The Middleman: Fighting Evil So You Don’t Have To

“Don’t you want to fight evil?  Monsters?  Robots? Aliens?”

No?  Don’t sweat it.  The Middleman is here, fighting evil so you don’t have to and since he’s doing it on ABC Family, you can rest assured that he’ll perform his duties with a level of virtue that makes Boy Scouts look like common street thugs.

There will be no drinking (unless it’s milk), no cursing (profanity cheapens the soul) and no tights, cause, well, he’s not that kind of superhero.  So what kind of superhero is he?  Picture a male version of Donna Reed dispatching aliens as Donna would dispatch dust bunnies from under the bed.  Just another day in the life. . . and it all comes from the fertile imagination of Javier Grillo-Marxuach.

Javier Grillo-Marxuach (the name is way too cool not to repeat) is a TV writer and producer known for his work on Lost, Medium and Charmed.  Even better than that, he’s a comic book geek extraordinaire! The Middleman was originally written as a TV pilot, but it ended up becoming a series of graphic novels, which, ironically, are now being made into a TV series.  (That’s one way around the system!)

It’s three parts Austin Powers, two parts Men In Black, one part X-Files all mixed together with just a touch of Gilmore Girls.

Wendy Watson (Natalie Morales) is an art student who’s having a little trouble finding her true calling.  She lives in a loft with her best friend Lacey (Britt Morgan) and she works boring temp jobs to pay the rent. And then one day, the boring lab where she answers phones gets a little less boring when a science experiment escapes from the lab and is neutralized by a calm, but mysterious, stranger. 

Turns out ‘the stranger’ is really The Middleman (Matt Keeslar) and he’s so impressed with Wendy’s quick thinking and level head that he recruits her into the Middleman organization.  (Does that make her The Middlewoman?)

Wendy’s not sure she wants to fight evil but it appears to be her destiny and soon she has her own zippy new theme song complete with Avengerish montage — and hey, what more could any girl ask for?

And with that, it’s off to stop whatever it is that’s knocking off mob bosses and leaving banana peels in its wake. 

It’s wacky.  It’s weird and its insanely well written.  So well written that it may be the show’s fatal flaw.

The Middleman is riddled with pop culture references (thus the one part Gilmore Girls) and they come at you faster than Superman on Red Bull.  Shaft, Planet of the Apes, The Godfather — there’s even a young man who speaks in lyrics but by the time you catch on to what they’re saying, you’ve already missed four other things.  It’s fast and its wordy (again with the Gilmore Girls) and The Middleman says ‘okey dokey’.  (I like him, he says, ‘okey dokey.’)

The trouble is, if you aren’t quick enough to play pop culture Jeopardy, then you’ll likely only see the rubber-suited monsters, the stilted, cliche dialogue and the comic-booky villains.  And if that’s all you see, then you won’t realize it’s supposed to be like that.  As Austin Powers is to spy movies, The Middleman is to 60’s B alien. . . spy. .  superhero. . . movies — in other words, it’s hard to pin down.

Let me send you off with this.  If you’re a pop culture junkie and /or a comic book fanatic, you have to check out The Middleman.  Don’t let the fact that its airing on ABC Family fool you.  It’s hip, it’s cool, its geek chic.  And it premieres Monday, June 16 at 8:00 on ABC Family. 

Check it out, then come back here to leave your comments and read my interview with The Middleman himself, Matt Keeslar.  You can also learn more by subscribing to The MiddleBlog, the official LiveJournal for the series. And you can see a video introduction by Javier Grillo-Marxuach at the official website.

Photos courtesy of ABC Family