and basing her whole set around him. Unfortunately she hits a little too close to home, mentioning Judy Garland shoes and his sexual orientation. Midge finishes her set and prepares to go on tour with Shy as he takes over and sings us out. Back home, Abe gets a job as a theater critic for the Village Voice while Midge says goodbye to her parents and heads up to the runway ready to leave for her tour with Shy. Only, her great set the night before lands her into hot water when Shy drops her thanks to some of her jokes she made about his sexuality. A teary eyed Reggie bids them farewell and boards the plane and as Susie hugs Midge and comforts her, the plane takes off and leaves, as the series ends on a bittersweet note. There’s a lot to digest here and seeing Midge’s naivety come back to the foreground is something that’s constantly hounded her character throughout the show. A lot of unresolved plot threads are left dangling here too including Midge’s apartment, career and family life. That’s not even mentioning Abe and Rose’s future career prospects too. While there are question marks hanging around whether the jokes in the Apollo would be met with boos and jeers in the 1960’s, there’s enough here to get the gist of what’s happened nonetheless. Midge made a big mistake with these jokes and being kicked off Shy’s tour throws her right back where she started from before. Will there be further consequences for what happened? The visual design of the series as a whole though has been fantastic and here too, there’s some great scene composition that dominates the episode. With so much left unresolved though, this may put some people off from this one but fans of the show will almost certainly be left hanging on for the next season impatiently to find out what happens next.
