TV Watch: Seasonal notes -- "Better Call Saul," "The Middle," and of course "Mad Men"

It's the birth of the "real" Mike! (Foolish as those other guys are made to look, I'll bet the actors were thrilled to be doing a scene with Jonathan Banks.) In this corner, the next-to-last episode of Season 1 of Better Call Saul registered as a "wow!"

by Ken

There's been an inordinate amount of crap to wade through on the TV scene, but also some oases. This includes a number that probably deserve -- and may yet get -- individual attention, but which I didn't want to go uncelebrated.


WASN'T THAT AN AWESOME BETTER CALL SAUL?


"You're not a real lawyer," Chuck McGill says to brother Jimmy. And cruel as it seems, is he wrong? Then again, if he hadn't had Jimmy forced out of the case that he found, who knows?

I'll be interested to go back and rewatch all the episodes, which I've enjoyed thoroughly, but which I suspect will prove even more absorbing now that we've gotten to know the characters so much better. This past week's episode, however, "Pimento," the next-to-last Season 1 episode, struck me as a total "wow!," with the biggest payoff we've gotten to date for our investment in these characters -- notably the four central ones: the brothers McGill, Jimmy (Bob Odenkirk) and Chuck (Michael McKean), their lawyer colleague Kim Wexler (Rhea Seehorn), and of course Jimmy's future right-hand man Mike Ehrmantraut (Jonathan Banks) -- the first instance of Mike being Mike.

How great was it to see Chuck fighting his way through his crippling sensitivity to electricity to actually return to HHM? (And the preparations everyone at the firm made, and the reception they gave him?) But more than anything, for me, there were those two great Jimmy-Chuck scenes -- first, as Chuck breaks the news to Jimmy that the two of them can't handle the potential blockbuster class-action case Jimmy has dug up, that there's no choice but to turn the case over to HHM. Already, I found myself remembering that these are two of the all-time great comic actors -- and remembering because there's nothing at all comical about what these guys are doing here. And then there's the scene excerpted in the above clip, as Jimmy reveals to Chuck that he knows it was Chuck who forced him out of the case. Awesome stuff!


MEANWHILE THE MIDDLE'S HAD A "HECK"-UVA SEASON


Sue has figured out that Axl has to be nice to her. (This is the least blah of the three clips ABC extracted for promotion from an episode that had at least 10 splendidly clip-worthy moments. Does the network have any idea what makes this show so good? Could this have anything to do with why so few people know how good the show is?)

I guess it's just a coincidence that ABC's two enduring quality sitcoms, Modern Family and The Middle, both have a daughter facing the agony of college application-and-acceptance. Of course Alex Dunphy (Ariel Winter) and Sue Heck (Eden Sher) don't have much else in common, but both shows have found fresh and engaging angles on the subject. I loved the plot line in last week's Modern Family of Alex's deep depression over her CalTech acceptance. I assumed she had lied about having been accepted, but the actual answer was way better -- especially since it was her grandfather Jay (Ed O'Neill) who instinctively understood, leading to a rare and really sweet moment between them.

For Sue, well, this whole year has been, finally, the Year of Sue. I think it's been wonderful the way the writers have found for her to finally begin emerging from her hard-luck cloud -- in a way that began to allow her to feel some confidence in herself and to imagine some hopes for her future. And that set up the wonderful moment of the Heck family celebration of the fact that -- they're poor! Finally they get to cash in on their financial misery!

It was also an episode that made great use of some of the show's inventory of recurring characters:

• Dave Foley as Dr. Fulton, Brick's (Atticus Shaffer), er, peculiar psychologist-counselor (who might be thought of as either half-hinged or half-unhinged, depending on your outlook)

• Norm MacDonald as Mike Heck's, er, peculiar brother Rusty, with a scene in which Mike (Neil Flynn) suddenly is forced to revisit their relationship through the eyes of a kid brother who worshipped a big brother who pretty much tormented him their whole lives.

• Gia Mantegna as Devin, the latest of Axl's (Charlie McDermott) way-too-good-for-the-jerk-he-is girlfriends, who made it possible for Sue to get some fake but nevertheless demonstrated loving from her tormenting big brother.

And it was an episode in which Frankie (Patricia) performed one of her trademark cringe-worthy meltdowns. Yes, I cringe; this time I'm pretty sure I said out loud, "Stop!" But of course Frankie can't stop. Only this time, with help from, of all people, Dr. Fulton, she fought her way back, and while her effort at mitigating the damage threatened to become as unbalanced as the original wig-out, she got through it, and even saw some payoff.


AND DON'T FORGET, TOMORROW NIGHT IS
THE BEGINNING OF THE END FOR MAD MEN


Matt Lauer talks to the Mad Men crew on Today.

Naturally the folks at the AMC blog have some suggestions to prepare for this final run of episodes.

10 Ways to Get Ready for the Mad Men Premiere This Sunday
[from amctv.com -- links onsite]

The Final Episodes begin this Sunday at 10/9c — are you ready? Here are 10 ways to prepare for the beginning of the end…

1. Missed any episodes last year? Catch up with the Season 7 marathon on AMC, beginning Sunday at 2:30/1:30c and running until the premiere at 10/9c. You can also watch full episodes on amc.com (cable/satellite provider log-in required).

2. Relive the whole story with The Complete Mad Men Fan Companion. View props, blueprints, sketches, and photography, which include behind-the-scenes quotes and potent moments from all seven seasons.

3. Watch Matthew Weiner’s commentary on ten Fan Favorite Scenes, including the “Lawnmower Incident,” Lane’s fistfight with Pete, and the reunion between Don and Betty.

4. Take in the cast perspective with the Last Round With the Cast videos: Don’s Secret, Pete’s Life Lessons, Roger’s Awakening, Peggy’s Transformation, and Joan’s Ambition.

5. Get the scoop on all of last week’s Mad Men events, with full photo galleries.

6. See what other fans have to say: Watch the full set of Mad Men Tributes as Gary Oldman, Sarah Silverman, David O. Russell, and others reminisce and say goodbye to a favorite show.

7. Count down each and every punch, cigarette, and affair with Mad Men by the Numbers.

8. Check in on Mad Men: The Fan Cut. Watch fan versions of scenes from the very first episode, and share your favorites.

9. Put your knowledge of Mad Men trivia to the test with all the Ultimate Fan Games.

10. Join the Mad Men Social Club for early and exclusive access to photos, videos, interviews, features and more.

A FIRST LOOK AT THE MoMI MAD MEN EXHIBITION
(PLUS: THE WIZARD OF OZ IN GORGEOUS 3-D)


Don's Season 4 office, one of the two Mad Men sets reassembled in the Museum of the Moving Image's Mad Men exhibition, is apparently featured in this AP video accompanying Frazier Moore's rave review. (Maybe you can get it to play.) There's now a line on the museum's Web page for the exhibition which advises: "To avoid lines on weekend days, visitors are encouraged to arrive before 2:00 p.m.")

Today, following a screening at the Museum of the Moving Image (in Astoria, Queens) of Warner Bros.' spanking gorgeous 3-D digital restoration of The Wizard of Oz (there are daily screenings at 12:30pm through April 12; there's also a daily 45-minute "Wizard of Oz Character Remix" every day 12 2:30pm, recommended for ages 5-10), I finally got upstairs for my first look at MoMI's much-heralded Mad Men exhibition, which runs through June 14 and has been really packing crowds in.

