So my husband left me three months ago for his teenage secretary
however, the other night he came home,
for some clean underwear and a fuck.
Actually just for the underwear, I threw in the fuck for free.
You've probably already seen The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel
after ordering books, paper towels or whatever it is you buy on Amazon Prime.
What are the fucking rules, I mean not the fucking rules, the -fucking- rules?
Who gets first fucking rights?
A lot has already been made about the show's depiction of a woman in a man's world.
But just as important is the depiction of a newborn New York counter-culture
that didn't want anything to do with the state.
Those people just want to be left the fuck alone.
Maisel is a 1950s Upeer West Side New York house wife
who discovers, after her husband leaves her, that she has a knack for stand up comedy.
Do you ever think you were supposed to be something
and uh, and you suddenly realize you're not?
Yes, married.
The domestic life she thought she wanted goes up in smoke,
with nowhere to go, she stumbles into a East Village theater
and tells us how she feels about it.
Ignore this, ignore this, but imagine coming home to these every night.
Yeah!
Yeah they're pretty good, right?
Plus, they're standing up on their own.
Shit.
Quick trigger warning here for free speech nerds.
You're under arrest.
What? Why?
Public indecency and performing without a cabaret license.
You need a license just to do that, seriously?
Yeah yeah you can bitch all about it to your friend in the back seat there, go ahead.
Hey.
That's Lenny Bruce, he was a real 1950s comedian
who was routinely arrested for obscene jokes he told on stage,
a topic he often worked into his act.
As a comedian he just wanted to discuss taboo ideas,
something his young, boundary-pushing audience was into.
Maisel is cut from the same cloth.
That's the end of my show folks, join in next week
when my grandmother steals my pearls and fucks my boyfriend, five!
Even New Yorkers in the audience are on Maisel's side
maybe that's because they felt the encroachment of the state all around them
and they were sick of it too.
Cities are made up of more than buildings and roads, people make up a city.
Jane Jacobs was a journalist and an urban theorist in the 1950s
who pushed back on centrally planned city developments
and huge, looming urban renewal projects.
In the series, she and her followers protest the building of a highway
through the middle of a city park.
Just that you are loud enough that Robert Moses can hear you over his bulldozers!
She thought city planners shouldn't get to decide what a city should be
but rather that people should be left alone to live their lives
and let those choices determine how the community would grow and function.
After her husband bails, Maisel starts walking into new worlds and trying on new identities
something she thinks she should be allowed to do without anyone standing in the way
or literally dragging her off stage.
In Maisel's day this was a new-ish idea, but a good one.
You said stuff to make a nun blush but you didn't say it in a convent I'm assuming?
I was not in a convent.
So where's the crime?
Right.
Cops that hang around outside clubs, waiting to harass entertainers for doing their thing,
I hate that, passionately.
You start controlling speech, you're slip-sliding toward fascism.
Hello?
Perhaps the most individualistic theme in the show
is that Maisel doesn't even fall into the second wave feminist category
history books associate with her time.
Instead, her brand of feminism is less about movement and more about personal choice.
She enters and exits her corseted Upeer West Side life
for the loose, pot smoking world of a downtown comedy club whenever she sees fit.
I thought you wanted to be a cool chick.
I can be a cool chick with a doorman and a Kelvinator Foodarama refrigerator, can't I?
Midge is building her own world,
it involves pearls, bright red lipstick, and saying fuck a lot.
And it's pretty fucked up to send in the cops for that.
The second season of The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel is starting soon.
Let's hope Midge can stay out of jail.
You've been a great audience ladies and gentlemen, that's it for me,
my name is Mrs. Maisel, thank you and good night!