Tear Jerker / The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel

General

• The Morality Police are firmly in control of what can and can't be said in comedy at this time, and Lenny and Midge are both either arrested or (especially when Midge begins a routine about her best friend's pregnancy) kicked off the stage when they cross the boundaries. When you learn about the systemic pattern of harassment faced by Bruce — which ultimately destroyed not only his career but his life, and helped contribute to his death at the age of 40 in 1966 — knowing what is happening is utterly heartbreaking.
  • Lenny Bruce only appears in a couple of episodes per season, but each time he does, he mentions how his personal, legal, and financial situations have gotten worse, and his depression becomes more obvious. And because he's a Historical Domain Character, the audience knows it's never going to turn around for him.
• While the series doesn't touch on this a lot: Midge is a Jewish woman and has to put up with sexist underestimation and attitudes, Rose isn't taken seriously as a part of her family business because she's a woman (despite her grandmother being a founder), Rose and Abe and others of their generation have to put up with anti-Semitism, Shy Baldwin is both gay and black and it's likely that he cannot be in the same hotel as Midge and he was even beat up for his orientation. While the series indulges in the fashions and grandeur of The '50s and now The '60s, it's clear that the characters have had to encounter a lot of prejudice, prejudice and harassment that would have been legal.

Season 1

• Joel leaving Midge for Penny, from Midge's perspective: she loves him so much, she did everything a wife was expected to do to snare and keep her husband happy from the viewpoint of her time, she was funny and threw parties, she kept in shape, she enjoyed having sex with him and experimented, she even supported his ambition for comedy.
  Why wasn't I enough?
  • When she tells her parents what happened, they immediately assume that Midge wasn't keeping Joel happy, thus causing him to cheat on her. Abe tells her to put on his favorite dress, fix up her looks, and go out and get him back.
    • It gets worse when you understand how close she is to her parents, to turn to them for comfort only for them to make her pain all about them and her supposed failure just has to hurt. Remember, this is the 1950s when different values were expected of women.
• Susie and Midge talk about their families in one episode; in contrast to Midge's loving and functional (if argumentative) family, Susie has two brothers who are "assholes", a sister she gets along with but is married to an asshole (again her words), her father left the family and is an asshole and her mother is great but works a dead-end job and talks about how she came in 3rd in a beauty contest, then gets drunk singing "Danny Boy". Midge's family may be a tad smothering and critical but it's clear her parents genuinely care about their children (even to the point of Midge's mom forcing her to give up cheerleading so her breasts wouldn't sag) while Susie's parents checked out.
  • This gets worse when we actually get to meet Susie's family in season 2 and we find out just how much of that rings true.
• Joel suffers from one long Humiliation Conga in the final episode of the season. Initially riding high after he believes that he and Midge are getting back together, he attempts to rekindle his nonexistent comedy career. However, after he hears Midge's first ever set on record where she eviscerates him to an enraptured crowd, he is sent spiraling, even quitting his job during a major presentation. Going to see Midge open for Lenny Bruce-a comic he greatly admires- he watches her set where she rips into him and his mistress. This culminates in a withering "Reason You Suck" Speech from Susie as she tells Joel that Midge is everything that he is not, and that she'll be a major star while he will be stuck as a nobody. This culminates in Joel beating up a heckler who tried to rattle Midge during her set, and ending the season with a Thousand-Yard Stare as he realizes that Midge was far better at his dream than he could ever hope to be, and he threw it all away out of misplaced sense of pride.

Season 2

• One feels this for Rose, as she seems to be more lively and more expressive of her capabilities than her life in Manhattan. She's even happier only for the demands of her marriage and husband's work take her back to Manhattan where she feels overlooked and under-appreciated for all she does. She's a middle-aged woman who didn't have much opportunity to be independent or figure out who she is outside her marriage where her husband doesn't always listen to her or take women's intellects seriously or outside her role as a mother or a beauty queen.
  • It gets worse in season 3, where it is revealed that her family has been undervaluing her and over-coddling her since childhood where they'd take a preadolescent boy more seriously as being a part of their family business than she with lifetime experience because she's a woman.
• Midge realizing her path through the season and fulfilling it in the last episode: choosing her comedy career and ambitions over family, friends and dating relationships, which will eventually leave her personally and romantically alone. Joel and Declan lampshade the decision when talking with her, and in the finale Midge pensively watches Lenny Bruce sing a song relating to the circumstance (a song the real Lenny Bruce actually sang on the Steve Allen show^note Though they fudged the timeline a bit). She goes back and forth with Joel over pursuing comedy and being separated or giving up comedy and being with him, misses Imogene's baby shower while on her first standup tour, and ignores her potential engagement to Benjamin, with her father's approval of Benjamin's proposal to go on a six-month tour with Shy Baldwin. By the end of the season Midge appears to be at peace with her decision, although she's still nervous about what her career will bring.

