[The following story includes major spoilers for The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel series finale, “Four Minutes.”]
Lenny Bruce (Luke Kirby) made an emotional and heartfelt return to The wonderful Mrs. Maisel during his series finale, “Four Minutes”.
The final episode of the fifth season opened with Lenny performing the penultimate show of his career on San Francisco’s Basin Street West in 1965, where he concentrated primarily on his legal troubles before dancing onstage. The show, which actually took place, saw one of the comedian’s last performances a year before his tragic death in August 1966 at age 40.
“Every time he was on stage, those were always Lenny Bruce’s words, every statement,” Wonderful Mrs. Maisel co-showrunner Daniel Palladino tells The Unlisted News. “We did some cuts, but we never added.”
Towards the end of Lenny’s set, viewers spot Susie Myerson (Alex Borstein) in the audience, looking down at the legendary comedian, who seems too far gone at this point. Backstage, while Lenny is waiting for his driver, Susie approaches him and offers him a way out. She invites him to have coffee or lunch with her, so they can talk about getting him back.
“What I saw out there tonight was fucking embarrassing,” Susie tells Lenny. “No one wants to see you babble on nonsense, man. They want you to be funny.”
She tells him that she can book him dates at clubs, where he can continue to perform as a comedian, and as he struggles to get back on his feet, he points out that he can’t set foot in a club east of the Grand Canyon after his legal troubles. he sent him west. When Susie tries to encourage him by explaining that she has connections and people who owe her favors, he stops her dead.
“Are you going to use your favors on me? Why?” he asks. “Because you’re Lenny Bruce,” she replies, a lump in her throat. “There will only be one for you. Let’s get him back,” he pleads. Keep those favors. Use them for someone worthy,” he asks. says.
Kirby says that he feels that when Susie approached Lenny with her offer, he was too deep in it and it didn’t seem like a feasible reality at that point in his life.
“There’s something a little naive about what Susie introduces to him from where he’s sitting,” says Kirby. thr. “You really can’t go back. I mean, I believe in second chances and all that, but you can’t go back to the degree that she presents it, at least not in the reality of her and the kind of man he is and where he comes from. — that idea doesn’t ring true to you.”
The Emmy winner also explains that for Lenny, as cruel as he sounds, where he feels he’s headed is at least the truth, which is what he’s always been after.
When Lenny asks Susie if Midge (Rachel Brosnahan) is with her before she leaves, she tells him that she’s alone, although she’s not. She shrugs and walks out. Later, Susie finds Midge emotional and tells her that Lenny didn’t take Susie up on her offer to help him. When she is asked if she wants to come see him, Midge refuses and Susie comforts her by saying that when she is in Los Angeles next month she will try to talk to him again and suggests they get drunk.
Palladino says that the reason Midge did not want to see her old friend, and often her biggest supporter, was because it would have been too “painful” for her to see him in the condition he is in at the moment.
“The real Lenny Bruce had been on this path for quite some time,” he explains. “At the time, the historical character was very close to the end and had been off the rails for quite some time. I don’t think you know that Midge didn’t try before, and I think at the time, it was just too painful to see it that way.”
Co-showrunner Amy Sherman-Palladino echoes that sentiment, noting that another part of Midge’s reasoning for not seeing Lenny that day was that she didn’t want to hurt his pride.
“I think Midge sent Susie, she sent an emotionless person for him to treat her, because I think seeing her would be embarrassing too,” she says. thr. “It could be all kinds of things to him that I think she didn’t want. All he wanted was for someone to get him out, and I think he felt that if Susie can’t do it, then nobody can.”
Kirby, for his part, feels that Lenny seeing Midge that day would have been helpful to him because he clearly longs to reconnect with her, but the actor isn’t sure what difference it would have made to him. character path.
Rachel Brosnahan and Luke Kirby in ‘The Marvelous Mrs Maisel’
Amazon / Courtesy of the Everett Collection
“I think like it always has on this show, it always brightened up her world a little bit, being in the same room with her,” he explains. “So that’s what I like to think would have come out of that. I have no ideas or fantasies that it would have turned the tide of her doom, but certainly, given all we’ve done together, I think it would have been a nice and appropriate night.”
Instead of ending Lenny Bruce’s streak The wonderful Mrs. Maisel with a scene of him at one of his lowest moments, the Palladinos decided to bring him back towards the end of the final episode.
After taking a chance and making a four-minute stop at the Gordon Ford Show, against the host’s wishes, Gordon welcomes Midge onto the couch where all his guests sit and fires her from the show so she can pursue a career as a comedian.
In this early-run moment, the show shows a flashback that sees Midge and Lenny at a Chinese restaurant in New York City after the two went from friends to lovers in the season four finale. Over plates of salt and pepper shrimp, Lenny teaches Midge how to be famous, explaining that on an autograph, fans shouldn’t be able to read the signature because they’ll feel cheated.
When Midge asks Lenny how he knows he’s going to be famous, he does what he’s always done for her: he believes in her. He steals her fortune cookie and begins to read what she believes to be the fortune inside of it.
“The spotlight awaits you at center stage, all you have to do is step up and claim it,” says Lenny. “Once you do, everyone will know who you are. They will know your wit, your intellect, your smile, the big expressive eyes. They will be defenseless before your charms. They will fall at your feet and adore you and your display corset at the altar.”
Their exchange ends with a more encouraging sentiment from Lenny to Midge: “Mark my words. Very soon, in the not too distant future, you will be paying for Chinese food.”
Kirby feels that the conversation Lenny and Midge had that night resonated with her. “We are all very lucky to have a moment like this in our lives where someone can reflect the light they see in you,” she says. “I think no matter what, it helps her understand, in that moment, that she has a talent inside of her and that it’s her responsibility to determine what comes after that.”
Although the showrunners considered showing the consequences of Lenny’s death on Midge’s life, or even mentioning it in passing, they decided against it because the loss in real life was so sad and everyone knew that was her trajectory at the beginning of the show. So why emphasize it?
“For us, to see him in his prime, to see the last image of him on the night of his triumph, the night they were together, the night they were not only lovers right now, but he was still the person who said, You’re going. to be a big star. You’re going to do it,’ that’s where we wanted to leave Lenny,” says Sherman-Palladino. “We wanted to show him at his best.”