THE MIDDLEMAN
Season 1 Episode 6
“The Boy-Band Superfan Interrogation”
Written by Jordan Rosenberg
Directed by Norman Buckley


“Wow, there really is a hole in space.”
“With a duck caught inside.”

Ah, now this is my favourite episode thus far.
Yes, the Dub Dub personal life subplot (Pip copies Wendy’s paintings and passes them off as his own) doesn’t mesh very well with the main MiddlePlot, but this one’s got some killer lines, hilarious moments, the fate of the world—and Ida—in the balance, and, oh yes, boy bands…


“How could you be alive and not know Varsity Fanclub, Dub Dub?”
“How can you know Varsity Fanclub and not want to end it all?”

Varsity Fanclub (“… only the most popular boy band in the world!”), comprised of “Jake the crooner, Thomas the heartthrob, Bobby the street tough, Drew the charmer, and the requisite man of mystery, David,” are at the heart of this episode’s MiddlePlot, and it’s a hoot and a half.
I won’t get into the deets (as Pip would put it), but suffice it to say that not only does the episode maybe-reference SF TV series V, it also most definitely references A New Hope and George Lucas.


“But I’ve always been fascinated by the ability of pre-assembled sets of sub-masculine archetypes to tug at the heartstrings of a 12- to 17-year-old fan base.”
“Funny, I’ve always been fascinated by their ability to bring up my lunch.”

Granted, the subplot does seem rather removed from the MiddlePlot, but it does contain some thoughts on art and artists, which racks up some more points for this one.
Still and all, the star here is Jordan Rosenberg’s sinisterly laughable take on pre-packaged popular music, and how the fate of the world may very well lie in the hands of the tween set.
Be afraid.
Be very afraid.

“Only tween-age screams of ecstasy have the strength to cut a hole in space itself! How could I not see it before?”

Parting shot: Just as Ali Damji owned his scene in “The Flying Fish Zombification,” Alan Smyth’s High Aldwin, Supreme Commander of the Clotharian Rebel Fleet just slays…


Parting shot 2: Jordan Rosenberg is, like the mighty monster that is Gree-Joe Marks-Watch, also a Lost alum; Rosenberg co-wrote Season 3’s “Par Avion” with Christina M. Kim.

(Images courtesy of abcfamily.go.com and themiddleblog.livejournal.com.)

THE MIDDLEMAN
Season 1 Episode 5
“The Flying Fish Zombification”
Written by Andy Reaser
Directed by Allan Kroeker

So the MiddlePlot in this episode involves a quasi-zombie outbreak, courtesy of the Peruvian flying pike, while the Dub Dub personal life subplot involves “Art Crawl,” the regular art show Wendy and her gang of bohemian art fiends indulge in.


Given that there were not only quasi-zombies in this one, but also some airborne aquatic meanies (a tribute to James Cameron’s deathless Piranha II: Flying Killers?), I had high hopes for it.
And yeah, it did play better than either of the two previous episodes, but it still lacked some, ahem, bite.
And Pip (The Bold and the Beautiful’s Drew Tyler Bell; also in Victor Salva’s Jeepers Creepers II), the talentless would-be artist/son of the owner of the building Wendy has her illegal sublet in, is a less-than-inspired character. (I’m already having trouble with Noser, people…)


There were some great bits though, like Ali Damji as Rod Argent, whose brand new wife just got all zombie on him, and !!!! (Matt Keeslar, who really just owns the Middleman role, does a fantastic !!!!)
For those, I’m grateful.
But the whole sub-MiddlePlot involving Sensei Ping’s training of Wendy seemed a tad odd considering we never see Sensei Ping at all…
Hurrrr…


Ah, well, let me just accentuate the positive (something I’m sure Dr. Gil might say, if he were still with us): this one’s better than the past two episodes…

(Images courtesy of abcfamily.go.com.)