At the wonderful sold-out March 20 MoMI event celebrating Mad Men and creator Matthew Weiner, the honoree tried to describe his reaction to seeing the exhibition, for which he and the rest of the Mad Men team had provided abundant cooperation. He had first seen it the day before, he said, and was kind of overwhelmed by seeing seven years of his life on display. (There are, among lots of goodies, a generous assorment of his notes, memos, and scripts.) Seeing it again that day had made it all a lot more manageable, he said.

The crowd today was so abundant that I focused on the things that were viewable without shuffling through the enormous procession, like the two actual rooms reassembled from warehoused sets: the original Draper kitchen and Don's Season 4 office. Not only has each set been lovingly put back together, but for each there's a screen display with an assortment of scenes shot on that set! Beyond that there's just so much that I know I'll have to clear more time to take it all in.


THAT'S RIGHT, MoMI IS SHOWING THE WIZARD
OF OZ IN 3-D DAILY AT 12:30 THROUGH APRIL 12



And it looks fabulous!

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What is there not to hate about Halloween?

About a Boy's Fiona (Minnie Driver), Marcus
(Benjamin Stockham), and Will (David Walton)

by Ken

You're probably thinking this is going to be one of those spoilsport anti-Halloween diatribes. And it's true that when a friend mentioned on the phone this afternoon that he might be venturing out this evening for the parade (meaning, of course, the world-famous Greenwich Village Halloween Parade), I didn't know what to say. However, with all those people so passionately devoted to the parade, there must be something there, right? I can't say I'm okay with it, exactly, but really, it's none of my beeswax.

No, I just want to point out the horribly debilitating effect this cursèd day has on our culture, as reflected -- where else? -- on television. I mean, if you were to string together all the Halloween episodes of as good a show as Roseanne and force an interrogation suspect to watch them all, you'd be hauled in front of whatever court enforces the Geneva conventions on torture. (Oh, no court does? Never mind.) But again, a lot of somebodies must have liked 'em, 'cause they kept on making 'em.

Now here's this week's Halloween episode of About a Boy, a show that, as I think I've mentioned, I'm trying hard to like, because it comes from Friday Night Lights and Parenthood TV creator Jason Katims. And there's something there. Anyway, here's our hero Will (David Walton), who might just as well have been named Peter, as in Pan, with his eccentric British next-door neighbor Fiona (Minnie Driver), who somehow manages to be both a hippie throwback and a stuffed shirt, but who is nevertheless enthralling because she's the enthralling Minnie Driver, and Fiona's 12-year-old son Marcus (Benjamin Stockman). Will has just abandoned his life-changing move to New York to be with his suddenly kindled flame Dr. Sam (Adrianne Palicki, our old friend Tyra from Friday Night Lights), and is planning for his Halloween blowout. Naturally, Fiona doesn't have any Halloween spirit, and seems to have confused the holiday with Thanksgiving.

FIONA: How many holidays do you people have?
WILL: None as important as Halloween. I myself throw an annual party that is legendary, Will-o-ween.
FIONA: Will-o-ween?
WILL: Uh-huh. Anyway, the point is, I am going to the Halloween store to get even more of this wonderment, and you are coming with me, because you need to make your side of the porch less suicide-inducing. We're going to be loaded it to the gills with trick-or-treaters, and we need to be ready.
FIONA: Yes, no, we don't give out treats.
WILL: What?
FIONA: It is a made-up American holiday invented to encourage obesity and diabetes.
MARCUS: Mom hasn't had sugar in 12 years.
WILL: That's not all your mother hasn't had in 12 years, Marcus.
FRANKIE: He-e-ey! Un-hear that.

I get that the show seems to want us to think that if Will would just grow up a little, he'd be totally awesome, and if Fiona would just unstick a little bit, she'd be, well, a less stuck Fiona. But it does seem to be telling us that Will is pretty awesome already, when the evidence indicates that he's kind of a jerk. And this episode seemed to be pushing a little hard on Fiona's stuckitude, having her meet up with, of all things, a tall, good-looking, and -- yes == English architect and have herself some fun.

On the other hand, Halloween-wise --

THE TRUE SPIRIT OF HALLOWEEN


Ghost of a Heck Halloween past -- from Season 3, we have Frankie (Patricia Heaton) with the male Hecks, sons Axl (Charlie McDermott), Brick (Atticus Shaffer), and Mike (Neil Flynn).

Parents Frankie and Mike Heck (Patricia Heaton and Neil Flynn) are in the kitchen on Halloween eve with younger son Brick (Atticus Shaffer).

FRANKIE: Hey, have you figured out what you're going to be yet? It's almost here, and I don't wanna be scramblin' around at the last minute lookin' for a costume for you. You can't be Paper Towel Man for a third time.
BRICK: Aah, actually, I've decided I'm not gonna go trick-or-treating this year.
FRANKIE: What?
BRICK: I don't know, I think I'm getting a little old for that.
FRANKIE: Aww, you're not going trick-or-treating? Ohh! Mike, he's not going trick-or-treating.
MIKE: Good! You hate trick-or-treating.
FRANKIE: Yeah, but if I'd know last year it was gonna be the last time, I would have made sure to enjoy it.
MIKE: You didn't even take him out last year. And the year before that, didn't Nancy Donohue take him?
FRANKIE: Whatever time I took him, whenever it was, I wish I'd known that was gonna be it. Okay?

It was quite a nice episode, actually, with each of the three Heck kids having a sort-of-transformative Halloween.

Axl (Charlie McDermott), stranded overnight in (of all places) his college library (there's a phone there which could connect him to campus security, but the antique phone has no buttons, just "this wheelie thing"), and for the first time, at least the first time that we're aware of, he's facing the future with a fair amount of terror, having no idea what he's going to be. He imagines a couple of possibilities, which have to do mostly with how he's dressed, and speculates, "I just think maybe if I knew what I'd be wearing, I could work backwards from there, 'cause no one's telling me what I should do." Most alarmingly, he ventures, "I'm not sure my awesomeness is going to translate into the real world."
And as Frankie notes in her voice-over, while Axl is spending the night with books, Brick is spending the evening with a girl -- he actually has a female school friend coming over to the house!

Meanwhile undauntable Sue (Eden Sher), undaunted by her family's inability to pay for pretty much any college she might get into, is launching her own fund-raising crusade with a Halloween do -- an screening, with all the fixings of It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown in a pumpkin patch, for which no one shows up. She's even abandoned by her gay best friend Brad (Brock Ciarlelli -- okay, Brad doesn't know he's gay, but I think most everyone else has this one figured out) for the rival graveyard spookie-movie shindig hastily organized by Sue's old cheerleading nemeses, who after making fun of her idea have stolen and improved on it. But behold, one quaint geezer finally turns up (played by our old Rockford Files and X-Files friend Jerry Hardin), about as close to a Halloween miracle as the Hecks are likely to get.

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TV Watch: Finally I understand why ABC hasn't been able to find a show to go with "The Middle," "Suburgatory," and "Modern Family"

Polly (Sarah Chalke, mercifully back to camera), stepdad Max (Brad Garrett), and mom Elaine (Elizabeth Perkins) in ABC's latest hit, How to Live with Your Parents (for the Rest of Your Life). In case you hadn't heard, Max only has one ball. You can see a "Just the Jokes" clip here.

by Ken

The things I do in the name of blogorific responsibility!

