The End Of "The Middle"

"The Middle," that underappreciated (when compared to "Modern Family") ABC sitcom starring Patricia Heaton about an utterly hapless and disaster-prone blue-collar Midwestern family, will begin its ninth season next month (October 3 is the premiere date - as they say, check local listings for air time), and, regrettably, it will be its last.  The show's creators decided that now was a good time to stop.

I can see why.  Frankie and Mike Heck's children are getting old, and, as you may have already noticed, so are the jokes.  Axl has graduated from college and now has to make his way in the world as his own man - and trust me, there's not much humor in a subject like that.  Sue is now a college junior, while Brick - that cute, quirky kid we all remember from his grade school days - is a high school sophomore and his voice is beginning to change.  And how many more work mishaps can Frankie and Mike have?  Simply put, the comic possibilities of the Heck family are close to being exhausted, and show creators Eileen Heisler and DeAnn Heline (who based Orson, the fictional Indiana town the show is set in, on the real Indiana town of Jasper - Heline is from Muncie) are right to end it now, while it's still funny.

"The Middle" is a relatable show to anyone who's had to muddle through bad breaks in small-town or suburban America - namely, almost all of us - and its comic twists and turns are hilarious enough to avoid the use of a laugh track (which is dumb anyway),  thanks to the idiosyncratic traits of the characters.  You have Frankie's overworrying, Mike's lack of emotion, guitar-burnout Axl's failure to connect with reality, and Brick's introverted nature and obsession with books and print fonts, as well as his penchant for lowering his head and repeating in a whisper the last few words of a sentence.  But Sue, with her eternally and unrealistically optimistic outlook - punctuated by a record of failure that doesn't get her down - takes the cake. As played by Eden Sher, Sue is a bundle of nerdy, nervy energy that offers light in an otherwise depressing situation.  

Of course, the Hecks have had to deal with their own shortcomings even while being reminded how imperfect they are by the quintessential perfect family, the Donahues, those well-traveled, well-heeled overachievers, with their perfect matriarch Nancy Donahue (who is not, as far as I can make out, named for the veteran fashion model of the same name, who of course is a friend of mine).  But when they have to deal with the even more down-and-out and totally uncouth Glossner family (with a mom played by Brooke Shields), they're only reminded of how things could be much worse.

I'm going to miss "The Middle," and once it's gone, I won't have much to watch on TV.  "This Is Us" - that's it, really.  The only other TV programs  I watch anymore are documentaries, TV news broadcasts, and old reruns of "The Mary Tyler Moore Show," which, ironically, was set in a TV newsroom.   

(Oh, and also reruns of Bob Newhart's sitcom - not the 1980s show, the 1970s show with Suzanne Pleshette.)