The Princess and the Plea

The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel 5×8

Joel: Well?
Moishe: This, my son, is a girl you do not let go of.
Joel: This, Pop... is forever.

Midge: ... But they're your friends.
Joel: I just need you. That's all.
Midge: Took you a while to figure that out.

Rose: Is there candy in the book?
Abe: No, there's no candy in the book. Why would there be candy in the book?
Rose: Well, if you're waiting for her to go over to that book, I assumed you put some candy in the book. Hard candy, that's what she likes.
Abe: I don't want to feed her hard candy, Rose, I want to see if she'll go over to the book and not because she thinks there's candy.
Rose: What's the book?
Abe: It's Being and Nothingness by Sartre.
Rose: Are there pictures?
Abe: In Being and Nothingness?! No, there's no pictures.
Rose: Then you should probably put some candy in the book. Even one piece could make a difference.
Abe: Rose, I just want to see if she's curious about the text in the book. I have to see if my granddaughter is the grandson I've been waiting for.

Rose: She's not going to know what Being and Nothingness is, even if she's curious about the text.
Abe: No one knows what Being and Nothingness is, Sartre doesn't even know. Even I'm just pretending to read it.
Rose: Pretending?
Abe: For the experiment.

Midge: Bye. Cleanliness is next to godliness. Holy shit, what am I, 80?

Midge: Hey, guys. Here again, huh?
Shirley: One of the writers said we were such good laughers, he gave us an open invite to the show. So we plan to be here every night.

Hedy Ford: I understand you wrote the weather report bit.
Midge: I came up with the concept. The boys helped make it funny.
Hedy Ford: Don't.
Midge: What?
Hedy Ford: Don't.
Midge: Okay.
Hedy Ford: If the credit's yours, take it. If it's not, take it. That's what the boys do.

Midge: You've worked your ass off, Susie, and I've done everything you said. I-I've stayed sharp. I've been a good soldier, I bat a thousand at work every day, and he notices. It would make so much sense for him to give me a shot, but he will not be moved. That fucking brick wall keeps hitting us both smack in the face. It's two steps forward, three steps back, and I'm tired of it.
Susie: So am I. But what do you do about the Gordons and the Petes and all the fucking men that run the fucking world?
Midge: You go around them. You use whatever you can and you stop at nothing. Guess who taught me that!

Abe: Oh, God, I'm sorry. I've been such a drip. ... I'm...
Gabe: Abe?
Abe: It's just the whole goddamn world. You know?
Henry: Only that?
Abe: Ah, I'm getting maudlin.
Gabe: What about the world, Abe?
Abe: I've just turned 64. And at a time when I should be comfortable, settled in body, in mind... I'm not. At all. I suddenly find myself at a crossroads. And everything feels upside down.
Arthur: That's because everything is changing at such an ungodly pace, Abe. Especially for men our age.
Abe: Men our age...
Arthur: We were born in the 1800s. A different century. Before phones, before radio. My parents' house had no electricity till I was seven. One can't keep up.
Henry: Yes, and it's physiological as much it is psychological. Homo sapiens crawled along, playing the same roles for tens and tens of thousands of years, and now, suddenly, we're forced to adapt to this rapid-fire change. More change in a year than our predecessors experienced in a lifetime, in a millennium. Think about it. Change, to our predecessors, were sudden exogenous events: earthquakes, floods, an eclipse, a saber-toothed tiger lunging at you out of nowhere. They were things to be dealt with, in the moment. Then things naturally reverted back to the norm. But now... change happens over you. Change itself is the flood, change itself is the saber-toothed. Change itself is the norm.

Abe: My fear, though, is that the world is as it always was, and I just didn't see it. That a lot of us didn't see it. Us men.
Gabe: I had a feeling we'd get gender-specific.
Abe: I'm serious. We can't blame exogenous events. It's too easy. Our collective blindness has caused a lot of harm. We controlled so much, meddled so much, and to what end?

Abe: I'm having one of your moments, Arthur. I'm seeing the piles of my life, and they're foreign to me.
Gabe: This is about your family, right? You tried to help. You tried to guide. Mistakes were made. Everybody makes mistakes.
Abe: Everything I thought about the roles of men and women I think is completely wrong. I have done exactly the wrong thing for both my children... You know... my daughter owns the apartment I'm living in?
Gabe: I thought you bought it. Didn't you say that?
Abe: My wife came up with that, our cover story. No, my daughter bought it. My daughter... My daughter was dumped by her husband, out of nowhere. That was her saber-toothed. Instead of collapsing from the weight, she emerged stronger. A new person, so I thought. But now I think... perhaps that was who she was all along. I never really took her seriously. My son Noah I took seriously. I would take him to Columbia with me every week so he could dream of what he could be. I don't remember if I ever did that for Miriam. I don't think it ever occurred to me. And as unfathomable as this career choice of hers is, she's doing it on her own. With no help from me or her mother. Where did this come from? This strength, this fearlessness that... that I never had. That my poor son never had. What could she have been if I had helped her and not ignored her, ignored who she really is?

Abe: My daughter is a remarkable person, and I don't think I've ever said that to her.

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