The Middle – Greetings from Japan

Super episode of The Middle last night! It was totally oddball and completely random — that was comedy done right.

As I’m sure you were as well, I was a bit wary when the family began discussing a foreign exchange student. It wasn’t so much that Brick saw the student as a replacement for a dog … I think it was more shades of The Simpsons when Bart went to France and got exploited. I didn’t imagine that the Hecks would do something like that, but I still saw a darker experience ahead.

I wanted to know why a Japanese student would want to come to Indiana. I also wanted to see Takayuki (Matthew Moy) be the wrong kid — maybe an Asian American returning home from a trip abroad? — but I was plenty happy with what we got.

Axl taking Takayuki to school could have been expanded upon, and I can’t imagine that Takayuki did any worse with the ladies than Axl’s idiot friends do. Sue singing him karaoke because Brick said it’s the Japanese national pastime? Priceless. And was Brick, for all intents and purposes, walking Takayuki around the block? Does he imagine that a dog would be a better conversationalist than that?

I couldn’t believe that Mike took Takayuki out on the open water. After a few days with the Heck family, it might be wiser to put someone on a suicide watch. At least don’t take them someplace where it’s so easy to dive beneath the water to make it all stop.

What was up with the weird breakfast thing? Did we witness Takayuki eat a single thing during his entire US stay? And why was it so short-lived? How can anyone have a meaningful life experience in such a short span of time?

But all of those little questions aside, I really liked the episode. And I loved the pieces of “American culture” that Takayuki brought back with him to Japan. Axl’s nakedness was the most blatant, and my only problem with his replication of Brick’s weird whisper was that it doesn’t work if it’s forced (has anyone noticed Atticus Shaffer has been lacking that organic feel now and again this season?). But what was the Sue-ism? Was he wearing lipstick? It would have been much cooler if he’d had some piece of cross country paraphernalia on or around him.

Takayuki’s existence is an interesting opportunity for The Middle to show whether or not it can maintain consistency on some small piece of plot that would provide a certain amount of grounding to the series. There doesn’t have to be a Lost-like build toward a (totally disappointing) end, but it’s the little things on a show that make you feel more like a part of the family each time you tune in. Cross country for Sue is an excellent example of that.

Here, the Heck family had a teenage boy from Japan come and live with them. Clearly they left some lasting imprints on him, and Brick already has a thing for Japan. So will Takayuki’s name be uttered again? Will he and Brick become pen pals, perhaps? I’m not saying it has to happen … but what’s wrong if it did?

Clacked by Aryeh S.
on Oct 21, 2010 @ 10:00 EST5EDT