If you managed to miss out on ABC Family's amazing series The Middleman last year, now is your chance to finally get the full dose. You'll meet the mysterious, upstanding Middleman, who "solves exotic problems," as well as his assistant Wendy Watson, an aspiring artist who is also really good at fighting enormous genetically-mutated monsters with ballpoint pens. Find out why you shouldn't allow boy bands to create transdimensional doorways using the energy of thousands of fangirls, and why the man who made millions off the solar-powered uMaster cube has taken over the world in an alternate dimension where people eat aerosolized soup provided by the government. Oh, and watch Wendy and the Middleman trade quips as they fight evil ventriloquist dummies and flying Peruvian pikes that cause people to turn into trout-eating zombies. See why we love this show?

It's hard to find well-written SF on TV, let alone well-written comic SF. That's why this show is such a damn treasure.

This video on the Wilhelm Scream classic sound effect, hosted by zany showrunner Javier Grillo-Marxuach, is but one taste of the madness served up in the DVD extras on this set of twelve episodes. I liked this video in particular because it gives you a little taste of the non-linear wordplay and general madness that made this show so wonderful. And, of course, you get to experience the joy of hearing that scream, used in many horror and scifi movies throughout the twentieth century (most famously in Star Wars and Indiana Jones).

There are also loads of other extras, including a commentary tracks, a blooper reel (with extended interrodroid dance and teddy bear dance), Grillo-Marxuach riffing goofily as he answers email, deleted scenes, and (yes) much more. But really, the best part is have all the episodes together, to watch again and again. The dialogue is so fast and packed with references that you'll want to rewatch just to get that one moment where robot secretary Ida makes an obscure reference to the 3 laws of robotics, or the Middleman yells "eyes without a face"!

Pick up a copy for you and your pals!

Middleman DVD set via Amazon

The Comic Con video of the "Doomsday Armageddon Apocalypse" table read is a poor substitute for getting the actual episode, but at least now you get to hear some of that fantastic dialogue coming out of the mouths of the actors, the way it was meant to. Our favorite moment: Manservant Neville (Mark Sheppard) growls, "My plan is sheer elegance in its draconian complexity!" (Take that, Guy Goddard!). And of course, if the video's not enough for you, the whole thing has been released as a graphic novel as well.

The whole thing is on YouTube, and the playlist of all the segments is here.

Oh man, it is so great to see the Middleman cast all together talking glibly and to hear Matt Keeslar spouting incomprehensible dialogue and crazy plot stuff like:

Prophecies of Orac! A Polyditetrahexamono-Trioctalon?

Or Wendy's line: "Look at all those pineal glands. It's like a gland-nado." To which Tyler says: "A tornado made of glands?" And then Manservant Neville says "You must admit, my plan is sheer elegance in its draconian complexity."

So in the unfilmed season finale, the Middleman finally kisses Lacey. Later she says she wasn't sure if it really happened. The Middleman says "It happened, and it will happen again." The Middleman even tells Lacey he loves her! And Tyler learns the truth about what Wendy does for a living — and we learn it's not just coincidence that Tyler and Wendy got together, it was all part of the fiendish plot by Tyler's boss, Manservant Neville. And the fiendish plot really really is fiendish. And over the top. You probably couldn't have filmed of all of this in any case, but

Oh my god, the fantastic fearsomeness of Romo Lampkin himself, Mark Sheppard, as Manservant Neville, the story's villain. The snarling! The raging! The ranting! Especially after he gets the power to reshape reality itself. "I shall turn all the beans of this world... into peas!"

We'll have a review of the graphic novel up on the site soon enough, but I really really hope the video of the table read goes up on Youtube. If you ever loved The Middleman — Hell, if you ever loved goodness, virtue or crazy science fiction gadgets and surreal humor. If you ever loved anything, you must see this for yourself. It is the culmination of all Western society.

"You will be made to walk the streets in suits made of cactuses and be flagellated by talking fish!"

