The Middle – Five birthdays, two anniversaries, an Easter, and a graduation

Another winning episode of The Middle this week (my tardiness shouldn’t reflect on that at all). Sad that the show — and we — really had to say goodbye to Frances Bay, who played Aunt Ginny, but they gave her a nice sendoff. I just wonder why it took four months to do so.

How great was the drive back from the funereal? Brick’s fear of dying in his sleep; Axl talking about freezing his head and then telling Sue that he was going to freeze her head and put it on somebody else’s body … I loved how panicked she got about that. Frankie and Mike totally had no control over that situation.

There was something funny about Frankie having to break the news of Ginny’s death to Aunt Edie (Jeanette Miller) over and over again. I wish we’d gotten to see Mike do it once or twice, but I love that Frankie spiced it up by adding in a hang gliding accident (not that we witnessed that either). Nice.

Awesome that Axl and Brick spent another episode hanging out together! Brick easily could have told his teacher that Axl had eaten his Indiana dough map project. If she’s had Axl…. But I more enjoyed the direction they ultimately went in, attempting to complete the project first with brownie mix, then pancakes mixed with dirt, and finally with pizza. That looked pretty cool. Unfortunately Brick hadn’t bothered to check his assignment … he had Texas! “Now you know why Mom gets so frustrated with me.” Um, yeah.

Matt (Moises Arias), the boy who had a crush on Sue, looked uncannily like Bob (Chris Kattan). I assume if the two were related it would have come up, and if the actors were related they’d probably have the same last name. Still, I could also see Bob doing the woo-by-dance thing that Matt and the wrestling team did for Sue. So maybe we’ll discover a connection between them somewhere down the road.

Finally, I feel like it isn’t necessarily true that the Hecks “float” everything. I didn’t revisit every episode that’s ever aired, but I know we’ve seen plenty of events celebrated these past two plus seasons. Brick’s birthday party at the library; Valentine’s Day celebrations; Mike and Frankie celebrating their anniversary weeks late by going to a carpet depot. Not to mention the Thanksgiving and Christmas episodes every season. I’d never suggest that they were on top of things, but I feel like they do celebrations somewhat decently.

Now, as for missing events in their kids’ lives … that I agree with. And Frankie might have been better off missing the wrestling meet.

“When somebody dies you’re not supposed to cook.” – Frankie
“Why not?” – Axl
“Because, you’re not supposed to cook when you’re sad.” – Frankie
“Are you sad all the time, Mom?” – Brick
“Yes.” – Frankie

“Brick, you gotta start paying more attention to your assignments if you want to get a decent grade. Sean told me our teacher said that.” – Axl to Brick, while they’re trying to figure out how to do Brick’s project

“Gentleman, how’s it going?” – Mike
“Good, good. I’m telling you, Mom makes a lot of things harder than they need to be.” – Axl
“You know, that could apply to anything. I don’t really need the details.” – Mike

Clacked by Aryeh S.
on Jan 14, 2012 @ 19:25 EST5EDT