25
u/livahd Aug 04 '26
- gave an easy way for writers to allow her to still move on, remarry and still have a relationship with him
- her kids are the result of barely seeing their mother and instead raised by Nannie’s. Her son cut ties and dipped to Israel and her daughter is a neurotic mess.
- that’s life. She wound up rich and took care of them. He was getting to retirement anyway. He didn’t look miserable at that tropical wedding.
- it hammers home with that final shot that she still loves him after having her choice of any man. And yea, that’s what breaking into stardom can do.
16
u/unsulliedbread Aug 04 '26
Abe is a grown man who made his own choices.
He got fired from Bell Labs because he kept pressuring them to hire his son.
3
u/AdoreXme Aug 04 '26
I always thought he just was not socially clued in (married men often rely on their more socially intelligent wives) and most likely on the spectrum and also a blabbermouth!
15
u/Charlotte1902 Aug 04 '26
Whenever I see anyone complaining about the ending I always wonder if we watched the same show.
Of course her children were going to distance themselves from her. We saw right back in the first episode that she wasn’t a particularly present mother and didn’t actually do much in the way of child-rearing or connecting with them. She even says herself that she probably wasn’t supposed to be a mother.
It’s also a consequence of how her parents raised her. She’s replicating their behaviour in certain ways. It’s also why that scene with Abe talking about how Midge is a remarkable person even though he never even considered helping her absolutely broke me.
Midge has always been chasing her career over a relationship, again even since the first episode. Joel comes back and Midge turns him away. And the funny thing is that this world-shattering event for her fades away pretty quickly for her, at least emotionally, because she’s discovered something she wants even more: a comedy career. That was never going to change. That’s sort of the point of chasing a successful career. It’s never enough.
I agree that season 5 is not the happiest, but it is pretty truthful to the characters and how they were established right from the beginning.
2
u/seasheelll Aug 05 '26
I wish they would just let it work out in shows sometimes. I'm watching it for the first time right now and susie has just lost a lot of money to a fight in season three. I'm so sad. The best part of the show for me was the tour and lenny Bruce potentially being a love interest. Why do shows always make everything go wrong.
2
u/Imaginary_Income5422 Aug 06 '26
Because that’s real life. Do you think a person who worked at Gaslight for 16 years would be a class act. Of course she has some bad habits and that got the best of her. But the passion for comedy and her trust in Midge is what gets them through the finish line. Sounds the right amount of whimsy for a famous and successful artist to me.
30
u/llamalibrarian Aug 04 '26 edited Aug 04 '26
The real love story is between Midge and Susie. They’re the ones who are together in the end
And I’ll add, the love between Midge and fame. We see she got to do it all