Oh, and you should have heard the crowd go wild when narrator/writer Javier Grillo-Marxuach read the stage description that Wendy is chained up in a Princess Leia slave girl costume. Says Wendy: "You want to make me the star in your hentai fan vid, go ahead." Manservant Neville says "Animated Japanese Erotica is the last thing in my vast and god-like cranium, Wendy Watson...from this sacrificial altar, you will bear witness to my master stroke." To which Wendy says "Eww," and her reading of that line was side-splitting.

And we learn the Middleman's true name, and we delve into his history, and the heartbreaking loss that turned him into the great upright hero we know and worship.

It is totally demented and incredible stuff, and it deserves to be seen for itself. Let's hope someone was filming it, and you all get to see it!

For those of you coming to this late, The Middleman was a graphic novel that spawned a television show on ABC Family last year. It followed the adventures of art student Wendy Watson, who takes a temp job that turns out to be an apprenticeship with the Middleman, a mysterious superhero who fights monsters and mad scientists. And the Middleman strikes up an awkward but really sweet flirtation with Wendy's roommate Lacey.

The Forbidden Romance Contingency: Show creator Javier Grillo-Marxuach says he balked at having any kind of romance between MM and Lacey. "I was only willing to make it a joke in the pilot," but insisted that would be the end of it. The pilot, incidentally, was 90 percent the same as the first issue of his graphic novel, laying out the characters as broad archetypes: the stoic, quirky hero, the snarky art student and her idealistic roommate.

But this is what happens when you develop a TV show, Grillo-Marxuach says. You bring that story that you created sitting in a room by yourself into a room full of other writers, and they start putting in their own ideas and influences. And you bring in actors like Natalie Morales (Wendy Watson), Matt Keeslar (The Middleman) and Brit Morgan (Lacey Thornfield) and they have bring their own stuff to the characters. One of the things that really jumps out at you, if you read the graphic novel (which you should) and then watch the TV series (which you most definitely should) is how much more complex and nuanced the characters become. Grillo-Marxuach says that's a result of working on the characters in a collaborative setting.

The image associated with this post is best viewed using a browser.And Grillo-Marxuach says he has "boundaries" in his own writing ability, stuff he can't or doesn't do. So when the other writers on the show started pushing for Lacey and MM to go on a date, Grillo-Marxuach pushed back. "But the writers in the writer's room kept insisiting... It's weird to be a showrunner at loggerheads with the writing room." He objected for several reasons: "He's older than she is, he's Wendy's boss and an authority figure." But in the end, he gave in, and that led to some of the more poignant moments in the show, and deepened the characters immensely. "If it was just me writing this in my room by miself doing every episode you'd never have seen that," says Grillo-Marxuach. "I'm not a megalmanical show runner, and I like it when people make my work better."

The Superhero Comedy Initiative: We just sat down and watched most of the show's run once again on DVD — the DVD box set comes out July 28, incidentally — and it's striking how much the show feels like a straight-up comedy when you watch a bunch of episodes in a row. Grillo-Marxuach is happy for people to view The Middleman as a comedy. "It was always a comedy, in that it always riffs on popular culture, and it always had this very specific pattery way of talking."

"If you want to send a message to the world — and I don't know that the show was a big message show — it's better to do it by making people laugh than by being preachy," Grillo-Marxuach says. The Middleman "was always a very sweet-souled show, and it had a lot of heart. It has a lot of pity towards villains. It says that evil is little people doing a lot of work not to be good, even though being good is probably easier."

And as we talked about last summer at Comic Con, a big part of the show's lightness is in response to the fetishization of darkness in genre entertainment of the past 20 years, shows and movies which insist that life is hard and full of struggle, and heroism will destroy your life. In response, "an affirmation of the possibility of joy and accomplishment is very much what the show is all about. Of course, my show got canceled after 12 episodes, and The Dark Knight made $600 billion," notes Grillo-Marxuach.

