Midge Maisel and Supervillain Origin Stories

The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel is very slick how it hides the fact that Midge Maisel is the villain of her own show.

Knowing how to dress is one of the main signs of supervillainry. Look at me: I can’t even keep a pair of pants on, which makes me Lawful Good.

The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel has ended, and as with all shows that start off with the buzz of something fresh and new it’s sort of limping off of America’s stage as something that suddenly seems very quaint and 2017-ish¹. It’s amazing that six years can feel so, so long ago, but there you have it: The world and the world of television are not the same, and Maisel felt almost like a reboot of an old favorite in its final season.

I still watched it, each and every overlong episode (seriously, what data is the algo crunching that tells it we want hour-plus episodes all the damn time²?) So, I’m a stooge, a useful idiot for Corporate America, a man who clearly thinks he’s smarter than he actually is³. Let it drift. Let’s instead talk about how The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel turned out to be the stealthiest of stealth origin stories for a supervillain ever conceived. I am only disappointed that the series finale did not involve a CGI shot of Midge Maisel (Rachel Brosnahan) rising into the air, stylish cape fluttering behind her as pure white energy beams emit from her eyes. Because Midge Maisel is evil.

Sugar-Coated Midge

Midge’s body language here is 100% ‘I’ll never get in trouble because of the whole tits up business.’

Mrs. Maisel is a character genetically designed to gain our sympathy. The first events of the series include the revelation that her husband is a) unfaithful and b) a hack comic who steals bits from Bob Newhart, and it’s Midge’s emotional breakdown as a result of these events that drives her into standup comedy, where her natural talent as a wit is immediately apparent⁴. She’s also very attractive, dresses like Grace Kelly, and evinces a superficial niceness spiced with sharp observational humor. Plus, the world is frequently mean to her, though not in any way that really matters (for example, Midge never worries about feeding her kids or being murdered in a dark alley). It’s easy to like Midge, to have sympathy for her⁵.

This sympathy helps to obscure the fact that Mrs. Maisel is actually not a very nice person.

This isn’t shocking to anyone who has watched the show—in fact, the show itself lampshades Midge’s awfulness regularly, joking about her distant style of parenting and frequently showing her colleagues apoplectic with rage at her for some serious and frankly unforgivable infraction. This is a woman who has ruined careers, who once built an entire standup comedy set around outing a homosexual friend (and then grew outraged when she was punished for this), and who regards any resistance to her climb up the comedy ladder with a deeply self-centered rage.

And it’s important to note that Midge’s climb from her initial standup routine to her breakout moment in the series finale that finally establishes her as a star takes three fucking years. Three years is nothing when you’re building a career. And yet Midge consistently acts like it’s been a lifetime⁶.

Tits Up

That facial expression is loosely translated as “Am I the baddie?”

So, yes, Midge Maisel is a villain, a force of destruction. That’s no surprise, it’s text. But the show manages something cute: It distracts you from Midge’s awfulness and bends light and space to make her look like a hero⁷. Yes, her rise to fame is littered with the bodies of people who got fired because of her, but she makes some mild effort to help Lenny Bruce (Luke Kirby) as he descends into drug addiction and career ruination⁸. Sure, she revealed people’s secrets in self-serving and callous ways, but she stopped Suzie from withholding a plumb booking from another client in order to help Midge, that one time. So, obviously she’s a good person at heart.

And of course, the real lesson of the show is this: Funny, charming, attractive people can get away with anything⁹.

If you take a moment to interrogate your reactions to the show, you might wonder why it is we assume Midge is the hero, here. Just because she desires success? Just because she’s tilting at a chauvinistic and unfair system? Just because she looks smashing in a designer dress and knows the purpose of vents and flairs¹⁰? Sure, Midge has many admirable qualities, she seems like a fun date, and she’s not exactly trying to destroy the world—she’s not an overt antihero like Tony Soprano or Walter White. But an antihero she is; over the course of the show she isn’t exactly nice¹¹, and yet your natural instinct as a viewer is to think she’s nice. This is because we unconsciously think of ourselves as on Midge’s team, we align with her simply because she’s the protagonist and the focus of the show. This is how cults work, too—you take a charismatic asshole and make them the Main Character and before you know it you’re drinking the poison fruit punch¹².

It’s as nicely done as Midge’s impeccable makeup. Don’t get me wrong: Having a villain as a protagonist works just fine, and I really enjoyed The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel. But when you decide to have a nostalgia-soaked re-watch a few years from now, watch it with an eye towards whether Midge is a good person or not. Once you realize that she really isn’t, the whole tone of the show changes. It’s still fun and funny, it’s still an incredibly well-produced and meticulously designed piece of entertainment. But instead of the charming story of a determined proto-feminist comedienne with terrific taste in clothes it becomes a supervillain origin story—because if this is how Midge acts when she’s obscure and penniless, just imagine what kind of monster she is when she’s rich and famous¹³.

Of course, I myself would love to have the resources to be mean to all you people. But my authorial poverty means I have to suck up to everyone, including you.

Next week: Black Mirror and The Lecture

1. 2017-era Jeff also feels like a stranger. He was a man who actually watched Twin Peaks: The Return and was actually surprised when it made no damn sense and also invaded his dreams.

2. I suspect this a frog-boiling thing, with episodes incrementally getting longer until they finally achieve the singularity: Training us all to sit and placidly watch 18-hour long episodes, then sleeping, then getting up to watch another.

3. My haircut backs this up.

4. Emotional instability being necessary for a standup comedy career is a given, I think.

5. Much in the same way it’s easy to find yourself falling in love with a jumping spider if you ever take the time to really look at one.

6. To put this in perspective, I decided to become a literary star when I was ten years old. It has been what scientists call A Long Fucking Time since then, and here we are.

7. Also, one of those rare unicorn people who can apparentgly wear high heels 24 hours a day without suffering debilitating back problems.

8. You have to give the show kudos for somehow conveying Bruce’s descent into hell without once actually giving you a single detail about it. If you’re unfamiliar with Bruce’s life before watching this show, trust that you will have learned nothing about the man by its end.

9. Of course, I know this from personal experience ... my personal experience hanging out with funny, charming, attractive people, that is. Shut up.

10. Well, so do I, dammit, and it’s never gotten me anything.

11. There’s a more intersting show buried in here examining the relationship between Midge’s yawning cavern of miserable attention-seeking and success as a comedian. Also a way more depressing show, one probably titled The Miserable Mr. Bruce.

12. Is “A Charismatic Asshole” the title of my memoir? There are forces in this universe who wish to make it so.

13. Personally, I can’t wait to destroy you all when I’m rich and powerful. You better hope I die penniless and obscure, for your sake.