The Finale of "The Middle"

Tomorrow, after nine seasons, ABC's "The Middle" - the only sitcom I watch any more - comes to an end.  "The Middle," of course, concerns an Indiana family who can't win for losing and try to muddle through with hilarious consequences.  The series finale will pick up with Axl preparing to move to Denver for a new job and Frankie (his mom) in a tizzy over it, while Sue prepares to spend a summer without her would-be boyfriend Sean.  Or will she?

I still find it hard to believe this show is ending, but unless you're talking about hip-hop, all things must come to an end.  Among the things I'm going to miss about "The Middle" are Brick's quirky obsession with books and with mundane things like print fonts and lawn chairs, as well as dad Mike's deadpan stoicism.  I'll also miss laughing over the quilt stored in the oven and the bedroom wall made of poster board.  But the thing I'm probably going to miss the most is Sue - sweet, perky, Heck daughter Sue, with her over-caffeinated optimism.  As played by Eden Sher, Sue resembled Janet Evans with a hormone imbalance!

And after everything I've written here about Janet Evans, you know I mean that as a compliment. :-)

Back later with some comments about the last episode.

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.)    

Odd "Man" Out

Ninety percent of all of the programs ever aired on American television, we are told, fail. And, apparently, 94 percent of these failed shows star Teri Polo. :-(

My favorite actress of my own generation appears in another TV series, and it looks like she is about to become associated with yet another flop, even though this series was initially expected to become a breakout hit of the 2011-12 season. "Man Up!," which debuted on Tuesdays on ABC at 8:30 PM Eastern - coincidentally, the same time slot that was once filled by Teri Polo's underappreciated sitcom "I'm With Her" - is a show that tries to find humor in a group of three men who try to hold on to some shred of masculinity in an increasingly feminized world. But these men have no real manliness about them, which their girlfriends or wives are happy to take advantage of.

I watched one episode, and despite a clever idea or two, it didn't make me laugh the way any of ABC's Wednesday night sitcoms do. It didn't make me want to change the channel, either. In fact, apart from making me want to watch Teri Polo, it didn't make me want to do anything. The writing is so-so, the performances are competent, and the execution of the show's premise - indeed, the premise itself - made me shrug at best. I really don't care much about the male characters and I find their feeble expressions of masculinity more static than amusing. In other words, it's as unengaging as "Better With You," an ABC one-season wonder from last season you already know about.

To make a long story short, the reviews have mostly been bad, and it's been struggling in the ratings - so much, that ABC doesn't even mention "Man Up!" in promos for its Tuesday night lineup. Indeed, they're already promoting "Work It," the show that will fill the Tuesday 8:30 PM Eastern time slot in January, pretty much sealing the fate of Teri Polo's latest sitcom and rendering it as her latest sitbomb. It didn't even premiere on ABC until October 18, meaning it will have only lasted two months.

So once again, Teri Polo will be joining the unemployment line, and, once again, her fans will be wondering when the heck a talented and versatile actress like she is finally going to have a hit series. "Sports Night," which first introduced her to television audiences, was a critically acclaimed ABC show that went nowhere with Nielsen families. "I'm With Her," which had male characters more likeable than those in "Man Up!," was a good ABC show that I believe would have been a great one if given the chance, but it was doomed by being broadcast opposite Fox's "American Idol" at a time when that was the hottest show on television. And the less said of Teri's "Wedding Bells" series on Fox, the better. And I'm not counting the two failed pilot shows she did on top of that.

So we Teri Polo fans will enter 2012 with the same frustration that Charlie Brown always felt when his favorite baseball player, Joe Shlabotnik, kept getting sent back to the minor leagues. And Polo herself will enter the new year feeling as though Lucy Van Pelt pulled the football away from her again. For the time being, the 42-year-old actress may have to resign herself to being a doyenne of Lifetime TV movies despite her natural ability to carry a theatrical release. She's better than TV actresses have to be and so deserves more time on the silver screen. In fact, I would insist that she's too good for TV and so should concentrate on films - but Teri, no more "Fockers" movies, please!

Fans will note that most of Polo's broadcast TV work has been with ABC, so if she does stick with the small screen, maybe she can get on a series that airs on another network. Overall, I'm certain that she won't disappear entirely - unless she ends up on an NBC series, of course.

Oh yeah, "Work It." That's a show about men who dress as women to get office jobs because they need the work. If it sounds like a "Bosom Buddies" rip-off, that's because people who have seen it say it is. Something tells me we won't see another Tom Hanks come out of this. Or anyone to draw comparisons to Dustin Hoffman, either.