Thursday, August 03, 2017

End Of The Middle

It's just been announced The Middle's upcoming season, its ninth, will be its last

It was a good run.  Very few shows that debuted in 2009 are still around.  Here are some contemporaries of The Middle that made a splash: Glee, Parks And Recreation, Community, Cougar Town.  All gone.  The Middle 's neighbor, Modern Family, is still very much with us, though.

The lead, Patricia Heaton, got the show a few years after starring in Everybody Loves Raymond, which also lasted nine seasons.  She's done well for herself--though she knows shows can tank, such as her 2007 Back To You, with Kelsey Grammer and Josh Gad, which left the air after one season.  (The creators of that show, Steve Levitan and Christopher Lloyd, did okay as well, bouncing back with Modern Family.)  

I've been watching The Middle regularly almost from the start, but I can see that it's time to go.  They've done just about everything they can--the kids are grown up and mostly out of the house.  The only thing left would be for the kids to have their own kids, and I'd just as soon not see that.

So it's goodbye to a well-done show.  Never my favorite, but it was reliable.

3 Comments:

Anonymous Denver Guy said...

One of our favorites, as much due to good writing as the fact that two of the kids matched in age two of our kids and situation satired events we experienced. We'll miss the show, but were seeing the end near with Axl graduating college, plus the Brick story-line getting too silly.

We will also miss Last man standing, cancelled after I think 6 seasons, despite being near the top of the sit-com ratings. I guess popularity in the disfavored demographics isn't enough to carry a show anymore.

I guess we'll be left with Brooklyn 99 and Rick & Morty as our only comedies. Perfect time to stream Community from the beginning!

5:26 AM, August 06, 2017  
Blogger LAGuy said...

The Middle, by the way, only received one Emmy nomination in its entire run, and it was for makeup.

You would have thought Eden Sher would have been nominated for supporting actress at least once.

Any time is a good time to stream Community, though it operates at full power only in its first three seasons. Most of its performers have gone on to other half-hours. Donald Glover in Atlanta (which is winning many awards). Gillian Jacobs in Love. Alison Brie in GLOW. Joel McHale in The Great Indoors (canceled). Dany Pudi in Powerless (canceled). Yvette Nicole Brown in The Odd Couple (canceled). Ken Jeong in Dr. Ken (canceled).

Have you stopped watching The Big Bang Theory? It's two years older than The Middle and still going strong (ratings-wise, anyway).

12:17 PM, August 06, 2017  
Anonymous Denver Guy said...

Yes, we stopped watching Big Bang because we can only watch it live, and we just can't set aside the same hour every week to follow a show. CBS doesn't have an App for streaming its shows on XBox, our number one way of watching TV shows. On line, CBS only lets you view the last 4 or 5 episodes, so once we fell behind, it was not possible to catch up. My DVR broke a few years ago, and since I only needed it for CBS shows, I have not replaced it.

This is partly why I'm considering buying CBS All Access, which I understand would let us view all old episodes of all CBS shows. But I'll probably only do it if the new Star Trek is really worth it. For one thing, Big Bang was getting less interesting about the time we were cut off anyway (when Leonard married Penny). Sort of like when Diane left Cheers.

5:48 AM, August 07, 2017  

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