'Marvelous Mrs. Maisel' review: Marvelous no, beautiful yes 

WHAT IT'S ABOUT Struggling home from Carnegie Hall in a blinding snowstorm, Miriam "Midge" Maisel (Rachel Brosnahan) gets a vision -- "Go Forward," reads a giant sign, which is actually a billboard for "The Gordon Ford Show," an NBC talk show hosted by NBC's soon-to-be-king-of-late night, Gordon Ford (Reid Scott). Think  "Johnny Carson" because you're meant to.

 Midge joins the show's writing staff, with a little help from manager Susie Myerson (Alex Borstein). Sure beats working nights at the Wolford, the burlesque club, where Midge spent last season.

MY SAY Before getting to this final season, can we talk about why there was even a "Mrs. Maisel" in the first place? Long before her death in 2014, Joan Rivers was a force who defied imitators, wannabes and especially future TV series based on her life. To use the fancy term, she was "sui generis" -- one of a kind, impossible to clone.

Not that either "Maisel" or "Hacks" have tried to. For these celebrated series, it's been enough to know a comedy pioneer was their subtext, if never quite their subject.  But that's about to change for "Mrs. Maisel." 

While Midge is still Midge and Joan Joan, their stories do at least converge somewhat over these last nine episodes.  Rivers supersized her national reputation through "The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson" and, without giving too much away, viewers should assume that Midge will try to do the same with "The Gordon Ford Show."  Initially she concedes (grudgingly) that a powerful man must be the catalyst of her career, then she resists and finally triumphs. (As Johnny's substitute host, Rivers essentially did the same when she went to Fox --  which earned her a near-lifetime ban on "Tonight.") 

That's the arc of this final season -- hardly the most satisfying of the five, but at least firmly rooted in show business history.  "Maisel's" weaknesses otherwise remain its weaknesses, the strengths the strengths. The fashion and period details are still gorgeous, their power to evoke a distant time (circa 1961) and place intact. "Maisel's" Technicolor Manhattan  is almost more vibrant and freshly scrubbed this season, the pedestrians more ready to break into song (and they do!).

    There's an episode where Midge is recruited to work a convention for the sanitation industry which yields a true gem -- a "Sweeney Todd"-like Grand Guignol production number that's a reminder of what this New York-based TV show has always done so well: Tap the local  talent pool. 

Meanwhile, about  those weaknesses. "Maisel" is still that charming, or irritating (your call) embrace of ethnic stereotypes, and filled with that dazzling, or grating, patter of quips, wisecracks, put-downs and zingers. It remains more about presentation, less about plot or character development.

There's an intriguing look back into Susie's distant past that's a glance as opposed to fully fleshed storyline.  Luke Kirby's Lenny Bruce had one of the best scenes late in the fourth season, and gets another late in the fifth -- a public breakdown brought on by his ascendant legal and pharmacological troubles. Midge (or Brosnahan) never seems to get anything quite as memorable.

There are a couple of fine episodes, a few others padded or muddled. There are sporadic flash forwards to Future Midge, none particularly revealing (or surprising).

This all suggests "Mrs. Maisel" didn't quite know how to wrap five seasons, but just that it had to. Maybe the long shadow of Joan Rivers was always the challenge -- how to fully step out of it.  At least "Maisel" ends as "Maisel'' began: Beautiful to behold, lots of fine performances, still deep in her shadow. 

BOTTOM LINE Marvelous no, beautiful yes.