5x06 The Testi-Roastial

[9.5/10] Is Susie Myerson a friend to the people in her life, or just a mercenary business woman? In the far off, distant year of 1990, combined roast/testimonial by the famed Friar’s Club suggests it’s the latter. The jokes are about her being tough as nails. The stories are about her being a Machiavellian (and persistent) bullshitter and ballbreaker. She’s being championed for these things, even as she’s being softly slated for them, and hearing her whole life’s professional accomplishments laid out in lionizing yet debasing detail seems to lead to nothing but disinterest from the now veteran entertainment legend.

The roast is a fun device. Not only does it allow the producers to bring back Gilmore Girls vets like Sean Gunn and Danny Strong, but it provides the show an excuse to jump around the timeline, giving us glimpses of Susie’s life, and by extension, those in her orbit, long past the main story’s late 1950s/early 1960s timeframe.

Many of those stories are fun, but paint Susie in the light of a manager who took a no-nonsense, “by any means necessary” approach to her job. During the famous triple crown, she pays off caddies, harangues execs, and invents sitcoms on the fly to make three major deals in one day.
When an entitled young hack of an actor demands the world from her, she reads him the riot act and tells him to fuck off. Rumors even fly that she bilked Harry Drake out of his clients when he wasn’t all there. The fellow showbiz muckety-mucks busting her chops seem to admire all of this, but the version of Susie they’re celebrating is slimy, abrasive, and something of a con artist.

And yet, for once, the truth is softer. She did inherit all of Harry Drake's big clients. But not because she got him to sign them over while he was delirious or paid off his daughter. Instead, Harry wanted her to have them because she was the one person he could trust. He saw the way she went the extra mile for Midge, kept her on the right path, and wanted the same for the stars who stayed loyal to him.

Before then, she thanks him for recognizing something in her and helping her get on her feet. Afterwards, she’s the only one who stays by his bedside while he’s dying. And if that weren’t enough, she pretends to be his daughter, not out of some selfish plot to take his business, but to grant him one last measure of kindness and peace in his final moments. The Susy Myerson people don’t know, the part of her life that doesn’t make headlines, are moments like that where she shows appreciation and care for the people who’ve helped make her a success.

Thankfully, that incudes Dinah! One of the small but joyous happy endings The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel offers in its final season is for her, who ends up not only becoming a manager with Susie’s mentorship, but running her whole east coast operation. On a personal level though, she also goes above and beyond a business relationship, to recognize when Dinah is being physically abused and send her goons after the culprit, while also giving Dinah the day off and the time and money to be able to rest and recover. People joke about her mob connections, but she does these things out of kindness. Whatever her faults, she goes out of her way for people, and isn’t just using them to further herself, even the underlings and also-rans with whom she could get away with it.

That same attitude, of course, extends to Midge. In a 1973 Hawiian wedding that Midge wants to break off, Susie tries to draw lines. She’s having a beautiful time and loves the peace and quiet of it all. Professional problems? You got it, Midge. But this is personal. It has to stop somewhere.

Except it doesn’t. It’s Susie who has to explain to the latest celebrity beau why he’s being left at the altar. It’s Susie who has to tell Grand Funk Railroad that their name is confusing and they won’t be playing tonight. It’s Susie who has to endure a comical scene where Abe and Rose go on about how expensive the cake they bought their daughter was. This goes beyond being a manager. This goes beyond business. This is the act of someone who cares.

And I guess, I have to begrudgingly admit, that also includes Joel. He is one of Susie’s greatest challengers here. After noting that she’s in with the mafia, and being wise enough from his dad’s operations to know there’s a second set of books, he’ll do anything to stop the mob from “owning” Midge. So what does he do? He offers himself instead, letting them get their hooks in his nightclub business by way of “financing” in exchange for leaving Midge alone.

Now let’s be real here. This is a stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid plan. It works (more or less) because this is, despite some raunchiness, a generally bright and warmhearted show. But god help me, the answer to someone you love being in the mob is not to get your family in deeper with the mob. We like Frank and Nicky, so we’re apt to buy that they’re men of their word. But in reality, even the gilded reality of The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, making deals with the mafia only ends badly for everyone. It’s a dumb solution to a problem that ought to, by all accounts, only make things worse.

