Okay, to be fair, I was too harsh on last week's episode, at least I was involved in that one and cared where the plots were going. This episode was interesting.but there were too many plots and I didn't truly care about how they ended.
Frankie goes bat-crap crazy again. While in line, paying her electric bill, she is late for work but because she is in her lab coat, people assume her job as a doctor is more important than hers, so they let her cut in line and she uses that to her advantage, milking up her situation, saying that she had to save the life of this one boy. But this backfires, as one of the guys she cut in front of shows up at the office, so she plays up the situation, and continues to pretend that she's a doctor and of course, Dr. Goodwin (Jack MacBrayer) catches on, and Frankie tells an even bigger lie, that this guy is creepy and has been stocking her. Dr. Goodwin lets the patient go as he doesn't want a crazy person in the office.
Meanwhile, Axl, being the idiot that he is, convinces Sue to ditch school, which she does, but she doesn't go on any adventures. Instead, she stays at home, and ruins the blanket on her parents' bed by spraying soda and then spilling her salsa on it, just like my friends and I totally predicted. Then, as my one friend predicted, the washer had issues, but luckily, just in the nick of time, Sue gets the blanket back on her parents' bed and pretends that nothing happened. But she missed out on so much, as informed by Brad, there was a surprise assembly and free ice cream. She decides never to ditch school again.
Brick refuses to take a test because he doesn't want to go on to Middle School. His teacher (Sam Lloyd) and guidance counselor (Dave Foley) are worried so Brick spends the rest of the day with the guidance counselor, using a variety of sock puppets to try and get the truth out of him. Finally, when he is just asked what was worrying him, Brick informs him that the water fountains have the handles on the opposite side of what he's used to and he doesn't like change, plus he'd miss his best friend, the guidance counselor himself. Luckily, or unluckily, because of budget cuts, the guidance counselor gets to come to the Middle School twice a week so Brick isn't that scared anymore, and goes forth to take that test.
Axl has the day off school for whatever reason so he and Mike are off to go fishing. Mike is worried that Axl won't do well in college and he has reason to be worried, considering there are all these distractions surrounding him. Cue the girls playing volleyball in bikinis. They catch Axl's eye but Mike also gets distracted and thus the boat (where in the world did they get a boat??) to fall into a ditch, so they spend the rest of the day trying to get the boat out of the ditch. Axl's plan works out better than Mike's plan, though it causes Mike to get covered in mud, but he learns that he shouldn't be as concerned as he once was. Axl learns that his dad is also capable of mistakes. He had never seen him make any before, though Mike says that's because he wasn't looking that closely.
The episode ends with a brief description of what happened to the characters in the future: Mike never looked at girls again, while Axl looked at tons of them, Sue got herself sick and missed more special events at school, Brick failed to enter the honors program because he didn't use the ever powerful number two pencil for his test and Frankie, well honestly, I forget what her description said, but it was probably something weird.
This episode was unfortunately one of the weakest of the season and I don't really like what they have done to Frankie's character this season, making seem crazy and meddling in the lives of her family much more than normal. There were only a few good moments tucked in between boring plots which is a shame because this show has some of the best actors on television but they need to be utilized properly. Next week's episode is the season finale and it looks great, I can only hope so after this disappointing episode. Grade: B
Hi Ellen. I’m always surprised how much we see things alike on The Middle. I don’t remember for sure, but didn’t ABC increase the order for the number of episodes this year? That could be the reason this episode seemed weak and didn’t do anything to advance any of the storylines. If that’s the case they may well have had to write another episode to stick in somewhere after they had it all worked out where they wanted things to go and how they wanted them to end. If you’ll notice, all the connections to the overall story are rather superficial. I think you were generous when you gave the episode a B grade.
ReplyDeleteI disagree about the Frankie character. She seemed just as over-the-top as always. (She did go a little farther when she put her hands in that guy’s mouth.) I’ve never liked the way they always made her so dumb, and she always is responsible for getting herself into trouble. She doesn’t seem to fit with the rest of the characters who find themselves in bizarre circumstances through no fault of their own. Frankie is always responsible for her own messes when she tries to get by with something or maneuver somebody into something. I don’t understand why they went to the trouble to set her up with a new job this year, and then the only times it was mentioned was in the episodes (five) where they had a name guest star coming in to play a part in that story line. Then those guest stars had smaller parts than the people at the car dealership in previous years. Maybe they found out the audience was more interested the kids’ storylines.
I’m looking forward to next week. I predict they are going to let Sue get her driver’s license and they will at least open the door to Axl getting back together was Cassidy.
I can agree with you as that Frankie is responsible for getting into the messes all by herself, but this season, especially the second half, I haven't liked what they did to her character. As for ABC increasing the number of episodes, I don't believe that to be the case. This season, just as the previous three, contains 24 episodes. And I find the kids more interesting than the parents.
ReplyDeleteFor next week, I basically agree with your predictions, as something good needs to happen to Sue. I am worried for next season, as Axl needs to go to college and they can't keep him at home, so we'll see what happens there.