The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel (4.3) Episode Recap: A Fitting Tribute

The third episode of the fourth season The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel both feels like a standalone episode and the most emotionally resonant of the season thus far. It centers around the death of Jackie, the owner of The Gaslight and Susie’s oddball roommate. This episode reveals that there was little that Susie even knew about Jackie, despite her (and the show’s) proximity to him. The episode works as a lovely tribute to the character Jackie, the actor Brian Tarantina (who played him and died between filming seasons), as well as character actors themselves.

The tribute culminates in Susie’s eulogy at Jackie’s funeral. She incredulously lists all the things she never knew about Jackie despite how often she spent time around him. She is astonished to hear that she was considered a close friend of Jackie’s. However, the more that she talks through her feelings about Jackie, the more she realizes how important and reliable he was to her. In the truest The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel sense, the eulogy is a rollercoaster featuring some good laughs, a deluge of “fucks” (obviously courtesy of Susie), but most importantly, heart. As all good tribute episodes (thinking of Riverdale with Luke Perry as a recent example), it doesn’t just function as a tribute to Jackie but Brian Tarantina, who played him across three seasons. Tarantina may have rarely been the leading man, but as Susie’s eulogy illustrates, that was never all that important when looking at who he was as a person. It was about everything else. Obviously speculating whether Palladino wrote that specifically about who Tarantina was is a fool’s errand, but it stands as a poignant send-off for Jackie’s lovably weird character and a face I will miss no matter how sporadically he popped up (it may also be worth noting that Amy and Daniel worked with Tarantina in a smaller side part on Gilmore Girls as well).

Jackie’s funeral and its impact on Susie are at the forefront of this episode, but endings and beginnings aren’t the only thematic motifs. The other big event in the third episode is Buzz’s play coming to Broadway. (I won’t fault you if you don’t remember who Buzz is after all this time, but he is a friend of Miriam’s family). The running joke throughout the episode is how Miriam was dropped from the production growing up because she was a bad performer. Each time somebody new mentions it, Miriam protests with increasing vigor that she “wasn’t that bad.” The joke doesn’t just build to a crescendo in the waning moments of the episode but adds to the running motif thus far in the season about questioning of Miriam’s abilities to perform. She essentially starts this fourth season from scratch, having to work her way back to the praise she received opening for Shy Baldwin. The newspaper reviews of her act are yet another example of this motif. If the writing from Amy Palladino in the past is any indication of the trajectory of Miriam’s story, it won’t remain a dormant topic long. At some point, Miriam will confront that perception head-on. It continues being the driving motivation for much of what she has done trying to strike her own path and upend the rules of show business. How long will the show let it remain an unanswered question is, coincidentally, the most relevant question.

Given how much time I spend laughing at this show weekly, it feels only proper to start highlighting my favorite joke each recap. This one was courtesy of an interaction between Rose and one of her friends, as Rose has to watch Susie while Miriam and Abe go to their respective jobs:

I am consistently impressed with how well the jokes are woven directly into the dialogue as opposed to dialogue with the sole purpose of punchlines. It so rarely halts the flow of dialogue that the jokes are an innate part of conversation in The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel. Expect to see this part of the episode recaps regularly reflecting that.