I first saw only bite of this in its early days and right away I thought of Malcolm in the Middle, just like I thought of Office Space when I heard of The Office. I didn't know what such a title referred to. Like the young John Cusack comedy, Better Off Dead, this show features a family they SAY you can't help but relate to but the family is completely wacky and peculiar. As the show is narrated by the Mom, she isn't that good of a mother and forgets important dates and other facets relating to her kids and sometimes makes sarcastic, tongue-in-cheek remarks about her kids like she wants them out of the house. Her Husband rarely shows much affection, while claiming to be emotionally closed off, and is generally matter-of-fact. I haven't watched a lot of current TV shows and I don't know when the TV trope ended of making the dad a Doofus, often a self-centered one, but I found it nice that this dad wasn't that way. Axl is amusing for his extreme sloppiness, and sarcasm, laziness and narcissism. He often eats like he was raised by wolves and walks around in his underwear! He occasionally acts like an amusing dimwit. Sue is often the funniest of the three with her sweet, perky spirited energy, complimented by loud, emotional theatrical drama and her fixation with binders and thinking of her plushes as being alive. Brick, the quirky prodigy can also be quite a knee slapper with his obsession with his intermittent ticks of whispering back what he says, and other ticks that came and went, e.g. shouting "You're gonna love of our pizza" from a commercial out of nowhere, and randomly going, "Whoop!", as well as his expertise and intense interest in fonts and reading, as well as his awkwardness and nasal voice. Sue has a handful of boyfriends who almost all are very nice, funniest being the doofus with little hair. The "Middle" referes to living in the middle of the country, middle-age, and perhaps being lower middle-class. Thought that seems like an overstatement with Axl's trashy tendencies, never eating on the dinner table, and the parents at one point having "like 8 dollars" in the checking account. They also have that annoying "perfect" family next door, like the Kremps on the Goldbergs with another young man who woos Sue. Also adding to the wackiness is their low-class, ruffian neighbors with all boys, one who was 8 years old or so and wore diapers, whose abrasive mother is played by Brooke Shields. There is an interesting set of occasional guest stars with the show being under the radar: Dick Van Dyke, Jerry Van Dyke, Jack MacBrayer, Norm Macdonald, and Brian Doyle Murray.
Review of The Middle
