Truly, The Middle is at its best when emphasizing the importance of family. Seizing the opportunity for a guest star appearance by Dick Van Dyke worked wonders as he played opposite his real life brother Jerry. Uncle Dutch and Grandpa Tag made this yet another strong episode with their own rivalry and reunion.
Tag has been a recurring character over the years, but he was never given so much screen time before. I’m glad to see that’s been changing this season, as earlier Mike took him out to get his license renewed. The father and son-in-law relationship between Mike and Tag has never been stronger. For some reason, Tag felt like he could really count on Mike to be on his side when his own daughter and grandkids were swooning over Dutch’s stories. Of course, there’s a reason for his bitterness towards his brother. Siblings can be so tough on each other, and it really is a shame when they let one little fight escalate into years worth of hatred, or worse, silence.
Frankie’s mission for the weekend was to get her dad and uncle on good terms again. She ultimately didn’t play as big a part in their reunion as she had hoped, but even Mike pointed out that she wasn’t trying to get them to talk out their issues either. Instead, she brought up meaningless excuses that she thought caused their big rift, such as when Uncle Dutch taught her how to ride a bike instead of her own father, which wasn’t actually the reason they stopped talking for all those years, but it did get them bickering about small things once again.
Another result of Dutch’s visit was to see Brick’s new fascination with idioms. He even came up with a new one to explain anything that doesn’t make sense: crackers on butter. Brick has had his nose in a book in practically every episode of the entire series so I found it slightly hard to believe he’d never heard of idioms before, but I’ll buy it this time.
Sue wasn’t home for much of this episode, as she was serving her detention on a Saturday. According to Axl, Saturday detentions are the worst. It was funny to see Sue freak out over what to expect. Even funnier was the teacher’s rules and invention of the word “mexting,” which is when kids text in Spanish so she wouldn’t understand what they’re saying. In the end, Sue learned a valuable lesson to toughen up in life after tattling in great detail when she was left in charge of the detention room.
Notable quotables:
-”I’m not a naysayer. I’m a realist. People don’t change. Your problem is you hold onto hope. Once you let go of hope, it’s very freeing.” -Mike’s philosophy on life as explained to Frankie
-”It doesn’t matter if you’re 18 or 88. If you’re family, you’re stuck together. You gotta make it work. Anything else is just crackers on butter.” -Frankie
What was your favorite part of the episode?
[Photo via ABC]
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