The Unlikely Terry Nation In-Joke Alert:The image associated with this post is best viewed using a browser.The fact that The Middleman is such an upbeat show makes it even funnier that — SPOILER ALERT — the unfilmed final episode is full of tiny references to Blake's 7, the famously depressing British science fiction series. I would list them, but we'd be here all day. "I was trying to find the show that has the most depressing series finale ever" to reference in The Middleman's finale, says Grillo-Marxuach. That unfilmed final episode, of course, is coming out as a graphic novel in time for Comic Con, and there'll be a reading of the episode's script, featuring the original cast, on Thursday at Comic Con. And for those who missed it, here's the official description:

Who is The Middleman's long-lost love? Can Lacey Thornfield ever forget her requited but never-acted-upon attraction to The Middleman? Is Manservant Neville a beneficent plutocrat or an evil madman with a nefarious plan for world domination? Will Wendy Watson and Tyler Ford ever find time for one another? Will Wendy Watson ever wear a slave girl costume? All your burning questions will be answered - and all your burning answers will be questioned - in this season-ending, series-concluding installment of The Middleman.

And at the right is a sneak peek at the graphic novel's final image of MM, from original artist Les McClain.

Anyway, all of those Blake's 7 references are there to set up a downer ending, but the graphic novel's actual ending is not that bleak, says Grillo-Marxuach. In fact, the graphic novel version of the series finale has a more upbeat ending than the actual episode would have had if it had been filmed as planned. By the time the show's creators were working on the 13th episode, they were exhausted from doing the first 12 and struggling with "big budget obstacles," and their beloved colleague Neil Levin had just died. (The show's 12th and final episode is dedicated to Levin.) But since Grillo-Marxuach had some time to rework the script slightly between the show's cancellation and the graphic novel coming out, "I found a way to end it on a more optimistic note... Had we shot it, it would have had more weariness."

So as Grillo-Marxuach puts it, "In our world, Blake is not evil, and the Federation is destroyed." (This led to us having a huge debate over whether Blake is evil in the Blake's 7 series finale.)

The "Never Say Never Again" Potential: So if the DVD box set sells a billion copies, could The Middleman still return in some form? Absolutely, says Grillo-Marxuach. "The nice thing is, this happened with Firefly, it happened with Futurama, it happened with Family Guy. There's a history of cult shows being found and further exploited by the corporations, in a good way."

So this seems like a great moment to plug the DVDs, which are coming out July 28 on Shout Factory. We'll post a review of the box set later, but they're already available for preorder at Amazon.com. And it's never too early to do your Christmas shopping. You never know when your local shopping mall will be overrun with gun-toting gorillas, after all.

Yesterday, we posted a leaked trailer for Day One, which starts airing in March on NBC. Grillo-Marxuach is joining the show as a co-executive producer, and he says that trailer is a "great teaser for what's happening in the show." It's actually the trailer that series creator Jesse Alexander made, to convince the network to pick the show up. Grillo-Marxuach says even though he's sad The Middleman was canceled, he's excited to move on with his career and get to work with another group of talented people and learn from them.

One of the things we loved about The Middleman was its light-heartedness and the way it reveled in its fantastical stories. So we were wondering if Day One was going to be darker than The Middleman. Grillo-Marxuach replies, "Touched By An Angel would be darker than The Middleman." At the same time, though, he says that some of The Middleman's optimism will show up in Day One, and Alexander and his son are both huge fans of The Middleman.

You can see that optimism in the trailer, which showcases "the idea of a community coming together in the face of great adversity," says Grillo-Marxuach. For example, in that trailer, there's a moment where a police officer is holding a gun on a group of people on the freeway. And the other guy disarms the cop, but also reassures him that he's a good cop, and everything's going to be okay. It ends on a hopeful note of working together, says Grillo-Marxuach. And Alexander has been influenced by our new spread of global communication, and seeing how the internet has brought new communities together. So if you're expecting Day One to be The Road: The Series, you might be surprised.

The Middleman comes out on DVD July 28. We'll have the rest of our interview with Grillo-Marxuach about the DVDs coming up soon.

Show creator Jesse Alexander twittered the other day:

Just hired Javier Grillo-Marxuach, Erik Oleson, and Angela Kang as writers on DAY ONE! More announcements soon!

And Grillo-Marxuach just confirmed on his Facebook page that he's joining the show as co-executive producer.

Day One, from former Heroes producer Jesse Alexander, will be premiering in 2010 on NBC. Day One set photos by Deergus, more at the link.

