{"id":1153,"date":"2008-08-19T15:27:33","date_gmt":"2008-08-19T22:27:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.alertnerd.com\/?p=1153"},"modified":"2008-08-19T15:27:33","modified_gmt":"2008-08-19T22:27:33","slug":"middlethoughts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.alertnerd.com\/?p=1153","title":{"rendered":"MiddleThoughts"},"content":{"rendered":"

Now it’s time for what is slowly becoming a weekly event — my post talking about how The Middleman<\/em> is awesome (actually, maybe I’ve only posted about that once or twice over here…the other instances were on Great Hera!<\/a> or Twitter<\/a>. But who has time for math?). Now here’s the thing: I’ve heard rumblings that The Middleman<\/em> is not a total shoo-in for renewal. Cancellation would truly break my heart, for this show has ignited a special, personal kind of love I have not felt since the end of Veronica Mars<\/em>. So follow Radio Free Javi’s advice<\/a> and send ABC Family some M&Ms, because having Wendy Watson yanked unceremoniously from my screen would be like a sad, sad repeat of watching Kristen Bell’s mournful little back as it meanders down the rainy sidewalk and out of my life FOREVER.<\/p>\n

Last night’s ep, I think, really brought together all the elements that make the show Must Genre Viewing. The vampire puppet plot was frenzied and fun (and a bit reminiscent of Angel’s great “Smile Time,” in a good way), the Wendy\/Lacey bonding was on point, and the Middleman\/Lacey stuff was unexpectedly heart-wrenching. One thing I really like about this show is its ability to balance out funny, lightning-quick references with an emotional through line. And it never feels like they’re changing the tone from scene to scene, because all of it — the funny and the sad and the weird — is part<\/em> of the tone. They also use all of their characters; no one feels superfluous. And the references aren’t just there to be references — they have a point.<\/p>\n

But one thing that made last night’s adventure really great was the little hint of mythology dropped in at the end. So Lacey isn’t the only woman Middleman loves, eh? Hmm. What’s nice about this is…we know it’s not Wendy. I mean, we can kind of tell because of how the scene is played, but we also know because Radio Free Javi has said so<\/a>. Pretty refreshing that they’re not going there, right? Anyway, I hope we get to find out who it is, so please send in some M&Ms and get this show renewed. Come on! Dollhouse<\/em> hasn’t even aired yet — surely those of you who are already working on that campaign can spare a little time.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Now it’s time for what is slowly becoming a weekly event — my post talking about how The Middleman is awesome (actually, maybe I’ve only posted about that once or twice over here…the other instances were on Great Hera! or Twitter. But who has time for math?). Now here’s the thing: I’ve heard rumblings that […]<\/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-1153","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-tv"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.alertnerd.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1153","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=1153"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.alertnerd.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1153\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.alertnerd.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1153"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.alertnerd.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1153"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.alertnerd.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1153"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}