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'The Middle' - 'The Break Up' Recap
by Jason Hughes, posted Mar 11th 2010 4:50AM
(S01E16) Sometimes it's important to realize that there are things going on in your kids lives that you know nothing about. It's important, but horrible at the same time. It certainly makes me afraid for when my son becomes a teenager. If they can keep a relationship with a Hollywood superstar a secret, imagine what else you don't know?Okay, Alexa Vega, of 'Spy Kids' fame, wasn't playing herself but she was playing Axl's secret girlfriend. A girlfriend that on the surface seemed way too good to be true. I certainly didn't trust her.
The remainder of the episode spotlighted an all too common phenomenon. What happens when kids watch scary movies at too young of an age. When I was Brick's age, I made the mistake of walking into the living room to ask my mom a question during the wrong part of 'The Exorcist.' Later, an encounter with 'Psycho' had me showering with my eyes open for more than a decade.
The episode served as a fun reminder that our kids live in a magical world, one that we help perpetuate with our holiday traditions. One in which a kid memorizing a fire safety plan at a school looks like a zombie to his thirteen-year old sister. Eden Sher and Atticus Shaffer were a lot of fun as two kids jumping at their own shadows over a zombie movie, and yet it was all made better -- as Brick said it would -- by mom telling them that if there were zombies, we'd have heard about it by now.
I could appreciate that nothing spectacular happened to the Hecks this week. The events included going to a couple of basketball games and Sue babysitting. That's it. It's a testament to the strength of the writing and acting talent that they could mine so much rich humor out of these mundane activities, while at the same time coming across as fresh entertainment.
The Midwest stoic man with suppressed emotions isn't a myth, but a sober reality. I thought the whole thing was portrayed with painful accuracy through Mike's horror about emotions coming from his son, but even worse from himself. The tip that he gave Axl about emotions scoring women was more a way to try and recover his own damaged masculinity than any kind of real advice, as seen by Axl's miserable attempt to employ it to win back his girlfriend.
Granted, he chose to do so during the final seconds of an important game and cost his school the win, but kids are stupid. They don't think things all the way through. I like that things don't work out the way they do on television on 'The Middle.' The whole thing feels much more authentic that way.
Unfortunately, even the angry fans attempting to tip the Heck car because Axl caused them to lose the game was probably a bit more realistic than I'd even like to admit. People can take their local sports very seriously.
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