Mrs. Maisel's mediocrity

I noticed a couple posts on the board a few weeks ago talking about how good The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel is and I know it's been getting some critical raves, as well. So, bereft of regular watching material in these post-GoT days, I figured I'd give it a shot. My opinion of Amazon's original series so far has been somewhere in the collective zone of "meh" or worse. Britannia is just bad. When the top acting talent you have is the Guv'nor from The Walking Dead, you're climbing a mountain already. When you decide to pile on special effects that really have no connection to the story, it's obvious that you're either trying to make up for something or you were aiming low in the first place. Similarly, Good Omens isn't working for me. The book is FUNNY. I've twice tried to make it through the first episode and fallen asleep both times (i.e. not funny.) My hopes weren't particularly high for Mrs. Maisel, either, and...

I'm missing something. I've watched the first two episodes of season 1 and all I can do is shrug my shoulders at most of it. First off, it's not funny. I think I've LOL'd once? For a show about stand-up comedy, that's not a good sign. My sense of humor is as critical as the rest of me and I don't generally go in for cringe humor and watching people act out their very normal neuroses with fortune tellers isn't going to get me rolling, either. Secondly, Mrs. Maisel's character isn't believable. It's not because she's a woman in the 1950s doing a profane act on stage in the Village. That part I'm OK with. It's that she's clearly written to defy most possible stereotypes and yet claims to be hewing to them. From her first moment on screen, where she's delivering the toast at her own wedding, to halfway through the second episode, where she entices her husband to fuck in the bathroom of a diner the day after said wedding, this is obviously someone used to doing her own thing. But, somehow, we're supposed to believe that the woman openly mocking her parents' attitudes and regularly spending time among the Bohemian set in the Village is going to have conniptions about performing on stage alongside the Geographical Poet (who is one of the more entertaining aspects of the series so far, if that tells you anything)?

Consequently, most of the characters aren't particularly entertaining. They're largely annoying or routine. It's been a long time since Kevin Pollak was the most invisible man of the lineup in The Usual Suspects and, despite playing the highly bombastic Moishe, he's still not leaving a lot of impressions. In most writing, regular characters have to have one of two things: impact or depth. If you can do both, great! Moishe doesn't really do, either. Granted, it tends to take more than a couple episodes to display said depth, but Rachel Brosnahan does it immediately. She's the main character, so it's easier for her, but that means that the characters in her orbit should have impact. They should be immediately doing or representing something interesting when they appear on screen. What Pollak's character represents is the stereotypical Jewish father, disappointed in his shlemiel of a son and feigning outrage at his wife but secretly admiring the chutzpah, since it's more than his son will ever have. Every time he's on screen, I'm doing the windup gesture with my hand in the hopes that the TV will somehow fast forward through this bit. No luck so far.

There are only two who meet those criteria so far. One is Alex Borstein as Susie (finally out from behind the artwork as the voice of Lois in The Family Guy.) When she shows up, things happen and they're generally things that propel the story forward, rather than simply act as set decoration. The other is Michael Zegen as estranged husband, Joel, who's clearly looking for something more in life and without a clue as to what it is or how to find it. (Perhaps I'm sympathetic, having occupied that role for much of my life?) The most interesting aspect of the series so far is the presence of Luke Kirby as Lenny Bruce which, if you're interested in the history of comedy at all (and the genesis of the new breed of comedians from that time like Bruce disciples George Carlin and Richard Pryor), is at least mildly interesting to see. How do they keep this connection going without pandering to the history of Bruce or using him as a regular deus ex machina to open doorways for Brosnahan? It's clear that Midge is supposed to be one of those disciples and she is kinda entertaining to watch. It's just that most of what's going on around her really isn't and, so far, her comedy really isn't earth-shattering, either.

So, I dunno. On the one hand, there might be something there. OTOH, when I sit down to watch this I keep thinking that I could be doing something more productive with my time (this is not new.) I'm open to encouragement, either way.