5x07 A House Full of Extremely Lame Horses

[8.2/10] The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel is inherently about the challenges facing women. It’s baked into the premise. Comedy is male-dominated. Showbiz management is male-dominated. The 1950s and 1960s are male-dominated. So of course, a woman trying to make it as a stand-up, a woman trying to make it as a manager, even a woman trying to make it as a match-maker comes with the hurdles of the times.

But frankly, sometimes it fades into the background. There’s often an element of wish-fulfillment to Amy Sherman-Palladino’s shows. Yes, Midge and Susie and their cohort face challenges. But usually, they’re talented and determined enough to overcome them. In fact, now we know they do. But that fact makes those big setbacks, especially the ones founded on what’s been their legs rather than what’s between their ears, feel like a splash of cold water.

“A House Full of Extremely Lame Horses” is a tough episode on that front. In some ways, this is Midge’s triumph. She has become “one of the guys” in the writers’ room. She can just saunter in and gripe about her kids flushing a boat down the drain without flinching. She can politely recognize that she has a regular place in the circle that bigtime sitcom star Danny Stevens (Hank Azaria!) has invaded, rather than having to drag a chair over. She’s even confident enough to pitch to Danny that he go with something personal rather than pure comedy since he’s selling his life story in book form rather than a T.V. show. In some ways, despite the uphill climb, she’s arrived.

There’s no better sign of that than the fact that Danny not only takes her advice (and kills), but tries to poach her to write for the sitcoms he’s developing (though only for shows starring women). Not for nothing, it’s also telling that Gordon Ford is willing to fight so hard (in some cases literally) to keep her (though with the specter that he may just want to keep her close for potential romantic conquest). And most notably of all, the bidding war means she gets a big raise (though one that merely puts her on par with what the male writers are making).

So she’s riding high! And if that weren’t enough, Susie’s budding friendship with Mike, and her help getting him the producer’s job means he connects her with the booker for Jack Paar, and nets Midge a slot in his showcase for new comic voices. So what better time for Midge to use her leverage to try to convince Gordon to give up his superstitious rule about not booking talent that works on the show and snap her up before Jack does? It’s not enough to convince him, but it’s enough to give her the confidence to offer a “You’ll see” admonition.

Granted, it’s weird to have a thematic focus on her and the other women in The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel’s orbit being unduly underestimated in an episode where they’re entirely helpless around the house without Zelda and acting entitled in taking advantage of her kindness to hold their hands through every little thing. That too is, unfortunately, a common thread in Sherman-Palladino shows. But here, at least, maybe it’s another sign that the kind of labor women often provided in 1961 was undervalued and taken for granted, even by other women.

That's not where Abe’s focus is, though. He’s enlisted to do the parent visit at Ethan’s school. It’s a wonderful school with fabulous snacks and enriching “free to be” sessions. But Abe is aghast at his relegation to the “happy group.” In total defiance of the Weissman tradition of first born male geniuses, Ethan seems to be a bit of a dullard, something Abe blames on Joel having the temerity to, well, talk to his son before the momentous age of six.

The other side of the coin is that, recognized by her dad or not, Midge is a talent. She nails it at the Jack Paar showcase. She knows how to liven up a dead room, and goes out there to do what she does best.

But it's not enough because of who, or more accurately what, she is. The talent booker decides he can't “sell” a female comic. No matter how good she is, or how well she works the room, her gender is always going to be held against her by people like that. Even in the afterglow of being the subject of a bidding war and finally reaching pay parity at her job, here is another reminder that she can do all the work, and have all the talent, and in some corners, it still won’t be enough.

The fascinating wrinkle to the whole thing is that the talent booker wants to schedule James, who it turns out definitely got the movie role Susie fought for in the previous episode. Susie tries to say this is about Midge, and later even tries to talk James into turning it down because it’s “not his turn.” But Midge stops her, and effectively says they shouldn't let the prejudice against her as a woman prevent James from overcoming barriers of his own.

The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel is assuredly making a statement here, by presenting a showbiz gatekeeper who’s more willing to countenance a person of color who happens to be a man, than he is to accept a comic who’s a woman. At the risk of overreaching, it speaks to debates that span topics as wide as the intersection of women’s suffrage and civil rights, and the 2008 primary race between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. Frankly, I expect some controversy from this one, but I appreciate the series playing in some fairly bold territory.

However it shakes out, Midge comes home frustrated. She’s done everything right and still can't catch the break she’s been gunning for due to sexism of various stripes. (Her in-laws don’t even comprehend that she could get them tickets to the T.V. show she works on.) She cries, and it’s one of those rare times when she is utterly vulnerable and without a smart remark to defuse the situation. All she can muster is frustration and anger at an unfair hierarchy holding her back.

The same could be said for Rose. There’s a lot of laughs to be had here from her worrying that the elder Maisels’ piano smells like onions or that her dance instructor won’t have room to instruct in Midge’s apartment. In the future of 1973, she does a ridiculous commercial for her match-making services that requires 196 takes.

But she makes a fair point, that she too is underestimated, her work considered frivolous. Despite being a smart and capable woman, she’s been boxed in by her father’s family, her brother, and even her husband in various ways. As goofy as her feud with the Match-Making Mafia has been, this is the place where she gets to use her talents, to do something independent. And she feels the same disrespect and disregard that Midge does.

For now, at least. One of the sad and sweet moments in the episode comes in the future, when we learn that Rose doesn’t have much time left, but that Midge is bankrolling her money-hemorrhaging match-making business to make her mother happy. More importantly, she wants her team to lie to Rose and tell her it’s successful. Because even if she doesn’t see the same value in match-making that Rose does, she understands why a project like this can make you feel alive, valuable, and satisfied from her own fight to be taken seriously.

Maybe, though, there’s a whiff of hope for the next generation. Abe spends much of the episode lamenting what’s happened to his grandson. He bandies about a famous family book about all the male accomplishments over the years. He tells a story about his son playing a violin out of nowhere once he turned six, and the wait to see Ethan snap into this masculine tradition.

And yet, when he hears someone playing the piano immaculately, like he’s been desperately trying to teach his grandson to do, it turns out to be Esther. We know from the season’s cold open that she turns out to be the genius, the one who carries on the Weissman genes Abe’s so proud of. She’ll face challenges too. (The world of academia for a young woman in the 1980s is no picnic either.)

But it’s a reminder of the biases that stretch from the family matriarch whose small business is treated as an afterthought, to our protagonist who has the talent but not the testes to get booked on the Tonight Show, to the next generation whose potential for greatness isn’t even considered by her grandfather until it’s staring him in the face. The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel isn’t often about this, but in its way, it’s always about this.