If you missed The Middleman, you should definitely check it out when the first season comes out on DVD this July, in time for San Diego Comic Con. It was a fun, snarky show about an upstanding 1950s-style hero with no name, who fights monsters, super-smart gorillas, supervillains and even his own predecessor. He's helped by Wendy, an art student who learns the crucial art of world-saving at his side.

But sadly, the show's first season was only 12 episodes, instead of the planned 13. Creator Javier Grillo-Marxuach, and ABC Family, decided to cut the final episode and invest its budget in the other 12, but Grillo-Marxuach teased us by posting one page from the lostl episode's script a while back.

Now we're going to get the lost episode as a graphic novel, according to this new press release from ABC Family:

Fans of the ABC Family cult hit series can revisit the weird world of "The Middleman" and his trusty side-kick Wendy Watson when the "lost" series finale episode appears in comic book form this summer. The series will also be released on DVD in summer 2009.

In a deal with Viper Comics, "The Middleman – The Doomsday Armageddon Apocalypse" graphic novel is to be written by creator/executive producer Javier Grillo-Marxuach and Hans Beimler, with illustrations done by Armando M. Zanker and layouts by Les McClaine. "The Doomsday Armageddon Apocalypse" special collector's comic book edition will be released in July 2009 to coincide with the annual Comic Con Convention in San Diego.

"The Middleman" season one DVD will include all 12 one-hour episodes that aired on ABC Family in summer 2008. The DVD will also contain extensive bonus material that will allow fans of the series to get an insider look at the mad capped world of their favorite heroes. ABC Family has partnered up with Shout Factory! to produce and distribute the DVD. The DVD will be available in July 2009.

So yay, because I've been dying for half a year to see how this all turns out. But boo, if the graphic novel is instead of more actual TV episodes featuring the brilliance of Matt Keeslar and Natalie Morales. (I suspect that massive, runaway DVD sales would help a lot in rescuing the Middleman.) Update: the New York Post is saying this means the show is actually, officially, canceled. For good. Bah.

The complete first season will hit your shelves this summer. Writes show creator Javier Grillo-Marxuach:

produced by the good folk of shout! factory (the incredible episode-box artisans who created amazing sets for "freaks and geeks," "my so-called life" and MST3K) - the DVDs will be out in time for the san diego comic-con and will be chock-full of the kind of extra goodness you have come to expect from the middleteam...

Hopefully those extras will include more details about the show's abortive thirteenth episode, plus tons of extra clips and stuff. (More Lacey mascot dancing?) But you know that this is only the start of your obligation, right? Once the DVDs are out there, you'll have to convert all your friends and try to ensure Firefly-esque DVD sales, which are the only way we'll ever see MM and WW in action again. [Thanks Hannah!]

Q: Will you be making another appearance on Middleman?

Kevin Sorbo: I really had fun doing that show and loved my character. There was talk of a spin off, but I have too many things on my plate that I want to do. I have no idea what is going to happen to that show, but I am hearing rumors it will be canceled.

Not being able to contain ourselves for fear of our Middlemania reaching its end (the thought of no more Dub Dub and Lacey is terrifying) we went straight to Javier Grillo-Marxuach and asked him to if Middleman is indeed getting canceled and what about this Guy Goddard spin off show staring the awesome-haired Sorbo?

Javier Grillo-Marxuach's reply was a little noncommittal — but comparing it to shows such as Family Guy and Firefly is doing nothing to calm my fears of cancellation.

I don't think ABC Family is ready to throw in the towel just yet. They love, and — more importantly — own The Middleman. But I think it's fair to say that they aren't going to order any new episodes in the immediate future. Right now, we are all focused on closing a deal for a DVD set that will please the fans with a lot of bonus material, bring new viewers to the show, and secure the show's legacy and longevity. As was the case with shows like Firefly, and Family Guy, the sales of the DVD will truly be the barometer for the future of The Middleman.

Ok but what about the zany 1969 Sorbo spin off, any truth to that because Guy was a great character?

Kevin Sorbo is one of the most gracious, professional and charismatic people with whom I've had the pleasure to work - and he embodied one of the most memorable characters in the Middleman pantheon; so I absolutely ran by him the idea of either bringing back, spinning off - or better yet, doing some kind of a movie set in the time of - Middleman '69. We had a great time discussing it, and, frankly, I'm grateful that he liked the show enough to think it was a nifty idea. With greater success or a longer run of episodes, it is something I would have pursued.

