Awesome / The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel

Season One

• Midge's first act that got her arrested is this: she turns venting and a breakdown into comedy and proves that she is much more talented than her husband ever was.
  • It also helps she doesn't fall apart sobbing over what she must have done wrong because she recounts that she was a great wife by the standards of the time and more. It serves also as an Ironic Echo when Susie gives her "The Reason You Suck" Speech to Joel at the first season finale when he accuses Susie of ripping the family apart.
• Midge fails to get a job at the department store at first, but when she assists a woman with finding a good lipstick for her coloring and outfit, she goes back and tells the hiring manager she'd love to be make-up girl.
• Midge (in her act) eviserates a man who came in asking for makeup that will make his wife look like Elizabeth Taylor. First she suggests sunglasses, then she comments how the guy had the audacity to think a woman like Liz Taylor would marry a guy like him, that it's a shame there isn't something that would make him look like Rock Hudson, and then she says she persuades him to buy a lot of merchandise so he'd feel like he was married to Liz Taylor.
• Midge spelling out on stage why Sophie Lennon's stage act is superficial and expressing her fury that women have to pretend to be something they're not to please people.

Season Two

• Our first view of Midge in the season, now sentenced to the mind-numbing job of directing calls at the store's giant switchboard, but getting through it all with a smile on her face and even effortlessly taking over the other women's calls as they break down one by one. This scene is also a particularly impressive one-take that involved a lot of complex staging and camera work.
  • Later in the season, she ends up getting her position at the makeup counter back.
• Susie gets taken by a couple of hit men who have been hired by Sophie Lennon and her agent to rough her up, only to end up befriending them after they all turn out to be from Rockaway. No matter what Lennon sends her way, Susie manages to best her.
• After Midge has her spot at a high-end club repeatedly bumped for male comics, and the comics themselves make a bunch of sexist remarks, when her turn finally does come she spends the set viciously insulting them, which the crowd eats up. This also gets her payback against the club owner, as he'll now have a hell of a time convincing some big moneymakers to perform there again.
• After Rose inadvertently convinces the majority of the female student body in Columbia's art department to go to the business department because that's where the best husband material was and Columbia doesn't have any female professors and being a female artist blows. Rose is this close to getting pushed out of the classes, when Abe and Rose talk to the Dean about their points of view and leave him dumbfounded.
• Upon their arrival at Steiner Mountain Resort, Midge is dismayed to find that Paulie, the resort's executive director, wants her to not participate in the Mrs. Steiner swimsuit pageant and instead be the girl who presents the sash to the contest winner. When she tells Joel about this during the orientation assembly, Joel decides to take the podium, announce to the resort that he and Midge are separated, they are amicable, and please stop gossiping. He then shames Paulie for kicking Midge out of the beauty contest, saying she had a winning streak and every cash prize she won was donated to an orphanage in the Bronx and thanks to him "some orphans are going to go hungry!" Rose later admits to Midge that she found it "surprisingly manly" although wishing that Joel would keep his and Midge's relationship private.
• In Midnight at the Concord, Midge gets an opening at the Revlon Counter at B. Altman's and is able to get a ride from Benjamin to get the coveted spot. A win after having been demoted.
  • Joel beats a rival for dates by emphasizing while he works in aluminum sliding for his father, he works for his father at a factory that manufactures women's clothing....
• Midge gets caught performing stand-up at the Concord by her father and while she is thrown off by his presence (and disapproval), she manages to push her stage fright and give a hilarious performance about sex, food, the Catskills, and family.
  • The next episode has Midge telling her father that this is what she wants to do and he cannot make her quit.
• Joel spends a season standing up to his overbearing, crass, corrupt, incompetent parents and manages to save their business.
  • Special mention to his first scene on the job, calling out his father for paying family friends to sit around and do nothing whilst forcing other employees to work long hours picking up the slack. He kicks the freeloaders off the payroll and gives the real workforce a coffee machine and regular breaks. After his jerkass behavior in the first season, it's nice to see there's a decent person underneath his fragile ego.
  • He also decks a rival comedian/manager for locking Susie in a closet and harassing both Midge and Susie; He even tells off the owner in the building that talent needs to be respected and one day Midge will put "this shithole on the map!"
• Midge manages to get more calls and volunteers into a dying telethon; cut to the viewing audience at home: the diner she frequents is laughing uproariously where one manager brags about getting her on TV, her switchboard co-workers are amazed at her skills, the Gaslight is crowded and hysterical, and Abe smiles looks through Midge's bedroom window to see their next door neighbors watching Midge on TV while Joel watches in awe ignoring the model he had over the night.
• Susie threatening to rain fire and brimstone down on Sophie if she keeps on sabotaging Midge. The tirade actually earns Sophie's respect as her own manager Harry Drake would never go to bat for her like that, and she asks Susie to take over the job.
• After being hit by a huge wave of Break the Haughty moments towards the end of the season, Abe decides to throw away his cushy positions at Columbia and Bell Labs to become an activist again. And when his colleagues make remarks about Midge's comedy^note during one performance she was talking about Abe's work for Bell Abe threatens to punch them in the nose if they risk his daughter's career. He may not like what she does, but damned if he will let anyone put his daughter's happiness at risk.