As we all know, ABC has -- for a change -- a hole in its Wednesday-night comedy lineup. Amazingly, the hole doesn't seem to have been plugged by this fall's The Neighbors, which I've seen described (and not pejoratively!) as a "suburban alien comedy." Somehow you could tell that The Neighbors wasn't going to be Third Rock from the Sun, which showed that you could actually have an "alien comedy" that was smart and funny.

So this week ABC was promoting a newcomer to the Wednesday lineup, a surefire hit called How to Live with Your Parents (for the Rest of Your LIfe)?" Well, okay, you think, shows with even hideouser titles have not totally sucked. No, I can't think of one offhand, but my memory isn't what it used to be.

Wait, two seasons ago CBS offered us $#*! My Dad Says, a breakthrough of sorts: a show whose name literally couldn't be pronounced. It wasn't horrible, but it wasn't good. More recently ABC itself offered us the resplendent Don't Trust the B---- in Apartment 23, which I've seen a supposedly respectable critic defend as some sort of breakthrough, though to me it seemed peopled with stunningly repellent characters I hoped would all become victims of the slasher who would be introduced in a mid-episode genre switcheroo.

It's hard to believe, but somehow I forgot to record HTLWYP (FTROYL). I actually checked ABC's "On Demand" listings, and it hasn't turned up there, at least as of yet. So I cooked up this idea of writing a post called something like "Say, did anybody watch that How to Live with Your Parents (for the Rest of Your LIfe)?"

But no, it occurred to me that I might be able to watch it online, and alas, I did. (You can too, here.) Now, it has to be possible to do a show about an adult child moving back in with his/her parents, which is certainly a theme for our times. And no, I don't mean the assaultively hideous (and now mercifully canceled) Enlightened, which at least does make it clear what a horror it is in this case for the afflicted mom, suddenly re-saddled with her monstrous self-absorbed leech of a brain-dead offspring (played, in somebody's idea of a joke, by actual mom-and-daughter Diane Ladd and Laura Dern). I've actually seen an admiring critic -- come to think of it, I believe it was the same critic who thought Don't Trust the B---- in Apartment 23 was something special who I've seen claim that Amy, the Laura Dern character, is "idealistic" and "pure." Say, is there drug testing for TV critics?

Even in the promos for HTLWYP (FTROYL), it was surprising to see so many familiar faces, or maybe I should say "recycled" faces. The tail-between-her-legs daughter-mom is Sarah Chalke, and while I am one of the few people who didn't think she absolutely sucked as "the other Becky" when Lecy Goranson took her college leave from Roseanne, and I watched Scrubs occasionally and would concede that she was by no means the most obnoxious feature of the show (with Zach Braff leading the obnoxiousness charge every week, how could she hope to be?), I cringed my way through an episode of this.

Like when her twerpy boss at the upscale food store where she's gotten work in the six months since she moved in with the 'rents turns out to be trying to get her attention to call that attention to the cute guy in the store, and she actually collars him for a date, is there anyone who doesn't know that it's going to be a disaster? At the same time, is there anyone who cares which species of TV disaster date it's going to be? For the record, he gets falling-down drunk, and forces Polly to draw on the services of her still-hanging-around ex-husband, the goofily Peter Pannish Julian (Jon Dore), who I think is supposed to be charming. You can decide that one for yourself.

Then there are Elizabeth Perkins and Brad Garrett as Polly's mom and stepdad, Elaine and Max. Elaine may in fact be a breakthrough sitcom character: a mom who's a rummy and a slut. The only thing you need to know about Max is that he has a stud or something in one ear, and he has only one ball.

I noticed online that one writer detects some influence from Arrested Development. See note above about drug testing for TV critics.

You may be thinking, it doesn't sound all that awful. Actually, I'm not making it sound as awful as I found it -- the details are just too preposterous, and nauseating.

But watching it did make me focus on, and I think finally understand, the problem ABC is having trying to plug the holes on Wednesday night. It all goes back to the fall of 2009, when The Middle and Modern Family were introduced as part of the network's newly created Wednesday comedy night. That's two genuinely first-rate shows -- one of them in fact looking like it's going to be one of the historic TV comedy triumphs -- introduced on the same night in the same season. How often does that happen?

But what I suddenly found myself thinking was: Nobody at ABC knows (a) how those shows got on its schedule or (b) why they were successful. Certainly neither has anything in common with anything else that ABC has offered in modern times as comedy. So how then would you intentionally introduce two more shows to fill out the two-hour block? Looked at this way, it's something of a miracle that the network last season came up with Suburgatory, which looked like it was just going to be endless cheap shots at boring suburbia (which I'm assuming is what the ABC execs thought it would be) as divorced father and blossoming teenage daughter George and Tessa Altman (Jeremy Sisto and the radiant Jane Levy) move from hip New York City to stultifying whatever-the-name-of-the-town-is. However, the writers have made it something quite different from that, involving basic issues of parenting and growing up, of fitting in and not, of insider vs. outsider status, of hopes and especially disappointments.

Again, it's about as far from an "ABC comedy" as one could imagine. And that, I think, is the ABC programming department's Wednesday-night problem: having to think as if they're not ABC programmers.

I think, by the way, that's how they came up with Happy Endings, which I see has just returned to the schedule. Weh's mir. As I recall, the same critic who thinks Enlightened's Amy is pure and idealistic thinks Happy Endings is something special. To me, it's Friends with a set of characters who might have been interesting and appealing but were instead made, by virtue of arrogance, abjectness, or just plain obnoxiousness, generally revolting. I really tried with this bunch, but in the end all I could think of was hoping that that slasher found his way onto this show too.

Meanwhile, this week Modern Family had a simply spectacular outing, and made what must be incredibly difficult look effortless. Pride of place went to the Dunphy household, with Claire (the astounding Julie Bowen, doing one of the tube's stellar characterizations)


OMG, IT'S THE RETURN (FINALLY) OF MAD MEN!

Two hours' worth on AMC tomorrow night. And next Sunday it's the season premiere of Showtime's Nurse Jackie, with the final season of The Big C launching Monday the 29th. Thank you, TV gods!

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Should I like "The Good Wife" better than "The Middle" because Josh Charles is a mensch and Patricia Heaton's a jerk? Of course not, but . . .

In this past week's episode of The Good Wife, "After the Fall," Will was actually enjoying his forced leave from Lockhart Gardner until he was descended on by both his sisters, Sara (Nadia Dajani) and Aubrey (Merritt Weaver, so wonderful as Nurse Jackie's Zoey), who promptly decided that he "needs someone," or maybe even already has found someone -- enter Kalinda (Archie Panjabi). Diane (Christine Baranski) is sure happy to see him back in the office.


"We get lumped in with lunatics."

-- actor-director David Hunt, husband of actress Patricia Heaton

by Ken

To minimize likely confusion, let me straightaway answer the question I posed in the post title: No, of course my recently heightened personal feelings about these two actors isn't going to make me like either show more or less. I have a feeling, though, that there will be some spillover in the respective pleasure I get from watching the actors (not to be confused with watching their shows).

