{"id":1042,"date":"2008-07-21T15:46:39","date_gmt":"2008-07-21T22:46:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.alertnerd.com\/?p=1042"},"modified":"2008-07-21T15:46:39","modified_gmt":"2008-07-21T22:46:39","slug":"middlegirl-bonding","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.alertnerd.com\/?p=1042","title":{"rendered":"Middlegirl Bonding"},"content":{"rendered":"

So I’m enjoying the hell out of The Middleman<\/em>. The combination of oddness and earnestness, of clever quips and trout-happy zombies and twentysomething drama…it all hits me exactly the right way. I need to check out the comics, but I’m waiting ’til the show goes into reruns — that way (by my screwy math, anyway), I’ll be Middleman<\/em>-less for a shorter period of time.<\/p>\n

One of my favorite parts of the show, though, is an element I wasn’t expecting: the relationship between Wendy Watson and her performance artist roomie, Lacey. As initially presented in the pilot, Lacey seemed like a fairly predictable character construct: kinda flaky, kinda annoying, easily distracted by the square jaw and pillow lips of The Middleman. I was anticipating lots of over-the-top performance art moments and eyeroll-provoking antics. What’s been developed in subsequent episodes is a lot deeper and loads more interesting. She’s a little wacky, but she’s not just<\/em> wacky. She cares about Wendy, she misses her neglectful mom, and she’s more observant than people give her credit for. She has a soul. And the friendship between her and Wendy is really great — I think it would have been easy to make Wendy constantly fed up with her or just kind of above her various hijinx, but instead, they have a real bond. They feel like real friends, like Buffy and Willow — different people, but with a core of sameness that bonds them.<\/p>\n

It’s tough to find a girl friendship on TV that feels that way. It’s nice to see on this show. Keep it up (and please, please don’t have a guy come between them).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

So I’m enjoying the hell out of The Middleman. The combination of oddness and earnestness, of clever quips and trout-happy zombies and twentysomething drama…it all hits me exactly the right way. I need to check out the comics, but I’m waiting ’til the show goes into reruns — that way (by my screwy math, anyway), […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1042","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-tv"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.alertnerd.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1042","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.alertnerd.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.alertnerd.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.alertnerd.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.alertnerd.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1042"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.alertnerd.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1042\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.alertnerd.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1042"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.alertnerd.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1042"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.alertnerd.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1042"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}