And yet, taken in the aspirational tone of the show, this is Joel’s greatest redemption. I still don’t love the guy. I still find him kind of grating and entitled in his own way most of the time. But for someone who didn’t appreciate what he had with Midge, and who didn’t seem to respect her or the life they’d built or her talents as a stand-up, this is an act of him throwing himself in front of this bullet train so that he can protect her, and ensure that she can pursue her career free and clear of the mob’s influence, and not for nothing, the noblest thing he’s ever done.

Maybe that’s the answer for Susie and an improved, if not exactly enlightened Joel. He’s an obnoxious jerk much of the time, but when it counts most, when he has a chance to show he cares about Midge in a way he didn’t when they broke up, he not only seizes it but stays quiet about it for decades so as not to burden her.

With that, Joel is what breaks up Susie and Midge. The prison sentence we learned about a couple episodes back turns out to be the product of an FBI sting for his mob ties. Many of these flash forwards have prompted the audience to ask what could possibly break up Midge and Susie after all they’ve been through. The answer is satisfying. Whatever their issues, Midge cares about Joel. Her seeing him go to jail for her, to help cover for a problem Susie got into, would be a final straw, something big enough and harsh enough that it would change how Midge saw her manager.

It made Susie look more like George from The Gordon Ford Show. Most of this episode is about the future, but the one detail that advances the story in the present is Susie helping stage a coup to get George ousted (and with him, the rule against employees appearing on the show) and get Mike installed as the new producer. The smoking gun is George sitting on Gordon’s network contract so that he can feather his own nest. For all his gladhanding, for all he plucked Gordon from obscurity, he was just using the guy to further himself, putting his needs before his clients.

That's what Midge effectively accuses Susie of. And Susie has things to answer for. I like that several things that have been floating around in the background of The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel come to the forefront here. I wondered all through last season how getting in with the mob would come back to bite Susie. Well, now it gets the partner of her number one client sent to jail. It sees Susie kicking thirty percent of Midge’s earnings to the mafia rather than to her. Even Susie’s seemingly pointless gambling problem comes back! With the suggestion that she’s forcing Midge to take tough casino gigs to settle her debts and square up with the wiseguys who own them.

Midge throws it all out there, accusing Susie of doing something worse than lying to her -- using her. When Susie tries to say they’re friends, Midge kicks it back in her face, chalking up the first time Susie ever used that phrase with her as a dodge, a sop, another con from a master of manipulation. In a fiery back-and-forth worthy of being compared to the Gilmore Girls’ “Friday Night's Alright for Fighting” family blow-up, the worst view of Susie comes from the person who arguably knows her best, which makes it sting all the more.

And still, when we return to the Testi-Rostial, something changes. Midge offers a video greeting. And in it, with the time to reflect and reminisce, she realizes that whatever their problems, Susie was always there for her. She was the person who went above and beyond to look after Midge not just as a business associate, but as someone who cared. She saw something in Midge, like Harry saw in her, and helped that fire burn hotter and brighter until the world could ignore it no longer. She fixed wedding disasters and staged talk show coups to clear the way, and rescued Midge’s third favorite hat. These are not the acts of a user; they’re the act of a friend.

But there’s something more too. Susie has seemed ambivalent to so much celebration, barely tolerating this dog and pony show. Only, Midge’s video has power. It is part apology, part expression of gratitude, but also part a recognition of something there that neither of them necessarily realized. When Midge couldn't go through with the wedding, she said that her beaus couldn't make her laugh. She’s cycled through boyfriends and husbands like chewing gum, looking for genuine love. And yet, years later, when she’s celebrating her manager, she talks about how Susie always did make her laugh, how Susie, in deeds not in words, showed her so much of that love. It’s a quiet sign of a quiet truth.

Susie isn’t a craven showbiz snake who treats her clients like expendable meal tickets and her supporters like stepping stones. She’s always been the one who recognizes the human beings beyond the business. And for Midge especially, she’s been more than a friend. She’s been a partner.