The Middle
Frankie, fresh off of being fired, as taken to walking
around the neighborhood, until she has a run-in with crazy Rita. She thinks Frankie stole her hose, though
Frankie is 100% certain she did not. Frankie,
in an attempt to appease Rita, buys a new hose to put in her yard, but Rita is
not impressed, and they get in a tug-of-war over the hose, and Frankie chips a
tooth. But in a surprising twist, Brick
took the hose! He was using it to water
the demonic bunny from the previous episode, so Frankie and Brick try to
sneakily get rid of the stolen hose.
But!
Rita stops them before
they drive away: her hose was left on the front yard the night before, so the
Hecks are coming to a pool party, since Rita hates owing anyone. Frankie and Brick get rid of the hose anyway,
just in case.
In other news, Sue was invited on a band trip as the
mascot. She is super excited and even
wants to show off her new routine sans costume, with unfortunate results. Apparently, Sue is only a good performer inside
the costume.
When Sue is at Mike’s work, hawking her meaty wears(and no,
that’s not dirty, get your mind out of the gutter), she gets a peek at Mike’s
paycheck, and comes to the not-so-surprising conclusion that the Heck’s are
poor. Sue, being the worry-wart she is, decides
she needs to single-handedly save her family, and cancels her trip to
Cincinnati to save money. Of course, she
doesn’t actually tell them why, but makes up (several) excuses as why she’s not
going, mostly involving the school putting the kibosh on the whole thing.
When Sue’s friends come over, and make it painfully obvious
she told them about her family’s poor-ness, Mike goes and talks to Sue. He has a very nice conversation with her,
reassuring her, and reminding Sue that she’s the kid, and doesn’t need to worry
about the grown-up problems.
Of those grown-up problems, having ‘the talk’ is one of
them, and apparently, Frankie and Mike didn’t have it with any of the kids, so
when Brick has a sex ed unit at school, he’s a bit freaked out. They manage to convince him to attend, and
the information he got from Axl manages to get the group called into the nurse’s
office to discuss ‘appropriate classroom discussion.’
This was a nice episode.
There was some funny visual gags, and the Brick made me laugh throughout. This show deserves more attention then I
think it gets.
I did catch a funny line:
Brick, after his first sex ed lesson, to his parents: “I
guess I’ll go look at your bras now…apparently, that normal, and you guys are
always on me to be more normal”
Suburgatory
This is another great show that finally had it’s season
premier.
Tessa spent the summer in Manhattan with her grandmother,
learning about her mother, and generally having much more freedom than she
normally does.
When she gets back, George is much less hands-on than he
normally is, and Tessa is appreciative, if a little distracted by all the mom
memorabilia she brought back from her vacation, including photos, a leather
jacket, and a tape of her mom singing.
In other Chatswin news, Noah’s surrogate(and George’s ex),
had the baby, and since his wife is on a book tour, Noah wants a nanny. But not just any nanny, Carmen, who currently
works for Dallas and Daliah. Dallas and
Noah spare no expense to bribe Carmen to work for them, to no avail, and Carmen
bugs out completely at the craziness that is Chatswin, and hides at George’s
house.
George finally talks some sense into the two, showing them
that sometimes, they may want to actually, you know, raise their kids
themselves, instead of letting a nanny do it for them, since soon enough, their
kids won’t need them anymore *cough*Tessa*cough*.
In the final story of the evening, Lisa is leveraging her
knowledge of Ryan being adopted to get everything she wants from her parents,
from Ryan doing all the chores, to getting the solo in the family act for the
fall talent show. Of course, this
totally backfires on her when Sheila figures out that if Ryan knows about being
adopted, he may want to go searching for his birthmother, leaving only Lisa for
Sheila and Fred to dote on, horrors.
We end on the talent show, and Tessa channels her mother,
and the guitar lessons her father gave her as a child, and sings the show’s
theme song, in the guise of it being a song her mother wrote, and it’s actually
very good, so that was fun.
I love how real this show seems, even as the absurdity of
the behavior of the Chatswin residents is ratcheted to incredible heights. The relationship hardships are exaggerated,
but the reconciliations always feel earned, and the growth natural.
All in all, a good opening for a fun show.
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