Being a middle child on TV is tough, or at least so that is how television depicts it. I was the youngest and that came with its own problems, such as trying to live up to the success of my older sister. Many TV families have three children, sometimes even more than that. Adding another child to the mix gives writers a chance to develop additional storylines if needed. We hunted all over TV land, looking at animated series like The Simpsons to classic sitcoms such as The Cosby Show, to try to find our favorite middle children and here is our list. According to some, the middle child always seems to disappoint in real life, but believe me this list is anything but disappointing. These are our favorite middle children on TV.
Lisa Simpson from The Simpsons
Having Bart Simpson as your older brother cannot be easy. Homer and Marge are too busy trying to control him to no avail. Lisa decided in order to be noticed she needed to to be the exact opposite of her rebellious older brother. And boy has she succeeded. Aside from Martin Prince, Lisa Simpson is the only student at Springfield Elementary that has test scores high enough to give the school funding. She is even so responsible that she had to babysit her own brother. Though that did not turn out that way she would have liked, her business increased. Lisa can hold her own in a fight with Bart. Her wit and intelligence makes her a worthy competitor during an argument and one of the greatest middle siblings on television. She is one of my favorite characters on The Simpsons, right behind Ralph Wiggum.
Jan Brady from The Brady Bunch
Technically, Jan and Peter Brady are both the middle child in The Brady Bunch, but Jan is the overall victor of who is the better middle child. Jan Brady had to put up with having Marcia Brady as an older sister. She was the grooviest girl in school. How could Jan ever live up to that?! She decided to make herself stand out. She was tired of everyone comparing her to her older sister, so she bought a black wig to make others notice her. When no one wanted to be her boyfriend, she invented George Glass to prove to her siblings that Marcia is not the only one who can get a boy to like her. Jan even went as far as disowning her whole family during the annual square dance because she just could not take being around them anymore. I am making it sound like Jan hated her family, buy she really did not. She was just funnier than the rest of them.
Darlene Conner from Roseanne
Becky was the perfect eldest child on Roseanne. She was smart and did her chores and was the apple of her mother’s eye. D.J. was the cute youngest child, who could do no wrong because we was just a little boy having fun. Then Becky decided to date bad boy Mark and elope. When she returned to Lanford she was a college dropout doing nothing with her life. Once D.J. grew up, be got a lot less cute. So this left of us with middle child Darlene. Out of the three Conner children, Darlene always got the best lines. She would get to say things like, “You are about to become a strange smell in the attic.” to D.J. or, “I can make you feel like a man, David. Take out the trash,” to her boyfriend turned husband. The thing that makes Darlene such a memorable middle child is the fact that she always was integral to the plotlines on Roseanne, something that cannot be said of Becky (especially in the seasons when she was played by the very awesome Sarah Chalke) and D.J.
Stephanie Tanner from Full House
Like most of the middle children on TV included in the article, Stephanie Tanner had to work for the attention she received from her family on Full House. Danny, Jesse, and Joey had their hands full dealing with baby Michelle and D.J. was just about to enter her teenage years without a mother figure. So, what did Stephanie do to get noticed? She made us laugh, of course. She even came up with two signature catch phrases to have herself stand out from older sister D.J. You could regularly hear her say, “Well, pin a rose on your nose,” or “How rude.” Stephanie was even the center of two very classic Full House episodes. The first was “Honey I Broke the House.” When she is left unattended, Stephanie proceeds to drive Joey’s car through the Tanner house. After that, she runs away to Becky’s house and hides in her closet, which is one of the greatest scenes in the history of the comedy. The other excellent Stephanie episode is “I’m not D.J.” where she gets her ears pierced by Kimmy Gibbler because she is tired of doing everything when older sister DJ did it.
Theo Huxtable from The Cosby Show
Theo Huxtable was the only son of Cliff and Claire Huxtable and was also their middle child of five kids on The Cosby Show. In very early episodes of the series, the Huxtables only had four children. Sondra was later created because Bill Cosby wanted to have a child who was attending college. Theo had to put up with a lot of women problems having so many sisters, but he also got to have his fair share of fun. He paid older sister Denise to design a shirt to make him look cool in front of a girl, which turned into a total disaster. In a classic episode, Theo wanted to become a grown up. Cliff and Claire always like to teach their children a lesson, so they took everything out of his bedroom and made young Theo find a fake job to make money to buy all of his belongings back. When Theo was not eating Cliff and Claire out of house and home he was also protecting his four sisters, making him a great brother and a middle child worthy of making this list.
Who is your favorite middle child on TV? Let us know in the comments section below.
Photo via ABC
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