Hands!

By the third season of a show, the characters are a little like friends you see for a short time each year. You kind of know them but enjoy the surprises. I miss the the discovery of the first season and the first episode of season 2. Midge's parents now have a pointless subplot of her father as an unemployed quasi anarchist. Her mom has dumped her trust fund. They are essentially homeless. Moving them in with Joel's parents made no sense and amped up the irritating dialogue. The appeal of the show for our family unit was Midge's career, the path she would take, the people she would meet and whether Joel would find his way. When the show deviates from that, except for Suzie's excursions, it is loses its way.

Midge is on the road. Let's face it. She has been spoiled her whole life and continues to recognize this. So when Joel comes to visit at her urging, she slips back into a comfort level. This leads to too much drinking and a real complication. Midge's mother and father are basically on the run and end up with Joel's parents. These people are portrayed as absolutely awful in their day to day existences. I still could watch Tony Shaloub any time, anywhere. Susie is trying to balance two clients and is really in over her head. I'll be interested to see how things play out here.

Just as the first two seasons reached the top in dynamism and fun, this third season is disintegrating before our eyes. There seems to be a desire to transform this comedy into a tragedy, without first going through the tragicomedy. There is no more black humour, there are no more powerful phrases, and I am not only referring to the monologues that have been shortened more and more, but also to the very plot of the secondary ones. Everything is resolved with beautiful sets and eternal musical numbers. The main characters have been losing their strength and their structure to be diluted in erratic characters. I miss Mrs Maisel's fiancé and Lenny Bruce, who each in their own way gave at the end of the second season a rare and peculiar power. I miss Joel's parents as two difficult but endearing and sympathetic people and not that which they have become, I miss the safety Rose Weissman and the poise of the father. Sophie Lennon exceeds as nemesis because she is not even nemesis anymore. It would have been better to have allowed more time to make this third season before deciding that filling each and every one of the characters in each episode with problems would fill creative gaps. It's a comedy, for God's sake!