The Middle – What’s amazing is that such a small town has so many restaurants

I’m not sure if the significance was lost on anybody else, but Valentine’s Day tends to generally fall out on February 14, which this year is this coming Sunday. And not, as last night’s The Middle would have you believe, this coming Saturday.

Now I realize that the calendar shift was made to enable the entire Heck family to have Valentine’s plans without it being on a school night, but the literary license did scream a bit loudly on that one.

Nevertheless, if it made possible the episode we had last night, it was all worth it.

As usual Sue had the weakest story of the night, at least for me. Cute idea to make her new friend Carly (Blaine Saunders) an overnight beauty, and it’s funny that if the Heck kids weren’t so young, Axl would have had a very different reaction. But maybe Sue’s just a bit too young to be enjoyable in typical teenage situations — personally, I don’t think she’s old enough yet for it to be embarrassing for her to be uncomfortable at a party with drinking, drugs, and sex. I think it’s still debatable whether or not kids her age could have even outfitted such a gathering.

Axl’s always been a bit of an oddball, but apparently it’s true that we’re different people with our friends. I did not like Axl with his pals, and it wasn’t that he was doing anything differently than he normally would (although, would Axl really have lost the girl on his own?). I just thought he was talking and expressing himself in a rather unlikable sort of way. Maybe it’s unfair to compare that to the interactions he has with his parents, but his whole money thing with Mike was more buddy conversation than anything else, so why couldn’t he act like that with his friends too? “Get in on the ground floor,” as it were.

And lest we forget, Mike and Frankie got a night together as well. Sure they spent most of it in the car, but they could have grabbed that opportunity by the horns instead of wasting it arguing about restaurants. It might not be perfect, but they could have enjoyed a couple hours kid-free without worrying so much about what they were doing.

If you hadn’t guessed it already, I saved the best for last: Brick. We need to spend an entire episode exploring his social group to help make kids who aren’t very social more social. But for now, let’s just discuss how awesome his first sleepover went. When I heard it was with the “cat kid,” well, a lot of ideas flooded into my mind about what that could mean. I did not come up with “acts like a cat.” Zack (Andrew J. Fishman) is certainly (I hope) one of a kind, but what’s great about Brick is that he’s so clueless about social interactions that he can’t even judge someone for being different. Even though he’s apparently the coolest (whatever adjective she used that’s what I heard) kid in the group. Who else would practice for their sleepover ahead of time? Great idea!

“Hey, Lady Gaga, love your music.” – Axl to Sue, upon seeing her dressed for her party

“You look so pretty in all of that makeup. Like a Kardashian.” – Carly to Sue, right in all the wrong ways

“They said they’d take him for the night. A deal’s a deal!” – Mike to Frankie, when Zack’s mother calls to have Brick picked up

Clacked by Aryeh S.
on Feb 11, 2010 @ 09:00 EST5EDT