We'll come back to that, but first I think a quick word is needed to David Hunt, in response to the above-quoted cry from the heart, quoted yesterday by the uncredited writer of HuffPost Celebrity's "Patricia Heaton Apologizes For Joining Rush Limbaugh's Attack On Georgetown Student Sandra Fluke,"which was an add-on to a declaration of his wife's in a PopEater interview last year, in which she told Rob Shuter "that she has many gay friends and doesn't oppose gay marriage, Patricia gets frustrated being automatically lumped together with other conservatives." And --

"We know for a fact there are some people who have said they wouldn't want to work with us because of our politics," [Heaton] said, with her husband David Hunt adding, "We get lumped in with lunatics."

Gosh, Dave, that must be terrible, getting lumped in with lunatics. Who would want that? But say, as long as we're on the subject, did you read these (now-deleted) tweets of the missus?

"Hey G-Town Gal: Plz let us also pay for your Starbucks, movie theater tickets and your favorite hot wings combo deal at KFC! Anything else?"

"Hey G-Town Gal: If your parents have to pay for your birth control, maybe they should get a say in who you sleep with!" Instant birth control!"

"If every Tweaton sent Georgetown Gal one condom, her parents would have to cancel basic cable, & she would never reproduce -- sound good?"

"Hey GTown Gal: How about only having sex on Wednesday? (Hump day!)."

"Hey G-Town Gal: turn your underwear inside out! Then u only have to do laundry every 2 weeks—saves on detergent & trips to Laundromat!"

The premise, you see, is that the Hunts are victimized because, as the HuffPost Celebrity scribe put it, "Heaton has never hidden her conservative views from typically left-leaning Hollywood." Of course there is some superficial truth to the image of "left-leaning Hollywood," but only superficial truth. The people who yammer about it never, ever look an inch or two below the surface to see an industry that is as deeply and fiercely reactionary as any in the country.

There are no doubt lots of reasons why some people in Hollywood don't want to work with other people in Hollywood. I wonder if it's ever occurred to Patricia and David that maybe people don't want to work with them because they're assholes. That's Just a theory I'm throwing out, but "asshole" might be a kinder description than "lunatic" for the person who sent out all those tweets.

As noted, the tweets have been deleted -- not because our tweetybird sees anything wrong with the substance, but because she now sees them as "disrespectful."

After feeling the backlash, on March 3, both Limbaugh and Heaton issued their own apologies. Heaton deleted the tweets and apologized to Fluke for her comments .

"re @SandraFluke Mea culpa Sandra! Wasn't being respectful 2 u re my tweets as I hope people wd b w/me. Don't like you being dissed -so sorry," she wrote and again on March 5th she reiterated the apology to her followers. "I apologized to Ms Fluke last week. I may not agree with her views but I didn’t treat her with respect and I'm sorry. I was wrong. Mea Culpa."

Well, good for her for apologizing. It does seem kind of a shame, though, that it took the shitload of grief dumped on her to awaken her to her unfortunate disrespectfulness. Apparently in the course of all that tweeting -- and tweeting and tweeting and tweeting and tweeting -- it never once occurred to her that, well, what actually happened might happen.

I loved the lead on that Huffpost Celebrity post, by the way:

Yet another publicist is likely cursing the invention of Twitter after The Middle star Patricia Heaton joined Rush Limbaugh's attack on Georgetown Law student Sandra Fluke.

By contrast, this tweet -- quite brilliant, I think -- was sent out by actor Josh Charles in response to the appalling homophobic blithering of onetime Growing Pains teen throb Kirk Cameron, whose parents were played by Alan Thicke and Joanna Kerns.


I guess Pat was trying to be witty in her rants tweets. Josh managed without visible effort to be not only funny but charming as well as blunt. Smartly done, Mr. C!

I was already a huge Josh Charles fan, dating back to his spectacular work on Sports Night, the lamentably short-lived (damn that gutless ABC -- oh wait, that's Ms. Heaton's network, isn't it?) comedy written by Aaron Sorkin. One happy result of this episode is that I'm seeing other fans of Sports Night crawling out of the woodwork. Which is only fair. That show was so good for its two seasons that if you were to make a short list of the greatest series in TV history, no matter how short the list got, you couldn't leave off that show about a nightly sports-news show produced by Isaac Jaffe (Robert Guillaume) and Dana Whitaker (Felicity Huffman) and anchored by Casey McCall (Peter Krause) and Dan Rydell (Josh C).

Nobody writes better for actors than Sorkin, and the cast assembled for the show was all but unimaginably brilliant. Given the caliber of the company he was keeping, it says something that Josh C may have done, week in, week out, the most memorable work on the show. To focus on only one of Dan's plot lines, his pursuit of, then winning of, and then loss of Rebecca (an absolutely radiant, mesmerizing Teri Polo) was one of the most beautifully imagined fictional relationships I've ever encountered -- and this on a show that itself included as well the altogether extraordinary relationships between Casey and Dana and between Sports Night staffers Natalie (Sabrina Lloyd) and Jeremy (Joshua Malina).

Sports Night's ill-fated Dan and Rebecca (Teri Polo)

Even the best actors are dependent on their material, and while Josh has worked a lot since Sports Night, and I've never seen him do anything that wasn't first-rate, I haven't seen him do anything that made comparable use of his talents -- except maybe for his season of HBO's In Treatment -- until The Good Wife, another show with an amazing ensemble cast, and writers (overseen by creators Michelle King and Robert King) who know how to write for good actors.

I've made no secret of my fondness for The Good Wife, most recently (I think) here. I notice that I early on I wrote that the show --

has passed some of my toughest tests: Not only do I look forward to it each week, but I'm now pretty regularly watching it in real time rather than trusting to the DVR for time-shifting, and so far I've been really sorry as each episode ended.

Three seasons in, that's even more true.

I like The Middle too. But I notice that this is a show I almost always entrust to the DVR, and I don't usually pounce on recorded episodes. I know I've still got the last new February sweeps episode sitting unwatched. When I get to it, I'll probably wonder why I stalled, but the fact will remain that I did. It's not because of Pat Heaton's politics. It's Frankie Heck I"m watching, after all, not Patricia Heaton. Just as on The Good Wife it's not Josh Charles but Will Gardner (along with all the other characters, of course) that I'm watching.

At the same time, I'll probably get even more of an extra kick out of being able to watch Josh Charles, who gives evidence of being a mensch as well as a terrific actor.

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The housing-loss crisis even hits sitcomworld in "The Middle"

A Tom Toles-style Halloween [click to enlarge]
(See washingtonpost.com's October 2011 Tom Toles gallery.)

"I looked around and realized that a lot of our neighbors were gone. We had hotdogs but no buns, drinks but no cups, macaroni and cheese with no forks."

-- Frankie Heck (Patricia Heaton),
on last week's episode of The Middle

by Ken

As regular viewers of The Middle are well aware, Frankie tends to focus kind of narrowly on the carefully delimited confines of her world there is Orson, Indiana. (Unlike the rest of us, that is, who regularly focus on the Big Picture.) Which perhaps explain how it is that her neighbors have to explain that the missing Menahans weren't "just visiting family." They "got foreclosed on and had to move out in the middle of the night," explains one neighbor, startled that Frankie doesn't know. Another neighbor ventures that the Menahans probably are visiting family now. And ""the Johnsons are on the verge of 'visiting family' too."

One of the especially nice things about Roseanne was that working Americans saw aspects of our lives reflected there which didn't show up much elsewhere in the media. Not only were the Conners and most of their friends and neighbors engaged in a day-in, day-out struggle to keep their heads above water, but when times got tough in real life, they did in Lanford, Illinois, too.

