Season Four
The Analyst / Arthur’s Medical Convention / Arthur Gets A Partner / Walter’s Ethics / Poor Albert / The Christmas Party / The Case Of The Broken Punch Bowl / Walter’s Stigma / Maude’s Mood Pt. 1 & 2 / Tuckahoe Bicentennial / Mrs Naugatuck’s Citizenship / Maude’s Nephew / Maude’s Rejection
Examining and explaining a character’s persona is a risky move for a sitcom, where we learn about characters through their reactions, and their foibles and eccentricities are an essential part of what makes them so funny.
While degree of exploration is present in most if not all episodes here, there are two key stories over three episodes in which examining Maude’s psyche is the raison d’etre, but for this viewer one works far better than the other.
Starting with the second of the two stories, and I have mixed feelings. There’s no getting round the fact that the
Maude’s Mood two-parter is one of the social issue storylines which is something of a Maude trademark: the most notable of its kind being
Maude’s Dilemma). While
Maude’s Dilemma was famous enough for me to have heard of it many years ago, and I’d seen a passing mention about
Walter’s Problem when considering watching the series, I had no idea
Maude’s Mood existed. This made for a different viewing experience to previous “Very Special Episode” material in the series.
On the one hand, I applaud the series broaching the topic of bipolar disorder. It’s done as well as I would expect from this series, with excellent performances from the cast.
In addition to this, the diagnosis fits the character of Maude whose behaviour and persona displays characteristics that could be explained by having such a condition. It even fits the “uncompromising, enterprising, anything but tranquillising” lyrics of the series’ theme. But this is also why it’s very problematic for me.
The thing is, Maude is a sitcom character, where the viewer would expect the brush to paint in broader strokes. Most of the characters present here - as well as 95% of characters one would see in
any sitcom - are quirky eccentrics whose responses frequently compound situations in which they find themselves and make life difficult all round. Using logic, any number of these characters could be given mental health diagnoses which explain the very things which make them funny. But the question isn’t if they could, but rather if they
should.
I’ll be frank: Maude’s diagnosis has spoilt my viewing, particularly since it’s specifically mentioned that she was initially diagnosed a number of years before this but rejected it. This retroactively puts a new perspective on everything I’ve watched to this point. Situations and behaviours I’ve found hilarious seem somehow less funny when I factor in that it’s informed or perpetuated by a character’s mental health condition which isn’t a good feeling. I appreciate this could taken as the point: in real life, such a diagnosis
will make sense of what’s gone before, which is why this would fit a drama series really well. But I just don’t want a sitcom character’s wackiness explained away so late in the day.
In principal, I have no real problem with such an issue being explored, but not this way. In
The Golden Girls’, Sophia’s lack of filter was explained as being an effect of a stroke she’d suffered, but the viewer was aware of this right out of the gate and understood this was what part of made Sophia the character she was. In
Please Like Me, Rose’s bipolar disorder was at times hilarious and at times absolutely heartbreaking but, again, it was made explicitly clear to the viewer why she behaved as she did.
In short (
*too late*) I just didn’t care for it being shoehorned in after three and a half seasons with the suggestion that it’s been a “thing” this entire time. The only possible way it could have worked at this point would have been for a character other than Maude - the series’ linchpin - to be given the diagnosis. Even in this run of episodes, Mrs Naugatuck’s series of TIAs worked fine, partly because it didn’t change what had come before (the TIAs were a new thing, not something that explained away her previous wackiness), but also because she’s not the title character.
One area where
Maude’s Moods worked was its placement in relation to
The Analyst. I’m not sure how far in advance certain arcs were planned with this series, but I can look Maude running a gamut of emotions in The Analyst and see ground being laid for the diagnosis, so this is one of the few episodes which is complemented and perhaps even enhanced by Maude’s upcoming diagnosis.
Happily, for me,
The Analyst is a far more successful diversion into light drama and character exploration. Once again, I was aware of this episode ahead of time. The knowledge that Maude featured a number of two-handers and even a one-hander was a big selling point for me.
When done well, I’m very partial to an episode presented as a theatrical piece with a tiny cast and playing out in real time. Many of my favourite British sitcoms feature lengthy scenes - and occasionally entire episodes - with one or two characters, and in soap opera a number of my favourite
EastEnders episodes have been such episodes (the first, a 1986 two-hander with Den and Angie, was my introduction to the concept).
It’s fair to say hopes were high for
The Analyst, and it lived up to those hopes The writing was strong and the execution worked as well as possible considering it ran on a channel featuring commercial breaks. Most of all, Bea’s performance was compelling. This was an opportunity for her to really tap into her timing and flair for both comedy and pathos, and the result was electric. The speech about her father not noticing when she stopped kissing him goodnight was one of the more stagey moments but she nailed it so perfectly it’s also a rare example of a sitcom hitting me in the tear ducts.
I noticed the episode following
The Analyst had Maude and Viv effectively placed in the B-story, with Walter and Arthur’s hotel shenanigans being placed front and centre. I assume this was deliberately done for practicality, to give Bea time to focus on her solo episode, and perhaps to allow cast and crew to prepare and even film scenes from the next episode while
The Analyst was in production.
Outside of this, it’s been business as usual, with the more standard fare as funny and easily digestible as always. There’s been the now-standard annual song and dance episode (at this point, I’d miss them if a season didn’t feature one); Walter’s arrest; Maude being devastated that a writer friend of Viv’s didn’t like her; and the death of one of Maude’s ex-husbands, Albert.
The Case Of The Broken Punch Bowl was nicely done, with the same scene at Arthur’s party described to Maude in several different ways by different characters, each accompanied by a flashback of their interpretation. It’s not that unusual by today’s standards, but I would think it would have been fairly innovative by the standards of the time.
One more thought: Maude’s “God’ll get you for that ____” is much associated with the character - so much that I knew of it before ever watching, and thought it a natural for the thread title. In reality, it hasn’t been directly said since quite early on (possibly as early as the latter part of Season One). I imagine it must have taken off pretty much immediately because it’s taken as understood that the audience knows what Maude means when she’s put an episode-appropriate spin on the catchphrase without actually saying those words. It’s another example of a series not taking the easy way out even when it comes to guaranteed laughs.
