THEWIDESCREEN review: Season 2 of ABC’s The Middle.
We’ll mention some season 2 classic episodes. This is a great season. Some gems include;
“Foreign Exchange” This episode features Franky, the mom, being sick of her kids, Axl, Brick and Sue fighting, so she gets the school to send them a foreign exchange student from some asian location, who then turns out to be a dud. Now the family is stuck with a terrible, boring foreign exchange student. Who never eats the frozen waffles Frankie gives him. The contrast between this funny asian dude and this midwestern american family is funny. An early season 2 gem.
Another highlight of season 2, episode titled “Mothers Day II” where Frankie, sick of being a mom, takes a day off to just do her, but quickly squanders the day away and time’s up on her free day. Dissapointed and in tears she pleads to get another shot at a day all to herself.
“The Bridge” is another season 2 classic. The episode features Brick being afraid of crossing bridges, and everyone in the family tying to get him to face his fears. Very good, simple stuff, and it fits the Brick character perfectly. Tactics tried include talking to, forcing him, getting Mike the dad to try, they never suceed, Brick fears the car collapsing the bridge and him drowning in water. Finally it is revealed that he can cross bridges if he walks across them so everytime they get to one, he’ll simply get out of the car first and walk along.
The Middle recently bowed out after 200 episodes and nine seasons. So let’s talk about it why here at THEWIDESCREEN we love this show so much. First of all it’s a sitcom but it looks great.It’s a sitcom but it’s single cam with great cinematography and use of heavy blacks and saturated colors that pop. Secondly the speed of it’s storytelling. Episodes go to commercials 4, 5 minutes in instead of the usual 7, 8 minutes in. Thirdly it has Patricia Heaton the perfect TV mom at the center from “Everybody Loves Raymond” fame, the perfect deadpan dad, the perfect trio of weird kids, and it has Eileen Heisler a sitcom vet writing for it.
Eileen Heisler wrote for Ellen, for Roseanne and for HIMYM. She’s from Chicago and she is a good writer so her show is good. She wrote the Roseanne episode “Looking For Loans” back in 1995. So she’s been around a long time. Sad to see this show get canceled, but it was suffering in the last seasons because of the growth spurt of its child actors, that’s the problem with these family sitcoms, they can’t run for more than a decade because the kids grow up, unlike shows like The Simpsons where they can stay 11 years old forever. Some have even said that this was the best sitcom of the last decade, but has largely gone unhyped by Emmy watchers.
Grade: Widescreen 16 X 9
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