Season 3

• Lenny's face when Midge walks away. He is clearly very lonely and depressed, and despite having had a nice night that they both enjoyed, seems to be even more dejected at the thought of sleeping alone in a hotel room.
  • There's also his parting words to her, "Some day- before I'm dead?" Lenny would die of an overdose in 1966.
• Midge getting kicked off of Shy Baldwin's tour right before the European leg begins because of the jokes she made about him at the Apollo, which came dangerously close to outing his sexuality. No amount of pleading from her or Susie can change his or his manager's mind, and when the plane takes off without them, Midge collapses sobbing in Susie's arms. Susie, close to tears herself and in contrast to how she normally reacts when Midge cries, simply holds her and quietly tells her it'll be alright. And that's where the season ends.
• Benjamin confronting Midge at the Stage Deli, loudly laying it all out about how utterly heartbroken he was that she not only left him, but didn't have the courage to do it herself (evidently having only written him a letter- which he couldn't bear to finish reading- and then never contacted him again). He'd bought her a ring, a large downtown townhouse for them to live in together, and would have been 100% fine with her standup- even if the jokes were sometimes at his expense- as well as the possibility of her being on the road for long periods of time. He tells her he is not Joel and it was extremely unfair of her to think he would have reacted in the same way.
• While in Florida, Abe meets with Asher Friedman, a friend who was once a widely-respected playwright, but whose career was destroyed when he was outed as a Communist and was blacklisted and now runs a bait shop on the beach. Combined with the Moral Guardian harassment of Lenny Bruce, it's a painful reminder of how fragile freedom of expression can truly be.

Season 4

• Midge reads in the papers how she has already been replaced on the tour. And because the story is in the papers, that meant Shy's people had already hired her replacement and still made Midge show up at the airport just to let her know she was fired then and there. Talk about salt in the wound...
• When Jackie unexpectedly dies of a stroke in "Everything is Bellmore," Susie falls into a deep state of depression. She ends up crashing at Midge's apartment because she's too uncomfortable staying in her own apartment. When she ducks out of attending They Came, They Danced, she's rattled enough by the sight of posters in the lobby for shows with the word "Death" in the title that she takes off. And when it's time for his funeral, she finds that only five people bothered to turn up to pay their respects: herself, Midge, Chester, Jackie's sister Nancy, and the monsignor from Jackie's church. This isn't a big enough crowd for Susie to deliver the heartwrenching eulogy she wants, so she crashes another woman's more heavily-attended funeral in order to eulogize Jackie.
  • The real-life reason this plot point is happening is because Brian Tarantina, who played Jackie, died in November 2019. The episode is dedicated to his memory.
• Midge goes to Shy Baldwin's wedding, and confronts him in the bathroom about his treatment of her. She reveals that she is angry with him because he didn't give her a chance to apologize for how she screwed up, and how he publicly embarrassed her as a result. Midge even coldly rejects Shy's offer at rekindling their friendship. It gets even worse when, immediately after this, Midge is brought before Shy's management and learns that they have basically isolated him from his inner circle- Reggie, his band- and even orchestrated the wedding all in an effort to "protect" him and his reputation to prevent his secret from getting out. Midge is horrified that her actions might have caused this situation, but is even more shocked when she learns that this was apparently in the cards for a while, Midge just simply moved up the timetable. She's disgusted when they try to buy her off with hush money and walks out.
  Midge: I promised Shy I would never tell anyone about that night, and I haven't. I promised Shy.
• Midge finds Lenny Bruce passed out on the street at the end of episode 5, and brings him back to her place in episode 6 to help him sober up. Lenny, unfortunately, bolts without explaining himself or what happened to him, with no clear indication that he will try to get help of any kind. Anyone familiar with Lenny's history will understand that this is a sign of how his eventual fate is coming soon...
• Lenny has just performed his tour de force show at Carnegie Hall, before which he and Midge had finally slept together. He's tried to set her up as the opener for Tony Bennett at the Copa, but Midge's emphatic new motto is "no opening acts" and she refuses the gig. Outraged at having his help thrown back in his face - after having kept his promise to think of her as a comic first - Lenny berates Midge for wanting to be uncompromising as he is. He's someone people watch just to see if he'll be arrested, and he doesn't want that for Midge. Before walking out, he gives her one final piece of advice: "If you blow this, Midge, I swear you will break my fucking heart".

Season 5

• The flash-forwards that happen each episode show that while Midge has become a worldwide success, it’s at the cost of just about all her personal relationships. She’s had a string of failed romances while she and Susie have fallen out hard with extremely bad blood between the two. And her relationship with her children isn’t any better. Ethan has moved to Israel and distances himself from her to the point that he didn’t tell her he was engaged, only telling her when she visited him unexpectedly. Meanwhile, Esther, despite being a brilliant P.H.D. candidate is a neurotic mess, who is deeply resentful of her mother. What’s worse, Esther’s only treasured relationship was with Abe who is implied to have passed away by 1981. On top of all this Midges preppy and resiliently positive attitude seems to have wained into a more cynical now using humor to cover up the loneliness and emptiness she feels despite having gotten the success she wanted. The only person she has a cordial relationship with is Joel, who is in prison for becoming involved with the mafia as part of a deal he made to free Midge from her obligation to them. This act of sacrifice was actually what resulted in her falling out with Suzie.
• The sight in 1965 of Lenny Bruce, once one of the most amazing comics of all time, bombing in a show in San Francisco. Susie can't give any sort of believable pep talk as Lenny complains his booking was a mistake as they thought he was Bruce Lee. He asks if Midge was there and Susie tells him no. But exiting, Susie finds Midge as both sadly agree Lenny is too far gone to try and save with a career boost touring with Midge. Making it worse is the implication this is the last time Midge sees Lenny before his death in 1966.