The Middle

As in, the middle of the week, and the surprisingly solid two hour comedy block ABC's instilled into Wednesday nights.

Before I get to that though, I realize I neglected to cover Tuesday's Glee. So here's the gist of it: It was probably the strongest episode this season so far, shifting focus to characters that always seem to hang on the Glee-verse's periphery and giving them more narrative exposition. In laymen's terms, Mercedes was fierce, and thank goodness she stood up and pointed out the Rachel Berry favoritism, Mike Chang was awesome and made West Side Story's dancing gangsters cool. Didn't really care for the assumption that Asian parents are only grades driven and don't encourage extracurriculars or other career ventures. And Glee needs to step away from Coldplay's catalog and never cover a song of theirs again. "Fix You" was rendered as schmaltzy and melodramatic.

Luther's back, and just as morally ambiguous as ever. There are aspects of the show that drive me batty, namely the glacial pace at which the title character and his band of skeptical detectives try to solve the case. Things I've learned about Luther:

- sucks if you work under him and some psychopathic homocidal maniac decides you're bargaining leverage (you're on your own)
- he really is a big softie, and the girl he rescued has a horrible mother
- the guy that played Stan Shunpike in the HP movies did an unnervingly good job as Cameron

And now, to the comedy block....

Can I just say that I LOVE The Middle? Sure, Modern Family gets all the glory and attention, but the Hecks and their middle class house replete with messy kitchen and aged furniture warms the cold, dark recesses of my heart. Frankie flips out after eating chips from a bag that Axl's deposited his toenail clippings in (GROSS) and flips out after a series of surmounting annoyances. The kids spend the entire episode coming to terms with the fact that they need to alter their behavior lest they drive their mother crazy, and finally put the idea into action when they find out a half hour before her return that she's coming home. I love that their solution is to dump everything in the backyard.

Suburgatory is snarky, good fun. It's weird to see SNL alums as the overly perky neighbors to a former L&O detective, but the gossipy male neighbors and the triumphant hibachi BBQ save were ridiculously funny.

Modern Family is at its best, I think, when it focuses on Jay and Manny and Cameron and Mitchell. Claire comes off as a tad too shrilly sometimes, which always makes me want to change the channel. Cam and Mitchell spend the day passive aggresively handing the kitchen cleaning duties off to one another (actually Cameron acts as though he wants to do it himself) while Jay tries to help Manny sell wrapping paper
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Happy Endings was one of those, "I guess since I'm sitting here I might as well watch teh hours." kinds of shows. I can't hate since it had dumb teens buying baby jumpers as a fad, a LOTR joke, and a guy working a food truck.

Revenge never manages to get a full sit down watch, and that's a shame because the underlying story is great, but I can't deal with all if half the time it jumps to randy teens trying to get it on.