‘The magnificent, the magical, the marvellous!’ It’s TV’s happiest endings
Warning: this article contains spoilers The Marvelous Mrs Maisel What does perfect 50s housewife Midge (Rachel Brosnahan) do after her husband leaves? She gets drunk
Warning: this article contains spoilers The Marvelous Mrs Maisel What does perfect 50s housewife Midge (Rachel Brosnahan) do after her husband leaves? She gets drunk and flashes her boobs on stage while doing an impromptu comedy set. It’s impossible not to root for her from this moment on. With the help of her unlikely manager, Susie Myers (Alex Borstein), she embarks on a standup career with the odds constantly stacked against her. Finally, Midge makes her breakthrough moment happen on a late-night show. “I want a big life,” she tells the studio audience, who have just been howling at her jokes. “They say ambition is an unattractive trait in a woman. Maybe. But you know what’s really unattractive? Waiting around for something to happen.” All of her family members – who had been so against this career – are there cheering with pride. Gordon Ford (Reid Scott) then introduces her to the world: “The magnificent, the magical, the marvellous Mrs Maisel.” But the real gut-punch moment? When Midge looks over to Susie, who has a tear in her eye and her hand on her heart. The final scene jumps to decades later, with the hugely successful pair joking over the phone as they both watch an old episode of Jeopardy. Hollie Richardson 30 Rock View image in fullscreen Funny business … Tina Fey as Liz Lemon and Keith Powell as Toofer in 30 Rock. Photograph: NBC/NBCU Photo Bank/Getty Images The brilliance of the 30 Rock finale – aired as two episodes back-to-back in 2013 – really begins halfway through the closing series. That’s when Liz Lemon gets married and embarks, via adoption, on motherhood, both milestones at which a traditional sitcom would usually end a show centred on a female protagonist. But not for Lemon, and not for creator Tina Fey, who ends it with TGS (the show within a show) being uncancelled and brought back for one last episode – an appropriately meta end for the show itself – so that everyone else’s storylines can be tied up. Liz is shown to be back at work and realising she needs to have work and not just family in her life or she’ll live on a knife-edge of insanity as much as she did when it was just work. It gave us callbacks (even unto St Elsewhere), the full gag quotient (plus The Rural Juror song), Kenneth’s ascendance (possibly transcendence), and closure. Even Pete got a brief year of happiness before the epilogue. Above all, it gave us Jack’s lovely speech to Liz from the boat, which she eventually interrupts to tell him she platonically loves him too. Affectionate respect has never been so beautifully captured. See-through dishwasher for all! Lucy Mangan Detectorists View image in fullscreen Time for the gold dance! … Lance (Toby Jones) and Andy (Mackenzie Crook) in Detectorists. Photograph: BBC There was rarely anything tricksy about the narrative of Detectorists – it was based round a set of simple, binary storylines concerning relationships, parenthood and mild discord over metal-detecting territory. All the same, Lance and Andy were deceptively complex characters and the show’s seemingly still emotional waters ran deep. It soon became clear that we were being offered one of the most charming and convincing depictions of friendship in television history. The show’s conclusion was gently audacious, suggesting continuity as the happiest of endings.
The BriefWire