The Middle

I have never been a Patricia Heaton fan. I don’t like her nagging wife routine. The Goodbye Girl is Marsha Mason. But I gave The Middle a chance; after all, I’m from Indiana. After two episodes, we’ve found reason enough to come back, but I hope the writers will be developing more to say, something beyond the gags involving the single characteristic of each character.

The tornado warning–priceless. It’s true. While I wish the naked boy would put on pants for any number of reasons, I loved when his parents instituted the five foot rule. Our favorite is the weird little Dewey-like character and the way he whispers to himself.

My only real issues are 1) that people here rarely use the word Hoosier outside of a conversation about a ball team with that word as part of the name and 2) the inexpensive food store they visit in episode two. We don’t have anything like that. We have Aldi’s, with cheap but decent groceries. Or, like, the day old bakery. The only place you can get rotting food is the WalMart produce section. The small Asian market we frequent is the only place I’ve ever seen a sign for Expired Product Buy 1 Get 1 Free.

If you’re going to feature a Little Debbie factory, why disguise it as something else? The way advertising and product placement goes nowadays, I’m sure they’d totally agree to let ya. Even if they won’t pay, you know we’re gonna make that association.

I’m pleased that their house is a little cluttered, a little dirty…that the mom doesn’t spend all her time making cookies and folding laundry. We don’t eat every meal out of carry out bags here, either. If the creators are going to have them keep doing that, the family should be compromised of people with large BMIs (which we do have in bulk, pun maybe intended). That is probably the source of some of the family’s money troubles.

As a final note, if all of you out there in Hollywood, in California (or for that matter, New York) think you’re better than any of us because of where you live, think that you can continually poke fun at how irrelevant and backward you believe we all are, you might want to wake up to the state of your locale, the economy and your industry. Eventually, you’ll have to face that we are the majority of your audience. You may end up dependent on us or living with us. We are not morons. We don’t particularly like you. And you can’t make it here. Keep that in mind.

Related Reading:

Indiana Jones: The Complete Adventures (Raiders of the Lost Ark / Temple of Doom / Last Crusade / Kingdom of the Crystal Skull) [Blu-ray]

Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark (Special Edition)

Crimes in Southern Indiana: Stories