The Middle: The Waiting Game

Sue (Eden Sher) is playing the waiting game. Waiting to hear from all the colleges she has applied at. She is trying, mostly successfully, to play it cool. She is making little sachets of potpourri for all of her senior classmates so they will remember their time together. Frankie (Patricia Heaton), on the other hand, is super freaking out. She is devastated when Purdue wait lists her and goes outside to kick some lawn chairs when Notre Dame doesn't accept her.
Still, it is hard for Sue to remain completely optimist when Brad (J. Brock Ciarlelli) decides to defer his acceptance to NYU and join the AmericaCore for a whole year. He believes that doing something with a hammer will help him bond with his father. Her dismay that her friends have their lives already figured out is written across her face.
In the meantime, Brick (Atticus Shaffer) is fed up with all of Axl's (Charlie McDermott's) crap in his room and Mike (Neil Flynn) decides that the kids are old enough to figure things out for themselves, but they are not the Donahues. Brick takes Axl's bed and places it in the empty dining room, though this upsets Frankie because she is about to move in Aunt Edie's table. While she and the kids are transporting the table back to the Heck house, Mike's car arrives next to theirs and he is singing and playing the air guitar along to a song on the radio. He is caught and is extremely embarrassed about the whole thing. He tries denying the whole thing and then forbids anyone else from talking about it before finally coming clean to Frankie that that is the way he relieves his stress. This whole getting Sue into college thing is making him stress. She finally needs something to go her way.
Luckily, it does. She hyperventilates when she opens the email from East Indiana State while Frankie tries to get her to at least express her emotions though that still doesn't work. Frankie and Mike actually have to read the email to find out that she has been accepted, even Axl grudgingly welcomes her as a fellow dragon.
The episode is good, though Sue's momentous achievement of getting into college is sort of overlooked with all the other plot lines, though they are all extremely good and entertaining, and gave each actor their moment in the sun. Flynn was especially a stand-out, proving that he does truly and deeply care about his only daughter. I wish that Sue would have shown more happiness and delight at her acceptance, though she was mighty pleased, jumping up and down and hugging everyone in sight.
The episode was also funny, which is always a relief. Sue deserves to be happy and hopefully, her speechlessness proves her happiness. I also liked that when Sue went to read her email, the point of view was from a webcam, showing her to be even more vulnerable than normal.
All-in-all, this has been the best, most well-rounded episode in some time. Grade: A-
Side Notes:
-Brick is finally out to write the perfect novel, after reading almost every book in the universe, and after kicking Axl out, he starts. He gets off to an amazing start, though quickly loses steam and abandons his first book after just two sentences.
-Axl loves his new room in the living room, and loves it even more after the table moves in. He can have breakfast in bed and can watch the big TV. After he returns to college, Frankie and Mike also enjoy breakfast in bed.
-We actually hear the voice of Brad's father, wanting him to go to the batting cages which Brad refuses.
-At first, Sue thinks that Brad is going to join the army and he says no though he always thought he would look good in that costume. Funniest line of the night.
-Axl keeps some pretty inappropriate stuff in his phone. Of course he does.
-Do colleges only send acceptance letters through email these days? I loved opening mine up in the mail on Christmas Eve.
-Frankie buys chicken from the gas station and thinks that making the call to Curves is the most important step. That is another motif in the episode. Frankie will never start exercising and will never join Curves.
-Mike tells her to calm down so she doesn't give herself a heart attack because everyone knows she doesn't exercise.
-Mike gets so mad when Frankie and the kids bring up the singing in the car incident at the table and stabs his fork into Frankie's newish table. It remained pristine for all of two days.
-Doris, the dog, isn't seen at all in this episode. I wonder what happened to her.