Does The Middle Deserve To Rise To The Top?
Show: The Middle
Premiered: Fall 2009
Why Was It Made? Everybody Loves Raymond ended and Patricia Heaton needed a job. Back To You wasn't it. But putting her together with a pair of producers who'd written together since college (Eileen Heisler and DeAnn Heline) in a post-Roseanne working-class sitcom for our new recessionary times is just crazy enough to work.
Why Did I Stop Watching? Heaton's persona as a defiant conservative -- remember when she went after Sandra Fluke? she'd been an outspoken anti-choice activist for a while before that -- really turned me off as I watched the pilot. I'd also just seen another new ABC comedy with one dumb curly-headed kid and I decided to stick with Modern Family.
Why Give It Another Shot? Earlier this spring, The New Yorker's Emily Nussbaum raved about The Middle, and since all the sitcoms I watch are in reruns for the summer, I might be looking for a new one.
What Aspects Of The Latest Episode Would Seem To Invite Further Viewing? Sue (Eden Sher), Heaton's character's daughter, is as endearingly goofy an optimist as Nussbaum's review promised: her response to a gruff science teacher (Roger Rees), who smacks her down over her exuberant pen choices, is to do an experiment to determine whether smiles are contagious, and spends half the episode smiling at everyone she sees with a terrifying rictus of overdone enthusiasm. And Heaton's politics aren't impinging upon her character as much as they seemed to when I watched the pilot -- but this episode might have been light on her character, Frankie.
What Aspects Of The Latest Episode Discourage Further Viewing? Neil Flynn is obviously great, but less of Frankie meant less of his Mike, Frankie's husband. Also: Brick, the family's youngest child, is supposed to be young enough not to be in middle school yet; Atticus Shaffer, who plays him, is quite a bit older than his character but (sort of) appears younger due to osteogenesis imperfecta. We're all used to seeing twenty- or even thirty-something actors playing high-school students, but other than crow's feet, the physical differences between older teenagers and young adults are negligible. Watching an actor who's obviously a teenager playing a prepubescent child is distracting, and feels exploitative.
Final Verdict: To describe The Middle as a gentle family comedy seems like a dis, but it's a sincere compliment: its best moments remind me of my beloved Aliens In America, which I miss to this day. And since I definitely have a dearth of comedy on my summer DVR, I will at least watch a few more and see if it takes.