THE MIDDLEMAN
Season 1 Episode 4
“The Manicoid Teleportation Conundrum”
Written by Tracey Stern
Directed by Jeremiah Chechik


So Ben, Wendy’s “sexually ambiguous doorknob of a boyfriend,” posts that video he took of his breakup with Wendy (the one he claimed was for a class project) on the Internet, and it’s gotten 750,000 hits in a single day.
And that’s just the start of it…
Then, while Wendy’s cyberspace humiliation rages, she’s in for a Pop Quiz Day, courtesy of the Middleman, while some curiously odd-looking rich people are disappearing, only to reappear on the exact spot of their disappearance, minus their heads…


On the heels of the previous episode’s luchador hijinx, this one isn’t quite the quantum improvement I was hoping for.
Yes, there’re some references to Tears For Fears and Italian zombie movies (in particular, Zombi 2; go, Lucio Fulci!), as well as some 24, but those don’t a good episode make.
And the Dr. Phil jab really isn’t all that funny either…


(Middleman images courtesy of abcfamily.go.com; Zombi 2 25th Anniversary Special Edition 2-Disc Set DVD cover art courtesy of amazon.com.)

THE MIDDLEMAN
Season 1 Episode 3
“The Sino-Mexican Revelation”
Teleplay by Javier Grillo-Marxuach
Directed by Jeremiah Chechik

Hey, the Sensei Ping they make mention of in the Pilot? It’s Mark Dacascos! With a luchador mask on!
So that’s a neat bit of casting in an episode that was, sadly, not as enjoyable as The Middleman’s first two outings.


There were some pluses, mind.
The nice opening sequence in particular, where we see Wendy’s CrapMobile, a Hruck Bugbear (“the pinnacle of Balkan Cold War engineering”) and get a “Girls On Film” reference.
We also get a glimpse of a Middleman-that-might-have-been, and later on, begin to get a sense of what possible characteristics make for a Middleman candidate.
The promise of those intriguing bits though, doesn’t quite lead to an effective episode.


And it’s not the patently ridiculous plot involving luchadores; that I can get behind 100%. Luchadores are cool.
And the patently fake fight scenes? Like the show’s low-rent CGI, they only serve to heighten The Middleman’s charming B-movie appeal.
It’s the overkill of repetition, whether of characters’ self-descriptive declarations (I hope to be spared of Lacey’s “confrontational, spoken-word performance artist” schtick in subsequent episodes) or descriptions of places of interest (the Booty Chest schtick).
The inexplicable display of various time zones also got old pretty quick in this one.


It saddened me that the mighty monster that is Gree-Joe Marks-Watch wrote this installment. You’d think that the show’s creator would give us the best episodes.
I can only hope that this worked better on the comic book page (due to the teleplay credit, I assume this, like the Pilot, was a script adapted from a particular Middleman comic).
On the small screen, however, it just doesn’t pop.
Even the debut of the MiddleJet didn’t really liven things up.

(Images courtesy of abcfamily.go.com, io9.com, and themiddleblog.livejournal.com.)

THE MIDDLEMAN
Season 1 Episode 2
“An Accidental Occidental Conception”
Written by Sarah Watson
Directed by Michael Zinberg

“Our mandate is to protect the people from threats infra-, extra-, and juxtaterrestrial; not to become consumed by the mundane problems of everyday life.”

Oh, lookie! A new opening credits sequence. It’s cool! And all sorts’a yellow!


Even as Wendy has a spat with her best friend, “confrontational, spoken-word performance artist” Lacey (Brit Morgan), an inexplicable mudslide in The Terracotta Warrior Tea House and Dim Sum Restaurant puts the Middleman right up against his very own Kryptonite: magic.
So a supernatural consultant is required.

Enter Roxy Wasserman (Elaine Hendrix, who played Joan of Arcadia’s science teacher, Ms. Lischak) of Famouse Fashion House, renowned fashion designer and reformed succubus, who employs a whole gaggle of demons who’ve turned a new leaf.
Only with Roxy’s help can the Middleman prevent a thousand-year rain of fire from coming to pass.


