Well, we're several episodes into The Middleman, and the quality and quantity of entertainment has remained high. This show is now quite solidly a recommendation.
About the only thing I'd remark on that I didn't touch on before is an element of the directing, where it often seems like there's a pause between ridiculous things, where the characters let the anticipation of the next ridiculous thing sink in before they leap into it. That acknowledgement of ridiculousness is a difficult thing to pull off. Jack Benny and Bob Newhart built a solid chunk of their careers on that pause, but they were (mostly) the straight men around whom ridiculousness swirled; it becomes much harder when you have to be able to both acknowledge and partake in the ridiculousness.
I dunno. I could be reading into it too much. It could just be the characters catching their breath between extended rapid-fire speeches. Which I love, by the way, all that verbal acuity, all that elaboration of phrasal structure; this is to, say, Two and a Half Men as Pei's Bank of China is to a tract house.
I also love the motif of repeating exposition, e.g. "the illegal sublet Wendy shares with another photogenic artist" or this week's description of the Pirate Chest, repeated every time the Pirate Chest was referenced, in dialog or in captions.
Posted by Greg at July 2, 2008 12:20 AM
"Holy coinkydink, Batman!" made my night.
Anyone who comes with the idea of a luchador with a hundred masks getting cursed by an Aztec mummy into becoming a hundred luchadores wearing identical masks qualifies as a mad genius (as if the previous episode's concept of the DevilSuccubus Wears Prada wasn't indication enough). I definitely have to pick up the trade now.
The balance between wackiness and inanity is hard to pull off - timing, naturally, is everything, and The Middleman has managed to straddle that fine line well so far.
What about pointed sticks?
"There's a Middle-Jet?"
"What kind of outfit do you think this is? It's right above the Middle-Boat."
The one thing, well, technically two things, that worries me is that after three eps, two were both written by the creator and, as I understand it, based on 2 of the 3 stories done in the comics version.
And those two struck me as significantly better than the other episode. So I'm worried that this might be either/both a very individual writer's show and/or some scripts are benefiting from being what amount to second drafts with a lot of time between comic and script allowing for improvement.
I'd really like to see both an ep written by someone else up to the quality of the pilot and Sensei Ping episodes, as well as one up to that level not based on a comic story before I'm completely happy with the show's long term prospects.