Stars: 5 out of 5Pros: Wonderfully clever show with good stories and laughs.
Cons: This is all we'll get
The Bottom Line:
Your second chance to
Watch this first rate show.
Do not
Hesitate to watch
The Middleman Was Sheer Eloquence in its Simplicity
As a TV fan, I get used to heart break. I find a new show, fall completely in love
with it, then watch as the ratings tank and the show gets canceled. And yet, I keep doing it over and over
again. I sat down and
watched the pilot of The Middleman on a whim, and I was immediately
hooked. But even airing on ABC Family, this
show couldn't get high enough ratings to last beyond 12 episodes.
Wendy Watson (Natalie Morales) is a fresh out of college
artist paying her bills by working at temp agencies. And she's just had a bad day. An experiment goes wrong in the lab at her current
assignment, making a giant monster. She
barely escapes from that, only to have her boyfriend break up with her on
camera for a class assignment.
It's then that her roommate Lacey (Brit Morgan) lets her
know about the job offer from the Jolly Fats Wehawkins Temp Agency. But when Wendy arrives, she discovers that
this agency is really a cover for a mysterious organization. The job offer is as an apprentice to The
Middleman (Matt Keeslar). The job? Fighting aliens and monsters and anything
else that pops up and keeping a tight lid on it so that the rest of the
population doesn't freak out.
While Wendy really does want to work on her art, she takes
the job. But can she balance a social
life and her true calling with saving the world?
How do I really describe this show? It is part monster of the week, part
comedy. I have seen it likened to Men in
Black. While I've never seen those
movies, what I know about them makes me think that's probably a good
comparison. Yes, I'd get caught up in
the suspense of the episode, but I'd also be laughing my head off at times at
the witty dialogue or strange situations the characters were in. Heck, Wendy and The Middleman face off
against masked Mexican wrestlers, zombie fish, a boy band (made up of aliens),
and even a cursed tuba and vampire puppets.
The series was originally based on a series of comic
books. What amazed me when I read them
recently was how much more developed the characters were in the series. Of course, the comic books only told three of
the stories we get in this set, so that allows plenty of time for the
characters to truly develop. I enjoyed
seeing Wendy try to balance her friends and her new job. And, of course, there's the constant lying
that any superhero has to do.
And the show falls into the fast paced, witty dialogue brand
that seems popular today. The quips fly
fast and furious. Since The Middleman
(that is the only name we get for him) doesn't know who it is who pays the
bills, or him, he and the office robot/super computer Ida (Mary Pat Gleason)
have started calling their boss O2StK (that's Organization too Secret to
Know). Ida is full of quips and one
liners, usually at Wendy's expense. But
Wendy can give as good as she gets. This
show used science fiction and super hero conventions while mocking them. Several of the villains give a monologue when
they get caught, often starting with, "The plan was sheer eloquence in its
simplicity." Heck, they even having
fun with the timing. While some episodes
play it straight, other include tags like "breakfast time,"
"lunch time," and "nap time" to show the passing of
time. One even used a different time
zone (unrelated to the story) to show every major shift in time.
Of course, the sharp writing was helped by the acting and
special effects. There were some pretty
strange things in this show, and I bought them.
Maybe they could have been better, but it is a minor quibble. The acting was always spot on, and made me
lover the characters even more. I
especially loved Mary Pat Gleason who made Ida such a cold, sarcastic robot.
The set includes the twelve episodes on four discs in wide
screen and full surround. And it is
packed with extras. We've got a gag
real, deleted and alternative scenes, the table read of one of the episodes,
behind the scenes photographs, and audio commentaries. At the recently completed ComicCon, the cast
reunited to do a table read of the unfilmed thirteenth episode. Honestly, I wish they had waited another
month or two to give us that as a bonus feature as well.
Based on how low the ratings were, I have a feeling you
missed The Middleman when it aired. Now
is the time to correct that egregious oversight.
Episodes:
1. The Pilot Episode Sanction
2. The Accidental Occidental Conception
3. The Sino-Mexican Revelation
4. The Manicoid Teleportation Conundrum
5. The Flying Fish Zombification
6. The Boy-Band Superfan Interrogation
7. The Cursed Tuba Contingency
8. The Ectoplasmic Panhellenic Investigation
9. The Obsolescent Cryogenic Meltdown
10. The Vampiric Puppet Lamentation
11. The Clotharian Contamination Protocol
12. The Palindrome Reversal Palindrome
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