This brings us to the highlight of the hour. After a slow-burn buildup of four seasons, some very blue things go down in a very blue hotel room. 

The thing about sexual tension as potent as what sizzles between Lenny and Midge is the fear that once they act on it, it won’t meet our expectations. But who were we kidding? Luke Kirby and Rachel Brosnahan have spent the past four seasons nailing onstage comedy acts — they know a thing or two about delivery! And deliver they certainly do. Midge returns to Wolford — a club that she’s transformed from a sleazy strip bar to a ridiculously elaborate burlesque show — for her very funny act about death and grieving. She pays a touching tribute to the invisible, silent power of female nurses, then heads backstage where Lenny Bruce awaits with an apology for that time she scraped him off an NYC sidewalk and he lashed out at her. It’s pretty solid, as far as groveling goes, especially since he comes with the gift of an incredible gig: with him selling out Carnegie Hall, Tony Bennett needs a new opener and he talked her up. Before she can offer an answer (which we later learn is a ridiculously resounding “no”), we learn that the classy strip show isn’t snazzy enough to be legal. I guess no one told the police about Boise’s fizzy pink drink because the place gets raided — a scene very familiar to Lenny, who whisks Midge off into the night.

It’s a f***ing miraculous thing, and it happens so very suddenly. One moment we’re in a chaotic police raid, the next they’re running through the blizzarding streets of New York and finally, they’re up in Lenny’s hotel room, drink in hand, sitting opposite each other with a bed in the background. Dear reader, I gasped. Just last season, these two peered into a hotel room and considered turning their friendship into more, but something held Midge back. And now we know exactly what. Before they cross the room to one another, Midge has one simple request: “I need you to look me in the eye and promise that you will never, ever forget that I am very, very funny.” And she means it. After a brief jest to laugh it off, Lenny goes solemnly serious too, and only then do they finally spend a night together. But because the good can’t come without the harsh, all of this is capped off by a sobering moment: Midge wanders into Lenny’s bathroom and finds his heroin stash.