Mrs. Maisel is a sharply written, legitimately funny series that centers white feminism in a way that erases the overt and profound racism of the time. The whole last season I found it profoundly distracting that the show basically retconned the time period in a way that presents the lead character as somehow suffering equal (if not more) discriminatory obstacles as a wealthy white woman (Jewish, sure, but let's be realistic here--her skin is the color of 2% milk) than the Black people inexplicably occupying seats at fine dining establishments or breaking into their own showbusiness careers in pre-Civil Rights Act NYC. At one point we see Black women mildly wandering and laughing in the background of prep school alumni events with their Easter-lily-skinned cohort. (I don't recall such diversity in wealthy prep schools for girls as the norm before OR after Brown v. Board...)
On the one hand, I genuinely like seeing Black actors get jobs as something other than "maid" or "waiter" in a show like this but I am also aware that people in this country look at TV or movies as accurate representations of history, which makes this show a fairly egregious example of whitewashing history to make, I assume, a largely white feminist target audience feel more comfortable watching a show set in a more “overtly” racist time—before Lee Atwater introduced the strategy of using euphemisms like “fiscal responsibility” and “urban” to replace the N-word.
If the show were historically accurate, we would have seen a VERY different response to a Black family walking into a fine dining/private club in 1960 NYC to have dinner. Even Maisel herself would have stopped talking to stare coldly at the interlopers who dared enter her white space without first putting on a waiter uniform.
Taika Waititi recently talked about this in a speech during The Hollywood Reporter’s DEI panel event, which encapsulates the problem with Mrs. Maisel that made me squirm: diversity and representation as quota instead of as opportunity to be in charge. It was distracting to see the time period misrepresented in a way that only serves to make white people feel less racist or give them a pathway toward telling themselves things weren’t as bad as they were (and are). But there are parts where I think the show got it right and, hopefully, took their lead from people who’d know better. For example, Susie Meyerson's secretary, Dinah Rutlege, is a solid character who makes sense (harder working, a lot smarter and more valuable than the white women who applied for the job) as a fully fleshed out person who is believable in the context of the show. She comes off as actually navigating a fundamentally segregationist NYC in an effort to carve out a living and, once she’s established, uses her access to Susie to start promoting talent from within her community. I believe this character in a way that I don’t believe a 1960’s fine dining establishment with white waiters serving Black folks at a table while all the rich white people carry on like nothing is out of place. That kind of thing doesn’t even happen today. If it did, the word “Karen” wouldn’t be in our lexicon.