So the laughs and the pop culture references continue to zing by, as do the humourous rat-a-tat lines of dialogue (“You let yourself become distracted and the next thing you know, a geological rift opens and the city’s overrun by three-toed hominids who once battled man for dominance while you’ve got your tighty-whities around your ankles.”).
And yes, the strangely appropriate Power Rangers-grade CGI keeps on comin’.

We also get some new bits, both interestingly informative (the Middleman is the only Middleman in the world) and terribly, revealingly amusing (like a high school 1991 remembrance that partially explains why the Middleman is the way he is), as well as what could be a new recurring character, Trevor (Monarch Cove’s Matt Funke), the “barely reformed” demon who could be Lacey’s new love interest.
Hendrix as Roxy is also a spot-on plus. While her eccentricities as Ms. Lischak always felt particularly contrived, making the character an ill fit in Joan of Arcadia, the overall goofiness of The Middleman affords Hendrix a space in which her just-north-of-the-top performance feels right at home.


The Middleman’s rich, people, a light, fun, pop culture confection that gets a nice groove on when it’s so inclined.
You should really check it out, if you haven’t already.

“Look, I’m a multitasker. Ability to defeat evil and deal with emo at the same time. It’s like my superpower.”

(Images courtesy of abcfamily.go.com and pinkraygun.com.)

THE MIDDLEMAN
Season 1 Episode 1
“The Pilot Episode Sanction”
Teleplay by Javier Grillo-Marxuach
Directed by Jeremiah Chechik

“You know how in comic books, there’s all kinds of mad scientists and aliens and androids and monsters and all of them want to either destroy or take over the world?”
“In comic books, sure.”
“Well, it really does work like that.”


Wendy Watson (Natalie Morales) is a comic-loving, Xbox-playing artist whose temp job inadvertently brings her into contact with the Middleman (The Last Days of Disco’s Matt Keeslar), whose job it is to deal with comic book evil.
You see, all those wonky four-colour baddies—the monsters and aliens and mad doctors and killer robots? Well, contrary to what straight society wishes us to believe, and lining up precisely with what we’ve always known, they actually exist.
And the Middleman’s our non-spandex wearing hero.
And Wendy? Well, she’s about to be the Middleman’s sidekick. (Though I imagine Wendy would much rather be called, I dunno, his assistant?)


That’s ABC Family’s new show, The Middleman, in a nutshell.
Based on a comic book written by former Lost writer, Javier Grillo-Marxuach (which, if memory serves, is pronounced “Ha-vee-air Gree-joe Marks-watch”), The Middleman is a fun and irreverent romp that finds all the neat hilarity in comic book tropes and pop culture fixtures without making fun of them.
This first episode alone (directed by Jeremiah Chechik, whose feature film work includes Benny & Joon and the Diabolique redux) takes on a convention beloved of DC Comics, and is a great introduction to the wacky world of the Middleman.


Aside from the fact that Grillo-Marxuach’s writing is silly-sharp-funny, Morales and Keeslar are well cast, fully getting the tone of the show, not always as simple a task as it may sound; sometimes, there’s only a narrow margin between loving, good-natured, humorous homage, and spoof/parody.
Not only are Morales and Keeslar amusing and engaging protagonists, they also prove to be adept at delivering sometimes incredulously goofy lines at a mile a minute.
And sure, the CGI is distinctly TV-grade, but the fakey look of the effects just adds to the B-movie charm of the show’s premise.

Admittedly, this doesn’t leave the gate with quite as much propulsion as, say, the Heroes Pilot, and the show does appear to have some minor kinks it’ll need to work out (hopefully sooner rather than later), but if you’re a comic book geek, The Middleman is definitely a show to be checked out; if you know how to have fun with your comics, I’d like to think you’ll have fun with this too.

Parting shot: 24 fans, take note: Mary Lynn Rajskub shows up in the Pilot as Dr. Gibbs of Simionics Animal Laboratories.

(Images courtesy of abcfamily.go.com.)