In the penultimate episode of The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, “The Princess and the Plea”, there’s a mysterious moment that’s probably confused some fans. So we’re going to dive into why Midge wrote “Don’t”.
Recap
Most of S5E8 revolves around Princess Margaret appearing on The Gordon Ford Show and Midge pushing Suzie to talk with Hedy about getting Midge on The Gordon Ford Show. But in the first third there’s a stretch where Midge is back at Bryn Mawr, her alma mater, hanging out with her college friends. They gossip at a luncheon, run through the dorms and see their old rooms, then check out their old hideout. The hideout is cobwebbed and falling apart, is some kind of workroom that no one uses. The girls even mention that their cigarette butts are still there.
After some digging, they find what they came for—bottles with flowers. It turns out, before graduation, each of them wrote a note to their future selves. Now, at this reunion, all these years on, the future selves are there, ready to read.
The notes aren’t anything special. Most of Midge’s friends are disappointed.
Daniella: “Love as if your life depends on it.”
Kiki: “Work for seven years, save money, travel for six months, then get married and have some kids.”
Petra: “Be thoughtful. Be thin. Cherish your parents, cherish your children, cherish your friends, and please be happy.”
Tammy: “Read Don Quixote in the original Spanish” Then “Just a long, obnoxious list of other books to read in various languages. And I end with ‘Most Sincerely, Your Younger You.’”
Midge is, of course, last. And the entire group is excited to see what she wrote.
Kiki: What’s it say?
Midge: “Don’t.”
Petra: Don’t?
K: Don’t what?
M: That’s it. Just “Don’t.”
P: Did you not finish the sentence?
M: No, I added an exclamation point and underlined it twice.
Daniella: Let me see that. “Don’t.” Weird.
Tammy: What did you mean?
M: No clue.
P: Do you remember writing this?
M: Nope.
T: Maybe it was “Don’t hurt anyone.” Something like that.
M: Then why didn’t I write that?
D: I know what it was, Midge. You were going to wear that purple dress to the senior formal but you knew deep down not to. “Don’t.” And you didn’t.
M: I don’t think that was it.
P: I think it was something like “Don’t miss out.” Don’t miss out on living life. And, my God, you haven’t.
T: That’s so true. All the amazing things you’ve gotten to do, Midge.
D: You’ve done more than any of us.
K: Combined.
P: And just think of all the stories you’ll have to tell your children when they grow up.
T: And your grandchildren.
P: Once you’re settled, remarried, happy, you’ll always be able to look back on this amazing chapter and say “I did that.”
M: Yeah. It’s been an amazing chapter.
D: Oh, wait, there’s more on mine. “Swing by the Piggly Wiggly after graduation.” Goddamn it, I could have been Mrs. Dee.
M: [Looks at the note again]
Meaning
The answer is simple. “Don’t do what your friends are doing. Don’t be like them.” As much as Midge gets along with Tammy, Kiki, Daniella, and Petra, they live completely different lives. When Midge was with them, she was like them. They were all on the same path. Graduate, find a husband, have kids, that’s it. It’s been nearly a decade, and all of them have followed that blueprint. To the tee. Except Midge.
That’s why she doesn’t understand what “Don’t” means. Because for the last few years, Midge has been truly and fully herself. Not Mrs. Maisel. Not a wife. Not a mother. But the comedian, giving everything she has in pursuit of her career and dream. She’s so far removed from who she was in college that it’s hard for her to even conceive of what that version of her was thinking.
But we see over the course of the Bryn Mawr scene the ways in which the group of friends bring Midge back to that time. From buying the vacuum cleaner at the auction (one of the main symbols of the 1950s/1960s housewife), to gossiping about husbands, to going back to the dorms, then, ultimately, this confrontation with the past self. What was initially subtextual, that tension between then and now, takes center stage. Midge is legitimately communicating with that version of her who did not want to be like her friends. Who feared it. Even as she pursued it. Because what else was she supposed to do? Midge didn’t think she had any other choice. Something that’s reflected in a later scene with her father, Abe, when he’s at dinner with friends and expresses his recent realization that he failed to support Midge the way he had supported his firstborn son and what more could she have done if he had? She flourished despite him, not because of him.
The episode never gives us that ah-ha moment where Midge understands what she meant by “Don’t”. It would have been easy to have her get up on stage and talk about it and incorporate the explanation into a joke. Instead, the episode opts for that small moment immediately after the note when Peta calls this nothing more than a chapter in Midge’s life. “Once you’re settled, remarried, happy, you’ll always be able to look back on this amazing chapter and say ‘I did that.’” All her friends care about is that classic concept of domesticity. For them, that’s happiness. But not Midge. After Petra writes off this period as nothing more than a chapter, Midge knows what her younger self was saying. Which is exactly what she talks about in the finale, during her climatic “four minute” set. She isn’t that woman. Her path was always going to be her own.
