3/17/2023 0 Comments Middleman tv show![]() It’s an approach that requires a certain amount of time and looseness, and it’s one that has proven somewhat difficult to translate to the screen. Part of the appeal of super-hero comic books is the way their diverse, sometimes contradictory narratives, told by various creators, interlock over years, and even decades, to create larger stories, which in turn help make the world’s setting feel large and interesting, and worth exploring even if it’s not through the eyes of the stories’ protagonists. Taken together, all of these things, could have very easily led to a very derivative package, which makes it all the more surprising that the series feels as singular as it does. The universe the characters inhabit plays by comic book rules, and knows that the audience is aware of them. The Middleman would fit right in with the Doctor. Wendy Watson has a lot in common with Buffy. The Middleman is,first and foremost, familiar. It loves comic books too, and is actually better than many of them. The Middleman, then, is right up my alley. My father, who has who has been collecting them for roughly fifty years, instilled in me a love for the medium, and while time has increased my disappointment in mainstream comic books, and their consistent inability to make the most out of the toys they’ve created, my affection for them as a whole continues undiminished. While there are certainly things that feel more bothersome now than they did in 2008-for example, the series feels heteronormative in a way it did not before-taken as a whole, The Middleman holds up better than I’d hoped. Going back into it, I was nervous that what had once felt fresh and funny would now feel familiar, offensive, or simply unfunny. Things have changed considerably since 2008, and not only has TV come to embrace superhero narratives of the sort The Middleman often makes reference to, it has also made considerable leaps when it comes to representation. When I chose to revisit this series, I was afraid that the decade between when it aired and now would make the show less enjoyable than it originally was. MORE INFO (and potential spoilers) under the cut: Understands the appeal of comic books and manages to replicate it more consistently and better than more traditional, and arguably more accurate, takes. Quite strong, both as a comedy and when appreciated on its own terms. ![]() And while there’s nothing huge bringing the score down, there’s a quite a few tiny things which do. Seven who appear in more than one episode, two who appear in at least half the episodes, and one who appears in every episode.Ĭasting aside-a series centering on a Latina Woman of Color remains notable-the series isn’t particularly interested in excelling on this score. How many male characters (with names and lines) are there?įifty. Four who appear in more than one episode, three who appear in at least half the episodes, and three who appear in every episode. How many female characters (with names and lines) are there? How many episodes have a cast that is less than 20% female? How many episodes have a cast that is at least 50% female? ![]() How many episodes have a cast that is at least 40% female? What is the average percentage per episode of female characters with names and lines for the full series? Since you could theoretically pass the Bechdel eight times over and still be churning out the most misogynistic content ever encountered, this blog will also endeavour to evaluate that content when and where possible, offering a positive content rating out of five (five being excellent, one being atrocious, and three being the baseline standard from which so few episodes dare to deviate), and details of these observations and others under the spoiler-cut. Within the context of this blog, it remains a bare minimum - even if the episode gives me nothing else worth talking about, I can at least note whether or not it passes the B. We all know the Bechdel is not (and was never intended to be) the be-all-and-end-all for judging the feminist content of a text, it's supposed to represent a bare-minimum hurdle that all-too-many things still completely fail to step over. In which I watch tv shows and write posts about whether or not each episode passes the Bechdel, along with other observations on the quality (or lack thereof) of their female representation (as well as anything else that feels important to me, and hey, a little about the quality of the episodes themselves, because I'm just a big damn fan of tv).
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