Shirley Maisel

Shirley is Joel's mother, a Queens housewife who runs her household and her opinions with equal ferocity. She frets loudly over her son's marriage, her grandchildren's upbringing, and anything else within shouting distance, delivering advice as though it were oxygen. Warmth and interference are, for her, the same gesture.

Caroline Aaron plays her at full volume without ever making her a cartoon — the neediness and the love are tangled together so tightly you can't pull them apart. She barrels into scenes talking, and the show trusts her rhythm completely, letting a woman who never stops to breathe become one of its funniest, most human presences.