The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel – Season 5 Episode 3 “Typos and Torsos” Recap & Review

Typos and Torsos

In The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel Season 5 Episode 3, Midge still hasn’t landed a single one of her jokes on The Gordon Ford Show after a month of working there.

At home, Ethan keeps slipping into her bed at night. Flashing forward, we see that Ethan’s and Midge’s relationship isn’t so great. When Midge flies in to see Ethan in Israel, neither he nor his new fiancée Chava are too excited to see her. She’s really only there to make Ethan attend a ceremony where she’s being honored, anyway.

In the present, Midge moves Ethan closer and closer to his bed every night. He’ll be sleeping on the floor until he makes it back to his bed, but he’ll get there eventually.

Meanwhile, Abe obsesses over a typo he unwittingly published in the paper, and Rose worries for her own safety. She tries to get a gun from Susie, who is equally upset that the beloved tea room burned down. Susie doesn’t want to get Rose a gun, but Frank and Nicky overhear her problem and decide to get involved.

Susie is later called to pay a prison visit to none other than the matchmaker matriarch herself, Benedetta. The matchmaker says she got a call about a gift from Susie Myerson. The next thing she knew, she was being arrested. It dawns on Susie that this was the work of Frank and Nicky.

But hey, Benedetta is at least willing to work with Rose now that she knows she has protection. Susie strikes a deal with her to get Rose better matchmaking ground, and then she’s out of there.

To Joel’s chagrin, Shirley makes his bar her new hangout spot, as she can’t stand to be around Moishe anymore. Joel calls Moishe for help in getting her out of there, but Moishe just decides to hang out there himself.

Midge does a set at the bar, but can’t get through it for all of Shirley and Moishe’s interruptions. Afterward, Midge learns that Shirley doesn’t know that Mei and Joel broke up. For now, Midge makes up a story for Shirley that Mei is trapped in China. She then tries to convince Joel to come clean with his parents.

Before he can, Shirley and Moishe have already come up with an extraction plan for Mei. Finally, Joel tells them the truth. Part of it, anyway; he lets them assume she had a miscarriage. That night, Shirley goes to Moishe for comfort. 

 Back at work, Midge finally successfully pitches a joke. But she groans out loud whenever Gordon fudges the joke on the air. She’s now terrified she’s going to earn the boss’s ire, and maybe even get fired.

Midge apologizes to Gordon, which goes well until he mentions how the joke wasn’t that funny anyway. Midge can’t keep her mouth shut; she claims the joke was great until he flubbed it. Their public argument gets so heated that it makes the paper the next day. Now Midge is sure she’s getting fired.

Except, she’s not. At least, not yet, because the office is too busy celebrating the fact that it surpassed Jack Paar as the number one talk show.

They celebrate at an ice skating rink, where Gordon kisses Midge. Apparently, he wants to woo her, not fire her. But Midge is put off, especially as he is married. Gordon insists his marriage isn’t like that, but Midge still skates away.

After doing some skating herself, Susie makes her way to the office for the bathroom. She runs into Mike, who begrudgingly thanks her for bringing Sophie Lennon to him and comments that they should set up a lunch.

Susie then starts snooping around the office (a bit risky when she just got on Mike’s good side, but that’s Susie for you). She finds a framed picture of Gordon and his wife, and seeing the woman, her face falls. It seems there’s a history there.

Meanwhile, at home, Abe has been taking out his frustrations about his typo on Ethan. He and Midge have been fighting over Ethan’s new sleeping routing, going so far as to drag the poor kid back and forth across the hall. Midge says she’s trying to be consistent with Ethan, unlike how Abe raised her.

Finally, Abe decides to lay down the law with Ethan while Midge is gone. He scares Ethan with the lesson that death comes for everyone, “even the brave.” The child may think he’s being brave by inching closer to his bed, but he’s truly just putting off the inevitable.

When Midge gets home, she finds Ethan tucked away in her bed and realizes that Abe got to him. But instead of moving him, she goes to the kids’ room. She takes Esther out of her crib to sleep with her in Ethan’s bed. Once Midge is asleep, however, Esther creeps out of the bed and returns to her own.

The Episode Review

This episode feels a little rushed in its attempt to conclude Rose’s matchmaking debacle, making me feel like nine episodes just won’t be long enough to resolve all of The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel’s past subplots while it also tries to introduce new ones.

I like the new ones, however. It’s tugs at the heart to see the ways the Weissman-Maisel family dynamic have affected Esther and Ethan differently. And I can’t help but be curious to see where the show takes Frank and Nicky. It’s concerning that they are getting so involved in Susie’s business without being asked. Susie may not realize how deep she’s in with the “do-gooders.”

But it’s Susie’s reaction to Gordon’s wife that’s most curious. Is it a coincidence that Susie apparently has a history with the woman while Gordon insists to Midge his marriage isn’t “that kind”–or could Susie and the blonde woman have a romantic past?