Thursday, January 10, 2019

Mrs. Maisel and the Golden Glow

UPDATE 5/23: Borstein shows up for her character Susie Myerson's roastamonial "smelling like Cheech and Chong" after hotboxing in her limo in the final season of the series. Pot jokes ensue. 

12/19 Bornstein told Seth Meyers she inhaled something in Amsterdam and felt the effects before developing  her "Amstergang." 

9/19: Bornstein took the Emmy for her role, and her speech brought us the rallying cry, "Step out of line, ladies!"

As talent agent Susie Myerson in Season 2 of the Netflix series The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel—the role for which she won an Emmy last year and just scored her second Golden Globe nom—the very funny Alex Borstein finds, smells, and smokes a joint...and then takes a glowingly stoned bubble bath. The character is based partly on Tokin' Woman Sue Mengers.

Another memorable character of Borstein's, Ms. Swan, smuggled in "the medicinal kine" on MadTV, and liked to be "just a little bit stone" in a skit where she outwits a protection racketeer.


Rachel Brosnahan, who just picked up her second consecutive Golden Globe for her lead role in the series, puffed in Season 1 with Luke Kirby playing Lenny Bruce (a stoner gal's dream date; at least one known Tokin' Woman, Annie Ross, did so).

Mrs. Maisel leads a charmed, wildly unrealistic life, but since Brosnahan's last Netflix appearance was as a call girl on House of Cards who becomes the obsession of powerful politico—leading to an end almost worse than the subway slaying of another female character—it's nice and notable that the matriarchal village behind Mrs. Maisel, which Brosnahan thanked in her acceptance speech, has given her a more positive and empowered role to portray.

The plot of the series plays into just what Glenn Close—who toked onscreen herself in The Big Chill—got a standing ovation for at the Globes, when she spoke of her mother sublimating her own needs to her family's. Mrs. Maisel, who wears a cocktail dress and pearls as did Tokin' Woman Joan Rivers, is also said to be based on housewives-turned-comics Phyllis Diller (whose hair has inspired a marijuana strain) and Totie Fields. But actually, show creator Amy Sherman-Palladino said at Paley Fest it was inspired by her father, a New York comic, who would sit around with his friends in the backyard smoking "odd-smelling cigarettes" and making each other laugh.