In Defense of Joel Maisel

If you haven't yet watched The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel yet, it's been over three years. It's time to crawl out from the rock you've been living under and watch the Emmy winning series. The show is a pink frosted cake sweetened with 1950s glamour and spiked with quirky dialogue and glorious feminism. The new season came out this earlier this month, and I thought I would take the opportunity to write about my favorite character, Joel Maisel.

After watching the first episode, it’s crazy to think that Joel would ever be tolerable, let alone my favorite character. However, with Michael Zegen's humble charm, Joel’s progression from the sniveling husband of the titular character to a supportive and responsible friend, father, and son has been endearing as well as entertaining.

When we first meet Joel Maisel, he’s an aspiring comic, who is just… not that funny. He is married to the fast talking and hilarious Miriam, Midge for short, who shines like a star in her cocktail dresses or faux-beatnik costumes. He is a poser through and through, wearing a turtleneck and reciting a stolen comedy routine at the Gaslight, then taking a cab back home to the Upper East Side. While Midge blindly supports him and his comedy dreams, the audience is not at all shocked when he leaves Midge for his dimwitted secretary later in the first episode. It’s not a great first impression.

While the separation sends Midge on a mission to explore her newfound talent for stand up comedy, Joel rebounds with poor Penny Pan and heavy drinking. It's exactly what he deserves, but you can’t help but feel sorry for him.

There is now way to justify his cheating, but the show implies that Joel and Miriam got married straight out of college, most likely around age 22. Imagine not only being married at 22, but already having an important job at your families company and a huge apartment right below your in-laws. It’s obvious that Joel never really got a chance to figure out who he is, let alone what he wanted out of life. Right after his honeymoon, he was practically middle aged. Midge and Joel were just two kids playing house until suddenly it wasn’t a game anymore.

Joel mopes around a lot in the first season, slowly realizing how much he screwed up his life, and crying about Midge. They briefly consider getting back together, but those dreams are dashed when Joel sees Midge joking about their breakup in front of an audience. The selfish Joel that we met in the beginning of the first season would have gotten back together with Midge, and made her forfeit stand up comedy and return to her role as a housewife. Instead he leaves the show and punches out a member of the audience who was heckling Midge during her set. He drunkenly cries out, “She’s good! She’s really good!” as he punches the guy who told Midge to “Get back in the kitchen!” All this from the same man who told Midge to focus on making brisket in the pilot episode. It's a huge deal anytime a man acknowledges how fragile their own masculinity is, but for a man in the 1950s to give up his chance at "domestic bliss" because he knows he can't handle his wife constantly mocking him in public is unbelievably selfless. After years of Midge sacrificing hours every day to make Joel his brisket and going down to the Gaslight, literally measuring herself, or however long that god-awful bedtime/morning routine takes, Joel has finally made a sacrifice on her behalf.

During their time apart, Joel realizes how much he misses Midge and his old life, but he has also gotten to see Midge in a new light: independent, resilient, and irreplaceable. Suddenly she is not just his wife, but an equally complex human being with her own aspirations and dreams. In this moment Joel makes his first steps towards becoming a pillar of support.

The most compelling evidence of Joel’s transformation however, isn’t seen until the second season. After his 2nd breakup with Midge, Joel moves in with his loud but hilarious parents. Throughout the first season, we see the Maisel's have always been a source of an embarrassment for Joel with their crude language and chaotic factory in the Fashion District, but now with no job or home, the prodigal son is living in his father's old office and legitimatizing the family business, a la Michael Corleone in The Godfather In his mission to get his families factory up to snuff, we get to see that Joel is not the useless loser from the first season but an amazing manager with unrealized potential. When he announces at the end of the season, that he wants to own his own club, you can't help smiling with pride as the reformed Joel Maisel finds his new path.

While I'm still FURIOUS about the ending of season two, and I DEMAND justice for Benjamin, I hope that the next season will bring some more Joel screen time. I look forward to seeing how he will continue to support Midge as she goes on tour, how he'll adjust to single life, and how he'll achieve his dream of opening a club. We all know that Midge will adjust to this new lifestyle with confidence, humor, and style. What makes Joel such a great character, however, is that we never know what the future will hold for him.