The Roseanne heritage has always been clear enough in The Middle, even if the edge is considerably softer. We've grown accustomed to the Hecks' basic economic reality, where the combined paychecks of Frankie (Patricia Heaton) and and Mike (Neil Flynn) just barely keeps the family going in the corner-cutting lifestyle they've become accustomed to. But in last week's episode, "Bad Choices" (which you can watch online here), the arrival of rain sent the family scurrying --



Now I suppose the writers were sort of romancing when, as the episode developed, it developed that, faced with the cost of necessary repairs like a new roof, the Hecks would actually save money by walking away from their still-unpaid-for house and moving instead into a dream three-bedroom condo. I don't think the Roseanne people would have tried to get away with a premise that silly, but there was still more grounding in reality here than we've grown accustomed to in prime time.

In the end it all worked out, with the Hecks' (remaining) neighbors pitching in to help repair the roof. I think the Roseanne people might have tried to sell us that kind of happy ending, but they would have done a more persuasive job of it. But The Middle has a softer, more fable-like edge, and within those paramaters, well, it was nice to see the current housing crisis at least acknowledged.

And I have to say, Brick's new absorption of Shakespeare was kind of fun too.

#

Yes, it's Royal Wedding fever! Doesn't it make you wish WE had a monarchy to make fun of?

Axl and Mike are less than respectful of Frankie's precious collectible Royal Wedding souvenir cup. (We saw the companion collectible Royal Wedding souvenir plate last night.)

(DAD) MIKE HECK: Frankie, I got some bad news for you. We're not British.
AXL (OLDEST HECK OFFSPRING): Yeah, we won the Civil War, so we don't have to care.
MIKE: Look, I barely cared about our wedding. Tell me why this is such a big deal. What'd this girl ever do?
(MOM) FRANKIE HECK [dumbfounded]: Hello! She landed a prince! That means she's the fairest in the land. [MIKE scoffs.] She's arriving in a car as a commoner, but she leaves in a carriage as a princess!
AXL: Princess of what? Seriously, is she even allowed to behead people?

-- Frankie encountering Heck family resistance to her
preparations for the Royal Wedding, on The Middle

by Ken

Oops! I seem to have jumped the gun last night. As I wrote in an update, this may reflect just how close attention I've been paying to the whole thing. Somehow I didn't seem to know when the damned thing is happening, and caring ever so slightly less, I persuaded myself that the big night is tonight, when in fact it's next Friday. It did seem kind of sooner than I was expecting, but certainly no sooner than I was hoping.

By way of corrective, I think we will all want to harken unto his grace, the Archbishop of Canterbury. (I'm just guessing about "his grace" for the archbishop. I could look it up, if I cared more. By the bye, am I the only one who finds the music used for this clip a bit, shall we say, unexpected for a British royal wedding?)



Anyway, here I was thinking how brilliantly ABC had planned this, running its "Royal Wedding" episode of The Middle (a show for which I have repeated declared my affection -- here, for example), depicting the week's run-up to the great event from the vantage point of Orson, Indiana, in the very week it's happening. Talk about reality TV!

Well, no. Actually, a measure of ABC's interest in the Royal Wedding may be that of the two clips from the episode that are posted on the show's webpage, a total of zero have any connection to the main plot. You know, Frankie's obsession with the Royal Wedding. (There's the clips I've pllunked below, and one that involves Sue's preparation, with Brick's unwilling, er, help for her audition for the school's TV club, the Shuckers.)

Yes, Mike, Frankie knows the family isn't British, but apparently she hasn't registered the part about winning the Civil War, Axl. Wishing she were British is kind of the point. As she says when she discovers that Mike has eaten the scones she bought for the great event, and he claims to have done her a favor because they were stale and dry: "They're supposed to be stale and dry. They're British." Eventually even Frankie admits that the Royal Wedding is of no historical significance, but it is, she says, "a pretty thing."

WHY WE SHOULD HAVE A ROYAL FAMILY,
AND HOW WE COULD SWING THE DEAL

Is that it, the appeal of British royalty to some non-Brits on this side of the pond? A pretty thing?

Maybe I should have been braver about asking my mother what the deal was with her passion for royalty, and the British royals in particular. In her later years, when I was dealing with her financial matters, one of my obligations was keeping up her subscription to Royalty magazine. Yes, there really is such a thing, or at least there was The poor dears were going through some rough times in the time I was watching over my mother's subscription.

And let me say, she was shrewd about taking advantage of the magazine, of which she took to passing issues she was finished with on to the British-expat social director of the senior residence she moved into, piling up the kind of brownie points mere money couldn't buy. (Well, I suppose a lot of money could have. But even then there would have been the taint of commerce.)

And her royalmania wouldn't have passed muster -- in fact, didn't -- with the authentic native version. I'm sure I've told this story before, but it's a family favorite. A long, long time age, probably several decades now, my mother and stepfather were visiting the English cousins, something they loved to do, because the cousins are truly splendid people. In fact, it was one of her bitter disappointments when she had to go to England alone for the wedding of a daughter they had watched grow up, into a lawyer like her father. They were supposed to go together, of course, and had been eagerly planning the trip. But by then my stepfather's Alzheimer's was too advanced. He wanted her to go, though, and with great difficulty she asked me to come to Florida to stay with him.

Anyway, on the earlier and happier visit in question, as my mother reported the event to me afterward, they were gathered around the TV when some sort of report on Prince Charles came on. He was much younger then, of course (but then, who wasn't?), but he was still . . . well, what he was, only a younger version. And my mother spoke up: "You'd think with all their money they could do something about his ears." Now these are sensible, well-educated people, the cousins, and according to my mother's telling, which I had and have no reason to doubt, they were struck mute with shock and horror.

SPEAKING OF PRINCE CHAS, I WAS GOING TO TELL
YOU WHY WE SHOULD HAVE A ROYAL FAMILY

Isn't it obvious? Is there anything better to make fun of than a royal family? And you can make fun of them to your heart's content, and that's totally separate from the government. And then you can make fun of the government separately! It's win-win!

Now you may think it's too late, that ever since old George Washington turned down all those entreaties to crown himself king, so we would have our very own King George to replace that other one we'd fought so hard to get rid of, there's no way we can get ourselves a royal family of our own.

I believe I've got that solved too. Remember Prince Charles? You now, we were just talking about him. The Prince of Wales, next in line for the throne if his mum ever gets off it? (Aside: I keep forgetting that Prince William isn't going to be Prince of Wales, at least not until his dear old dad gets out of the way by becoming king or dying or just, well, getting out of the way. I'm sure they've rigged up one hellacious title for Prince Will and his new princess. If there's one thing the Brits know how to do, it's rig up hellacious titles.)

We keep hearing that fewer and fewer Brits expect that poor Charles will ever be king, that especially since he married what's-her-name, the one Graham Norton always says looks like a horse, Camilla, that ever since he married her, he's no longer suitable king material, and he should be discreetly removed from the line of succession for whenever there is a succession. And we know that with all their money there still will be a succession.

So here's the deal: We bring Charles over to be our new king. (And I guess the horsewoman with her to be our queen?) And then let the merriment begin! We'll be rolllicking from morn till midnight! Oh happy day!

