From the pages of Viper Comics The Middle Man comes TV adaptation of the cult series. Brought to glorious life by Lost’s Javier Grillo-Marxuach, The Middle Man is a superhero of sorts. He stands for and conducts himself only in morally upright ways and recruits a ne’er do well sidekick, whom he sees as a future Middle Man….perhaps. Their job, along with alien wonderhelper Ida, is to clean up the messes from and save the world (in general) from a never ending line of aliens, monsters, and really, really bad guys. In each episode they save the world from the evils of gangster gorillas, blood-feud blinded luchadore wrestlers, trout-eating zombies, and all manner of unclean things.
This collection is absolutely excellent, to say the very least. Each episode is laugh out loud funny from start to finish and chock full of quirky characters that you can relate to, despite their obviously exaggerated natures. Take any of them down a notch and you have a good sampling of the people that surround you every day. It’s sarcastic and witty- almost British- in its delivery so as long as you can keep you’ll love this show! Since the series quickly tanked (What’s up with you people!?), this collection includes the entire series as well as a nice booklet of materials and a ton of extras about the show and how it came to be, how it played out, and what was intended for it all. I can’t say enough good things about this show, if you like well-written comedy that makes you think and that you can watch over and over (think BS!, MST3K/RiffTraxx, Monty Python, The Tick, etc.) then this show is a MUST for you. Props to Shout Factory for offering this collection to those of us who never had the chance to discover it!
Reviewed by Mark Fisher
