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Airing for twelve episodes on ABC Family in 2008, The Middleman was a clever, action-packed show full of pop-culture references and witty dialogue. This is a tumblr Middleman appreciation blog for Middlefans who love and miss the show as much as I do. Feel free to submit posts or ask questions!
FOR YOUR CONVENIENCE:
POSTS BY CHARACTER:
The Middleman
Wendy Watson
Lacey Thornfield
Noser
Ida
Tyler Ford
Pip
Middleman '69
POSTS BY EPISODE:
The Pilot Episode Sanction
The Accidental Occidental Conception
The Sino-Mexican Revelation
The Manicoid Teleportation Conundrum
The Flying Fish Zombification
The Boy-Band Superfan Interrogation
The Cursed Tuba Contingency
The Ectoplasmic Panhellenic Investigation
The Obsolesent Cryogenic Meltdown
The Vampiric Puppet Lamentation
The Clotharian Contamination Protocol
The Palindrome Reversal Palindrome
The Doomsday Armageddon Apocalypse
POSTS BY SHIP:
The Middleman x Lacey
Wendy x Tyler
The Middleman x Wendy
Wendy x Lacey
Lacey x Tyler
Noser x Hallway
POSTS BY OTHER CATEGORIES:
DVD Packaging
Javi-Casts
Behind the Scenes
Fanart
One Cap Per Episode | The Middleman | 1x13: The Doomsday Armageddon Apocalypse (San Diego Comic-Con table read)
The Middleman - The Doomsday Armageddon Apocalypse
And so it was, that at the 2009 San Diego Comic-Con, that the entire cast had a table read for the 13th episode, the unaired season finale, in front of thousands of fans. It was as humorous, heartwarming, and ultimately as optimistic as the rest of the show was. Immediately after, it was announced that a comic for that final episode would be released. The show had come full circle.
“We did a lot of good in the world and, eventually, we couldn’t deny what we felt… we did our work, we loved each other…”
(photo via theotherwillis)
The Middleman’s farewell is a direct quote of the speech given by The Doctor (played by William Hartnell) to his companion/granddaughter Susan (played by Carole Ann Ford) in the 1964 Doctor Who serial “The Dalek Invasion of Earth.” The serial was written by Terry Nation, thus providing both a “Doctor Who” reference—and the implication that The Middleman and The Doctor not only inhabit the same universe, but may have actually met— as well as a final homage to “Blake’s 7.”
From “Annotations and Pop Culture References” in The Middleman ”The Doomsday Armageddon Apocalypse,” as compiled by Javier Grillo-Marxuach
I recently discovered through some web-surfage and interview-reading that Javi (the creator of The Middleman) has posted some documents from various projects he’s worked on to his website. If you haven’t gotten your hands on the comic book yet, this is the full script for it, so you can at least read this along with the table read!
The Middleman 1x13: The Doomsday Armageddon Apocalypse (SDCC Table Read)
Middleman Character Sketches by Armando Zanker (illustrator for “The Doomsday Armageddon Apocalypse”) from his deviantart
Here are some early character sketches for The Middleman: The Doomsday Armageddon Apocalypse.
The Middleman was actually the most difficult character to get —since Matt Keslar is pretty much a perfect archtype of the classic hero, big clefted chin and everything, it was harder to make him distinctive. At first went with a little less cartoony design that looked more like him, but it pretty much clashed with the simpler designs of the rest of the cast. Wendy Watson (played by Natalie Morales on the show), on the other hand, I had from the get go. She’s easily the character I’ve enjoyed the most to draw so far in my short career.
Page 11 from The Middleman 1.13 “The Doomsday Armageddon Apocalypse”
(For “read/watch-along” purposes, this page falls at the end of this segment of the Comic-Con readthrough)