Now I wouldn't expect the Brits to surrender their heir apparent without a fight, or at least due compensation. For starters we can send them some routine compensation in the form of maybe 50 or 100 of our most cracked-brain Teabaggers and assorted other far-right-wingers. Plus, and here's the part I'm really proud of, We send them Trump!!!

That's right, The Donald becomes the replacement Prince of Wales. He can't ever become king, of course, unless Parliament goes completely nuts, so the designated king-groomers can go on grooming William for all those onerous duties, and Kate's every move will be watched in anticipation of her eventual queenification. But as hilarious as Charles has been all these years in the Prince of Wales job, they ain't seen nothin' yet!

Who knows? Maybe he'll try to fire that no-account prime minister. Or even the queen herself!


You wouldn't know it, but this clip really is from the "Royal Wedding" episode of The Middle.

#

Good news from Wisconsin -- but the battle is still just beginning

by Ken

I don't know about you, but these days I'm finding most of the political-related news so grim that when my clock radio turns on in the morning, tuned to NPR's Morning Edition and timed to an on-the-hour news summary, my first waking impulse is to shut the damned thing off. Here, however, is some good news.

Probably most of you also received this e-mail today from Jim Dean of Democracy for America. But the message is too important to ignore. So here it is again if you've already seen it, and if you haven't, well, here it is. Howie reported earlier today that the recall movement has spread to Michigan. There's been an important development in the first state using the recall device to try to restore political sanity. Take it away, Jim.

Today, we made history in Wisconsin.

WI Democrats -- supported by over 2,600 DFA volunteers on the ground -- submitted over 150% of the signatures needed to demand the recall election of the 5th Republican State Senator: Alberta Darling.

This is unprecedented. In the history of Wisconsin there have been only 4 recall elections ever. Now, in just the last two months, we've legally required 5.

Republicans from Madison to Washington D.C. are watching every single step of this fight and we're not going to let up until we win. With signature gathering continuing for the 3 Republicans left who are eligible for recall, it's vital we keep covering TV with our hard-hitting real people ad. If we hit $600,000 by Friday night, we'll be able to stay on the air in target districts through the end of next week. Please contribute now to make it happen.


Our TV ad, which we created with our friends at the Progressive Change Campaign Committee, features life-long Republican voter Mike Crump.

"As a Republican my entire life I'm appalled at what Scott Walker and the Republicans did. This hurts my family. It's about my kids in school."

Mike is one of the many reasons MSNBC's Rachel Maddow, Ed Schultz, Lawrence O'Donnell, and Cenk Uygur have all praised our Wisconsin ads. It's also why local activists in Wisconsin have asked us to keep it on TV.

Please watch the ad and contribute now.

Thanks to the support we've had so far from DFA members nationwide, we're closer than ever to flipping the WI Senate and stopping Governor Walker's anti-families agenda.

Working together with our members on the ground, we won't stop until we win. Thank you for everything you do.

-Jim

Jim Dean, Chair
Democracy for America

I should note that I've reduced Jim's fund-raising links to just the one, on the theory that DownWithTyranny readers don't need quite that hammering to know whether or not this is something you want to participate in. Nor do DWT readers need any further priming on the importance of the Wisconsin Senate recall effort, all the more so in the wake of that, er, strange Supreme Court election that was just rigged held, encouraging the state's Stalinist governor, Scott Walker that nothing stands between him and his goal of turning Wisconsin into a subsidiary of Koch Industries.


UPDATE FROM WISCONSIN:

REPUBLICANS WILL BE REPUBLICANS!

Thanks to commenter Southern Beale for calling my attention to Amanda Terkel's HuffPost post, "Wisconsin Recall Fight Heats Up As Democrats Complain Of 'Shots For Signatures' Deals," with a report that Republicans seeking to recall Democratic senators who left the state to deprive the rubber-stamp Senate Republicans of a quorum are using a novel technique: offering shots to petition signers, who may or may not know what it is they're being liquored up to sign. (A spokesman for the state's Government Accountability Board, Reid Magney, said, "Our attorneys have been unable to find anything in state law that would prohibit offering drinks or anything for signing a petition," but said they "strongly encourage people not to do so because it taints the process."

The Wisconsin Democratic Party is planning to file a complaint to the state Government Accountability Board alleging that a Republican signature-gatherer offered alcoholic beverages to a group of women to get them to sign a recall petition against a Democratic state senator.

Although that's not illegal in Wisconsin, it is strongly discouraged and, Democrats argue, evidence that Republicans don't really have enough grassroots support for their recall campaigns.

Republicans have until early next week to file recall petitions against eight Democratic state senators, more than half of the caucus that left the state in February to protest and delay the GOP's budget repair bill, which included a provision stripping public employees of their collective bargaining rights. So far, the state Republican Party has not filed any recall petitions, although they are reportedly planning to file two -- against state Sens. Dave Hansen and Jim Holperin -- on Thursday.

A bartender at John's Main Event in Burlington was audio-recorded offering shots for signatures, and an update passes on a screen shot supplied by a HuffPost reader in Burlington of Scott the bartender's Facebook page, where he makes fun of protesters who challenged his petition-gathering.


REMINDER: YOU ONLY HAVE A DAY LEFT TO PREPARE
FOR THE GREAT ALL-NIGHT ROYAL WEDDING VIGIL

Yes, Frankie Heck's got Royal Wedding fever,
and she's got it bad.

"We won the Civil War, so we don't have to care."

-- eldest Heck offspring Axl, responding to his mother's frenzied anticipation of the Royal Wedding

I was going to write about this tonight, with reference to last night's episode of The Middle, in which we saw Frankie experiencing the great event as one of just a tad larger than life-or-death importance. The nice thing is that even if you haven't finished your preparations yet, you still have a fair amount of time when you get home from work tomorrow -- especially if you live in one of the western time zones (and especially if you have access to 24-hour shopping).

So we'll put off to tomorrow Frankie's response to Mike's bewildering lack of enthusiasm: "Look, I barely cared about our wedding. Tell me why this is such a big deal. What'd this girl ever do?"

UPDATE: YOU MAY THINK I'VE JUMPED THE DATE . . .

. . . and you could be right, This may possibly reflect just how much attention I've been paying. Anyway, I'll still have my more or less final words on the subject this Friday night -- along with why I think we should have a monarchy, plus how I think we could swing it.

#

OMG, it's Justin Bieber's birthday! And we've got not one but TWO pictures!

Plus a number of, er, "news" items bound to be
of interest to Justin and his fans


by Ken

Howie and I were chatting the other day, and the subject of Young Justin came up -- after I slapped this picture of the lovely lad into a post that plumbed the depths of the raging issue of his haircut -- and he asked how old the youngster is. Based just on my remote impressions of how long I've been hearing about him, without having more than the vaguest idea who he is or what he does beyond being very pretty indeed, I threw out the number 16.

I mention this not to brag, but simply to explain how it came about that today, while matters of lesser importance raged around me, with datelines like Libya and Madison, I came to be seeking the correct answer once and discovered that today, March 1, is Justin's 17th birthday! Happy b-day, J-man! Knowing from my previous post how much interest there is in our boy, I thought this would be an appropriate occasion to share more of my knowledge of the subject. Unfortunately, I may have not only exhausted but exceeded the state of my knowledge in my previous post, regarding the famous haircut. This second photo, by the way, is a pre-haircut one, I'm pretty sure. I spent a lot of time researching the subject. (Of course it's made easier by the fact that the boy in this photo seems nowhere near 17. According to the Wikipedia caption, though, this photo was taken way back in 2010, at the White House Easter Egg Roll.)

