The Middleman – The Complete Series (2008/Shout! Factory)

 

Picture: C+     Sound: C+     Extras: D     Feature: D

 

 

In the dumbing down of America, The Middleman – The Complete Series is as bad as they get.  Saying “based on a graphic novel” because “comic book” is not good enough, especially when the show is such a bad comic book that you wonder how it became greenlit except that channels like ABC Family exits to create such dreck that rarely works and can only come from a network whose soul is still owned by Pat Robertson and The 700 Club.

 

Unfunny, smug and pointless, the series lasted 12 episodes and it throws in anything that looks like an update from genre comedy in the field from the 1980s to date (anything before Lucas & Spielberg never exists) and pretends to be a hip friend to an audience that obviously did not exist to keep this show going.  It is like MST3K without the wit and the directing is a mess.  When one discovers that it is Jeremiah Chechik helming some of the shows, you realize how bad it will always be in the hands of the man who helmed disembowelments of The Avengers and Diabolique.

 

The title character (Matt Kesslar) meets a secretary and aspiring artist (Natalie Morales) and the becomes the new X-Files-like team, but this is so clichéd and dumb (what were these writers thinking?) that “why-files” is more like it.  Except for some kind of cult that anyone has yet to detect, boy, is this bad.  Avoid it at all costs.

 

The anamorphically enhanced 1.78 X 1 image is not bad, but far from good looking and has a plastic phony look that befits the show.  The Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo is also nothing special, but passable.  Extra include useless alternate scenes, gag reel, audition footage, commentaries on select shows, web featurettes, weekly Javacasts, pseudo-PSAs, ABC Family promo, Wilhelm Scream and Evolution of The Title Sequence.  Do they hate geeks or just everyone?

 

 

-   Nicholas Sheffo