Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

I initially wrote this review after the first 2 episodes, and am now updating it. I'm leaving my original intact, and amending it at the end. This series started with great promise but no episode to date has lived up to the pilot episode. Season 4 so far doesn't look like it will deliver either. I feel stories are getting quite contrived to keep her from success and to keep her family conflicts relevant. Nothing has really changed in her life or goals since the end of season two. I feel the story should be about a lady who finds sucess by usurping gender roles and the patriarch, but it fails to deliver because she's never behaved in a maternal role and the men in her life may be jerks at times, but ultimately are decent. I feel many stories since the first season were contriving situations to keep the cast and crew employed rather than advancing the story. We're now 4 seasons in, and Midge is still waiting for her big break and mainstream success and acceptance. I think the lead actress is a brilliant comedian, despite not being one, but instead of seeing crazy showbiz stories from the road, we're seeing soap opera reasons for not seeing what makes this show good. Maisel is at it's best when she's thrashing gatekeepers with devastating wit, but we only see it every few episodes and her career never progresses. I feel the long term story arch should be about someone who gains it all through her brutal honesty only to lose it for the same reasons. What we have instead is a severely downscaled version of this in a repetitive loop that never goes anywhere. We're 4 seasons in, she's had some successes, yet she still can't get club gigs at places she's already killed at? I'd much rather see her in love triangles with the Rat Pack, or otherwise dealing with the madness of celebrity at this point in the series. Instead we're seeing her parents move in with her in a lifestyle and a place none of them can afford, and feels like a bad sit com. In a show about celebrity and female empowerment, shouldn't there be episodes of her being an empowered female celebrity? There's been enough detours, let's get to where we're going. Her family may be amusing at times, but has little to do with her comedy or career, and there's plenty of shows about eccentric dysfunctional families.. Her ex-husband who was the impudence for her launch into comedy seems no longer a source of angst or material. This once was a very original idea, yet past the first season it's adopted the wacky family cliché. While this is good enough to still show promise of the show I want to see, I haven't really seen it since the first season. Midge needs to come into her own. Put Midge on the warpath or put her to bed, this series is directionless, let's get somewhere! After writing this review and finishing the season, I feel by the end, an important character actually addressed many of my frustrations with Midge and the series in a very emotional and gut-wrenching way. She got chopped down to size by someone who would never have the heart to do so. In my original review I suggested that the show was at it's best when Midge would refuse to let people put her in her place. Ironically, by the end someone certainly did, and it's likely the best thing to happen in the series since the first season. I now have high expectations for the next. The final episodes are significantly closer to being the show I've been wanting to watch. I really enjoyed parts of the last 3 or 4 episodes. There were pretty significant events in the 6th and 7th episodes which most certainly should have had fallout, but they neglected to follow up on. I somewhat hope they just ignore these incidents, as most of them involve story lines that should no longer be relevant. The one from the 7th episode almost certainly demands follow up, and I'm shocked it wasn't done in that very episode if not the next, yet it still lingers. You don't get to shame powerful people publicly without an aftermath. Despite these complaints, the last few episodes have been among the best and the final one was brilliant, I'm about to watch it again. I just feel this final episode should have happened at the end of the previous season. I've now added an additional star to my original review. The season is short and does waste time in early episodes, but I do feel the series has now redeemed itself or is on the path to doing so.