Needless to say, given Justin's minor status, one hasn't even attempted to track down, let alone pass along, any naked photos, though one can hope that next year on this day the Internet will be awash in them. Say, do you suppose the preceding sentence is enough to have this post called up anytime anyone Googles "Justin Bieber" and "naked photos"? Now I'm really feeling the pressure to provide Justin-friendly content. OK, here goes.

JUSTIN AND YOU STILL HAVE A DAY TO TRY TO
USE THIS NATIONAL PANCAKE DAY TRAVEL TIP

In my book most every day is, or ought to be, National Pancake Day -- and I'm not much interested in those fancy frou-frou jobbies, just the regular kind, though I go as far afield as to mix whole wheat flour and cornmeal into the batter. I also totally grasp the concept of apple pancakes, though my personal efforts at same, with very different recipes, have been pretty unsuccessful. That just reinforces my impulse to stick to basics.

And I don't even put syrup on them! Not just not maple syrup but not that modern miracle, pancake syrup either. (The difference, I gather, is that where maple syrup is made by boiling down the sap of the maple tree, pancake syrup is made from the sap of the pancake tree.) Sometimes I think my devotion to pancakes is as carriers of butter -- just slather the stuff on. Not exactly figure-friendly, but heck, it's a holiday. National, you know, Pancake Day.

For this great event Spirit Airlines has a special $9-each-way round-trip fare promotion -- though goodness knows how much the actual cost is, assuming you're actually able to book a qualifying flight. For starters there's membership in their Fare Club, and then: "Fares are listed per person and do not include all taxes and fees. Additional baggage charges may apply."

I assume everyone saw the "Hecks on a Plane" episode of The Middle (a refreshingly quirky show I'm quite fond of), where the family booked a mostly free flight to New York, and Frankie (Patricia Heaton) -- with a mortified Sue (Eden Sher) and Axl (Charlie McDermott) looking on -- struggled gamely and ultimately [SPOILER ALERT!] successfully to defy the laws of luggage physics and force her trunk-size suitcase through as a carry-on in order to save the $25 baggage-check charge.

Nevertheless, Spirit surely has the spirit right. Who doesn't associate National Pancake Day with forced-date-and-destination air travel? You know, Justin must travel a lot. While I imagine he generally books his flights somewhat farther ahead, with this promotion he might be able to save a bundle.

SPEAKING OF SWELL BARGAINS, I'VE GOT
A BIRTHDAY-DINNER SUGGESTION TOO

On the subject of Justin's travels, I don't know where exactly the birthday boy is today, but if he's in the New York area, I would point out that through Thursday my supermarket has bits of boneless sirloin steak on sale for $3.99/pound. This is still a price point I don't frequently rise to, but remember, it's boneless, and for my birthday last week I splurged and shelled out $3.51 (but who's counting?) for a piece, from which I got two meals. Yeah, the meat at my supermarket is kind of crappy. Still, it was tasty, if chewy. Both times.

I guess by the time this appears Justin will have had his birthday dinner, but as I mentioned, the sale is in effect through Thursday.

OBVIOUSLY JUSTIN APPEARS IN PUBLIC A LOT,
BUT IS HE COMFORTABLE SPEAKING IN PUBLIC?

For a lot of people, as we know, speaking in public is one of the worst nightmares. This bit of wisdom from Groupon the Cat has been on my mind since it turned up with yesterday's Groupon "deal" offer:

The Groupon Guide to: Presentations

In today's lecture-driven workplace, there are no jobs that don't require employees to give at least 15 presentations per day. Here are some tips on giving a successful presentation:

• Start with a joke, then close with the same joke to indicate that the presentation is finished.
• Shouting makes everything more memorable.
• Make eye contact with your audience. This is especially effective if you are crying.
• Imagine that the audience is naked -- they're doing the same to you.

I was so impressed -- especially by the first two suggestions -- that I left a comment, to the effect that with these brilliant tips no one need ever again be afraid of speaking in public. Today I had a Facebook message (my Groupon account seems somehow linked into my Facebook one) from a sympathetic soul who was moved to correct me, informing me that, on the contrary, these suggestions are "a disaster." She invited me to visit a session of an organization she is somehow connected with -- in the Erie, PA area. [Note: I had a link to yesterday's version of this Groupon the Cat tip, but our blog software ate it up along with about a third of this post, and in reconstructing it I haven't been able to retrieve that link. Apparently these tips are periodically recycled. This link appears to be to an earlier appearance.]

I don't expect to be in Erie anytime soon, and in any case have to stand by my original response. This idea of starting and finishing with the same joke -- genius! And shouting? Brilliant! In today's gently comported world of polite discourse I find there's not nearly enough shouting.

Now, at the moment for Justin it doesn't seem to matter that when he opens his mouth to talk -- at least from the bits I've heard -- the whole magical aura of his physical appearance is obliterated by sheer dullness. I gather that what he does in public is sing. However, as a public figure he presumably does occasionally need to be able to speak in public, and while I'm not sure that my commenter's organization is equipped to help with the problem of not having anything sensible to say, if he's interested, I'll be happy to supply the name. It's the least I can do. (Presumably the organization has outlets in locations other than Erie.)

#

Among ABC's Wednesday comedies, there's definitely something intriguing going on in "The Middle"

by Ken

If you haven't seen The Middle, I don't know whether anything comes across with this clip, as the Heck family, always running to stay in place, races to make the morning's trash pickup, which budget cuts have reduced to once every two weeks. Naturally, from this point, anytime anyone asks Brick about his mother throwing a beer bottle at him, he replies truthfully that he's not supposed to talk about it.

Or this clip, where it's established pretty definitively that Brick, um, isn't like other little boys.



Or this clip (which isn't really a clip, but a stitching-together of widely spaced bits of scenes into a tidy mini-drama -- why should we expect an officially posted ABC clip to represent the show faithfully?), when everything goes wrong for the Hecks on Thanksgiving. All poor Brick wants is to visit the corn maze, one of those things the family always used to do, until they got sick of them -- before Brick was part of the family. ("The forgotten third child," Frankie notes in her voiceover.) Axl, being Axl, rubs it in with his tale of peeing in the Nile, until . . . well, you'll see.



Out of kind of nowhere, ABC came up with a Wednesday-night comedy lineup this season, and the shows aren't necessarily the sort of thing you would expect from Disney folk. You get the feeling that somebody in the programming department has heard that a lot of those viewers the TV networks are hemorrhaging have been drifting off to something new called "cable," where apparently they have edgier, sexier shows like something called Sex Under the Cities.

I'm not sure why, but I set my DVR to record three of the four (sorry, but I don't know a blessed thing about the fourth, Hank, which seems to have disappeared already anyway): the much-talked-about Modern Family (with the current super-jumbo-size Ed O'Neill, who doesn't seem to fit inside his skin anymore, as Jay, the patriarch of a family that includes his new young Colombia-bombshell wife and her son as well as his own daughter's and gay son's families) and Courtney Cox's Cougar Town (which really isn't what it sounds like but manages to cause as much discomfort as if it were for everyone, including viewers) and the awfully-difficult-to-describe The Middle.