Season Three

• Abe rediscovering his activist roots by standing up for Lenny Bruce as he's arrested again for violating the obscenity laws.
  • The lead in to this was Midge calling out her parents for blaming her for their lifestyle changing and for never supporting her as her marriage imploded and for her career. Equally satisfying is when she tells her father that Lenny Bruce is a freedom fighter for free speech.
    Midge: You don't even know who Lenny Bruce is! You blabber on and on about free speech – he's out there getting arrested in the name of free speech. He's talking about things that no one has the balls to talk about! You put down comedy and what I do? You don't even know what goes on out there! This guy is the real deal, but you just scoff and pretend that he's nothing. That is ignorant. You are ignorant!
• Rose tells off her family in Oklahoma for not letting her sit on the board because she's a woman and her "learnin' years are past behind" (despite the fact their grandmother founded the business, there is a young boy on the board, and that the job isn't particularly intellectually demanding) and takes her grandmother's portrait as "women aren't welcome here".
• Midge teaching Susie how to swim.
• Susie's "The Reason You Suck" Speech when Sophie sabotages the production of Miss Julie, and refuses to accept Sophie's attempts to deflect blame. And once again, that advocacy that Susie has done for Midge rears its head when Sophie's accusations turn to accusing Susie of dragging her down for the sake of propping up Midge.
  Susie: Hey! HEY! I got something for your plate! [runs in front of Sophie and forces her to stop] What the fuck just happened?! Because I know you did not just trash that production! I know I must've eaten some spoiled cheese or a hash brownie and hallucinated that on the opening night of your Broadway premiere, you chose to flush it all down the shitter!
  Sophie: What are you talking about? This is your fault!
  Susie: [indignant] My fault?
  Sophie: I am the biggest comedy star in America, and you chose to dump that and have me act! Act in this ridiculous farce of a play!
  Susie: I'd never even heard of Strindberg before I met you!
  Sophie: You should've stopped me! You're my manager!
  Susie: You fired Harry Drake because he stopped you from doing Strindberg, you wacko! Remember?
  Sophie: Just like he stopped Jerry Lewis from doing A Raisin in the Sun. It's what a good manager does!
  Susie: [exasperated] Goddamnit, Sophie! You asked me to get you a shot, I got you a shot, and you chickened out! You choked!
  Sophie: How DARE you!
  Susie: I went out on a limb for you, Bernie went out on a limb for you, the investors went out on a limb for you! Fucking asshole tennis-playing Milken went out on a limb for you! We got Gavin Hawk to star opposite you! [As she's saying this, Midge emerges from the theatre entrance]
  Sophie: You are all conspiring against me!
  Susie: [to a passerby] Hey call Bellevue! Tell them to bring a net!
  Sophie: Especially you.
  Susie: Why, Sophie? Why would I do that?
  Sophie: [points an accusing finger at Midge] For her. You were trying to prop her up by bringing me down! [Midge shoots a look that's half "WTF" and half Death Glare]
  Susie: [grabs her hat; to Midge] Let's go.
  Sophie: You're walking away from me?
  Susie: Yeah. I'm walking away. Because you are nothing but a fraud, with your Jell-O and your stuck-up butler and your lemon wedges! And you wanna know what the really sad thing is, Sophie? You could've done it! I watched you rehearse every single day, and you were good—fuck that, you were great. A great, fucking serious actress! And you had it all right there in the palm of your hand, and all you had to do was have the guts to follow through, and you didn't. You fuckin' folded like a deck of cards. Harry knew.
  Sophie: Harry knew what?
  Susie: That you didn't have the stuff to make it on Broadway. He was no idiot. He knew. [points to Midge] And I did not have to take you down for her. You are not her competition. You are not even in the same league! She's got guts. That is the difference between Midge Maisel and the "great" Sophie Lennon. You're a star for now, but she is going to be a goddamn legend. [walks away, Midge following her] I'm setting those fuckin' birds loose the minute I get home!
• Midge successfully performing a set at the Apollo Theater. It got her fired, but that's still an amazing achievement for a comedian to pull off.

Season Five

• Midge's set on The Gordon Ford Show, after she finally decides she is done waiting for her big break and done being fucked over. After Gordon tries to reduce her to a fluffy, condescending "human interest" interview, and cuts to commercial when she cracks a joke that gets a big laugh from the audience, she, with Susie's full blessing, says "fuck it" and grabs the mic, performing her set on the show, Gordon Ford be damned. And she absolutely brings the house down, even making Gordon laugh, and finally becomes a star. In-universe, this is the night the Marvelous Mrs. Maisel is born.