Jmunney's Blog

Season Analysis: The Middle is the best family sitcom on the air right now, and it has probably set its sights on being one of the best of all time.

“The Friend”
I feel like I (and others) have so often mentioned how interesting the awkwardness of adult male friendship can be that it seems redundant to keep praising shows that present this situation.  But Neil Flynn actually does manage to bring something different to the table, by portraying Mike Heck as someone who honestly could not care any less about his lack of friends.  Unfortunately for him, he is married to Frankie Heck, who cares way too much about this sort of thing.  Fortunately for the viewer, the new neighbor that Frankie sets Mike up on a man date with is played by David Koechner.  Koechner is known for playing for off-putting weirdos, but here he is actually allowed to play someone who could comfortably live in suburbia, but he is like all his previous characters in that he follows one rule in life: “I’ll have a beer with anyone.”
The Axl-Cassidy (and Brick) subplot showed that (now dearly departed) relationship getting on well.  It deftly played with expectations, with Cassidy and Brick’s shared love of the Planet Nowhere series seemingly suggesting that Brick might develop a crush on his older brother’s girlfriend.  But instead, it turns into an opportunity for Brick to teach Axl about culture and make the latter more appealing to his lady.

Season Analysis: This was the first season that I watched The Middle.  I have heard from other critics who have been watching since the beginning that this was the best season yet.  I won’t argue with that assessment.

“The Play”

It seems that I have not given myself the opportunity to write articles here relating to Norm MacDonald very often, so let me just make it clear that Norm is by far one of my favorite comedians, so any episode of The Middle with Uncle Rusty is practically guaranteed to be a fine episode in my book.  Norm’s observational, satiric style is different than the normal comedic style of the Heck family’s misadventures, but his persona of being easygoing while also keeping himself at a slight remove actually fits his role of the flaky uncle and the show as a whole quite well.  His memorable quotes from “The Play” are plentiful enough to fill up an entire one of these posts, but let me just point out the one (“Coffee’s bad. Cigarettes are bad, too. I’m gonna go have both, but let me be a cautionary tale for you”) that best exemplifies how it seems like he is on a completely different plane of existence than the rest of the Hecks while actually fitting into their world quite seamlessly (which I guess is pretty much how it goes with absentee family members).  Now, as much as I love Norm and as big as a reason as he was for this episode being the best of the season, I do not want to imply that the usual stable of actors on The Middle are not able to hold their own, because they are, and in fact, they were all quite sharp in this episode.  Neil Flynn particularly raises his game whenever he has to confront Rusty and actually display some emotion.  And in the storyline that this episode gets its title from, Patricia Heaton and Eden Sher bring out the best in each other, as Frankie gets a major role in a community theatre production of The Wizard of Oz, while Sue gets cut from the show due to her crazy eyes.  Frankie is forced to hide the fact that she is still in the show, since this was something that she and Sue were supposed to be doing together.  It was nice to see Frankie actually let loose a bit, and just as amusing to see Sue go a bit dark (in a way that was not very threatening but was completely devastating) upon discovering her mother’s deception.