The Middleman

Okay, call me ignorant, but I had no idea that there was this comic book called The Middleman. It seems that he fights crime, but doesn't go for the flash. He makes it all seem rather mundane while he fights things like Gorillas with aspirations to becoming Scarface. Sound weird? Yeah, that's because it is.. Anyway, Disney has made a new series based on the comic and what can I say? I think this is fantastic! It has that retro, campy comic booky feel to it without coming across as too cloying. The man character is your clean cut, all American kind of guy who recruits Wendy Watson (played by the incredibly cute Natalie Morales)to help him fight crime. All Wendy wants to do is paint and work as a temp. Now, she has to fight crime, but it does free up some time to paint.
For a pilot episode this gave us quite a lot of information in an hour of television. We did get the crazed gorilla story I mentioned before along with setting up all the main characters for the series. My favorite thing would have to be all the in jokes. There are pop culture references everywhere. They even do a black and white montage cribbed from The Avengers. Natalie Morales is no Diana Rigg, but I thought it was great.
The show is perfect and it plays on ABC Family Network. One thing I would have changed from the get go. Yeah, there's this newscaster that is always popping up on NBC, primarily The Today Show and her name is Natalie Morales. She's had the name in the spotlight for a while and it might have behooved the producers of the show to get our girl in the series to change or tweak her name. Makes for a difficult time to do Google searches for me to find a decent image to accompany this review.
The Middleman, Monday nights at 8PM. I recommend you watch it.