Judging by comments I've seen online, I'm not the only one who's "discovered" The Middle, created and produced by Eileen Heisler and DeAnn Heline -- though of course for even the worst piece of trash put on the air you'll find a coterie of diehard fans who swear it's the greatest tbing on the air. It seems at first as if the show is just another sendup of those schematically dysfunctional Middle American families, where you can slap a label on each of the characters and it sort of seems like you've described the show. You haven't, but it isn't all that easy to explain what's left out of your description, the thing that makes you -- or me, anyway -- care about the Hecks and root for them and hope against hope and experience that somehow this week things will work out for them a little better than a draw.

The Hecks: Mike, Frances (Frankie), Sue, Brick, and Axl

Generally speaking, it's in the "real family" genre -- out of Roseanne, of course. The friend who helped turn me on to Roseanne said of it that it was the first time he recalled seeing a TV family that looked like his, and Roseanne was indeed the rare sitcom -- or TV series of any sort -- that was cast with a thumb of the nose at the idea of prettiness. (Obviously Malcolm in the Middle is also in the mix with The Middle, and I see commenters who can't get past that, but you really have to -- The Middle isn't Malcolm.)

Not much effort is made to prettify the Hecks either, and it may be just incidental if the frequent sight of thick-skulled Axl in just his boxers makes inroads into the demographics of blushing teen females and twink-loving gay males of all ages. Patricia Heaton as Frankie, notably more vulnerable than she was on Everybody Loves Raymond, and Neil Flynn as Mike, liberated from the terminal annoyingness of his evil janitor on Scrubs, as the parents really show the signs of their ongoing struggle against all of life's obstacles. Both they and the kids (Charlie McDermott as Axl, Eden Sher as the perennially shrieking Sue, and Atticus Shaffer as Brick) really get you on their side. Although you know they'll get through in the end, somehow, the margin is going to be hair-raisingly close.

SIDEBAR: SPEAKING OF SCRUBS . . .

Won't that damned show ever die? How many final episodes is it going to go through? Last night there it was back again! (Even more incredibly, I recorded it!) I gather that many of the (nominal) grown-ups are gone, perhaps because they've gotten other work -- like Flynn, and Christa Miller, now Courtney Cox's best friend on Cougar Town.

Certainly Frankie gets no relief at work. She stands squarely at the bottom in seniority and sales among the staff of Ehlert Motors, the last car dealership left in Orson, Indiana. As I've said before, while it may well be just me, no matter what he does, everything Brian Doyle Murray says and does cracks me up, even if he's playing the most utterly appalling character. And I've never seen him have this much opportunity to display his hilarious-appalling craft.

Like on the Thanksgiving episode, when Mr. Ehlert delivered his bombshell: Because sales were so poor, he was switching to a 365-day schedule, just like that diner out on route whatever, meaning that the staff would have to work on Thanksgiving. When Frankie insisted, "Mr. Ehlert, that is just wrong," he rasped back: "Well, so's taking the country away from a bunch of Indians. But aren'tcha glad we did?"

Shortly thereafter, this scene played out in his office:

FRANKIE [entering timidly]: Mr. Ehlert . . .

MR. EHLERT: What now? Tampon machine empty?

FRANKIE: No, actually, sir, I was wondering if I could possibly in any way have Thanksgiving off to spend with my family?

MR. EHLERT [smiling -- uh-oh!]: Okay, we're gonna play a little game called "I Be You, You Be Me." [Whining in his croak.] "Mr. Ehlert, I know I'm the newest employee, with the worst sales record, and even though I whine about equality for women in the workplace, can I have Thanksgiving off so I can hug my family all day long, even though two minutes ago you said I had to work?"

FRANKIE [straining at hopefulness]: Yes?

MR. EHLERT [nodding, back to normal voice, except almost croak-free]: Okay, I'm me again. NO!!!

[As Mike Heck pointed out, "Who the hell is going to buy a car on Thanksgiving?" Eventually Mr. Ehlert allowed Frankie to work an evening shift, informing her that she was now working Christmas Day. Later, when she had to ask to change back to a daytime shift, that cost her Easter. ]

The remarkable accomplishment here is making this guy funny. It can't just be the character's obliviousness to how appalling he is. The world is filled with people like that, and hardly any of them are even the least bit amusing.

This was one of the things that fascinated me about Seinfeld. You could gather together all sorts of facts about Kenny Kramer, the real-life inspiration for the TV Kramer, and they might make it seems as if poor Kenny was having his life ripped off shamelessly. What that failed to account for, though, was the central, overriding fact: Where the real-life Kramer gave every evidence of being anywhere from a monstrous irritant to an out-and-out nightmare for the people who knew him, the TV Kramer was hilarious. That for me was a measure of the genius of Larry David and Jerry Seinfeld. Of actor Michael Richards too, of course, but think: In contrast with Brian Doyle Murray, have you seen him do anything else anywhere near as funny as Kramer?

I can't put my finger on much more about what makes The Middle so appealing, except perhaps to suggest that its creators really understood the tone they were going after and actually got it. Now that I've caught up on my stored episodes of Cougar Town and Modern Family, I find the comparison instructive.

The tone of Cougar Town, where Courntey Cox's character refuses to accept that she has passed into her forties as, post-divorce, she tries to raise her adolescent son, is all over the place, and I wonder whether the creators themselves know what they were after. Or perhaps they were scuttled by network geniuses forcing them to pander to their perception, right or wrong, of dumbed-down audience tastes. This is a shame, because there's so much good stuff going on here, even in the Cox character's pathetic desperation to maintain her looks and her youth, apparently en route to never grasping that they're really not an essential part of all those folksy homespun virtues she clings to.

You get the feeling that ABC thinks it can sell salaciousness, thereby thumbing its nose at an awful lot of good work by the writers and actors. It's almost worse if the show succeeds ratings-wise, because it will be for the wrong reasons, increasing the pressure to downplay its good qualities and focus on the bad.

And speaking of people not grasping basic truths, you might think that the whole point of Modern Family is to show us an entire set of characters who go beyond incomplete self-knowledge and knowledge about the people close to them to complete lack of such knowledge. At any rate, you might think that was the point if you could think of any way that might give the show a point. Again I have to wonder how much network meddling got in the way of a program concept that might have been developed into something genuinely interesting and funny.

Maybe the idea is that somehow the show can rise above the massive pile-on of character clichés and cartoonish stereotypes and become . . . well, I have no idea what it might become. All that said, though, I notice that I haven't reprogrammed the DVR to stop recording new episodes. Is it possible that there really is something there?

On the Thanksgiving episode of The Middle, who should turn up but John Cullum, giving a hilariously crotchety performance as Mike's dad, Big Mike, who drives everyone crazy with his rugged determination not to be "a bother"? (By contrast, when Shelley Long turned up on Modern Family as the family patriarch Jay's first wife, it felt like, "Ohmygod, who else could it have been? That's the one thing this show was missing.")

There's a new episode of The Middle scheduled tonight (at 8:30 ET/PT), but online fans of the show are worrying about ABC's decision to remove full online episodes of the show from the website. I've suggested that both Modern Family and Cougar Town were potentially viable projects that were sabotaged in varying degree by network executives who think TV viewers are even stupider than they themselves are. I suspect that The Middle escaped because it seemed so bland -- your average network suit probably wouldn't have a clue as to what's going on in a show like this.

In fairness, it can't be easy to run a TV network with your head wedged securely up your butt.

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