So while it sounds like this may be the end of Wendy and MM, sigh, at least we may have an awesome DVD collection to watch through tears and laughs each weekend. You'll regret this day, America — the Middleman was a classic gentleman among crappy TV superheroes. Seriously, the world commissions more episodes of Knight Rider, meaning that clever dialog and snappy comebacks have to take a back seat to Mike Tracer's less-than-thrilling abs? There is no God.

How do you make the comic-book tone work, without going too overboard into pastiche?

It's a very difficult thing to do, and what we did is embrace what we are. The Middleman is a show that is unashamed, we don't try to pretend we are anything other than a comedic show based on a comic book. It's the only way we can be what we are. Our characters have no internal censor, they all speak and they all say what's on their minds. It is what it is. Whether people buy the show or not, we're unabashed about what we are. We know very well that the show is made on a basic cable budget, on a basic cable network.

Is your show like the anti-Heroes?

I don't think we're the anti-anything, that kind of sets you off in a negative way. We're a show that's very much aware of everything that came before it, and we're happy to stand on the shoulders of giants, and we refer to a lot of popular culture in our show. But if [The Middleman] is anti-anything, it's anti- the idea that heroism is ultimately tragic, which I think is the dominating trope of most scifi shows that I watch, shows that I like and admire. Doctor Who is an example of a show that doesn't go there that much, a show that doesn't say being heroic will destroy your life. Doing the right thing will not kill you, will not destroy your friends. A lot of popular culture insists on sort of a pornography of despair. I don't think this makes any shows bad or inherently evil and dark, but there is a real darkness in scifi today. I have worked on shows that are very dark shows thematically, and that's really not who I am inside. Every show is a therapist's couch for it creator, so I can't help but bring my optimism [to The Middleman].

So I understand The Middleman isn't canceled, but will have a shorter season?

I posted in my blog about it, in the Middleblog. The ratings haven't been great, and we're still struggling to find our audience. And doing the cost benefit analysis of 13 episodes versus 12, we came up with this plan to do 12 instead of 13. It's a decision I made at the network's urging. ABC Family was the only network that believed in this show and bought the show, and the network president called me after the second episode and said, "Don't change a thing."

Is it weird to be on ABC Family though?

It has a female protagonist who speaks to their core demographic, and [shows] how Wendy is creating a family out of her friends. And Wendy's relationship with the Middleman is the core relationship in her life. Even though it's not a family show [and] I'm not a Republican. [The show] has a very postmodern bent. [But] it's a show that's very much about family, in terms of what Wendy's life with her friends is like.

This is a world where weird shit is always happening and nobody notices. Is there sort of a subtext of people being blind conformists who don't see what's going on around them? Are people sheep?

I guess I kind of wrestle with that. I don't believe people are sheep, obviously. I don't have the same kind of mentality that things have to be kept from people. I do think that people have a tendency to focus on the thing that's in front of them. It's not that Wendy has a broader perspective — this is Wendy's job. It's not that people are sheep, It's that the they accept the reality that's presented to them. It's not their job [to worry about alien monsters]. The Middle-universe has a casual workaday quality to it.. The textures of the show are very worn and layered and they're not high tech and slick.

And yet, all of the gadgets are awesome.

Everything is very old-timely, and everything is made of bakelite and steel, and has gauges and toggle switches. I call it "NASA punk." I told the designers, it should have stuff that would look like what NASA would have had in the 1950s. The [secret organization] O2STK buys stuff every 50 years. It's built to last.

The show feels like it's absurdist but not dark. Where's that coming from?

I think it's that life is absurd, and your friendships are what's important, your relationships with other people are what's important.

I love the fact Wendy and her friends are artists, and that's a big part of thee show. Where did that come from?

I did theater from when I was very young, and I've always hung out [with artistic people]. The people in the show are like the people I grew up with, we have very similar relationships. The idea of art school for Wendy also seemed so natural, because it's the opposite of being a spy and... even though I'm a television writer and people tend to believe that's not being an artist, the climate of a writers' room is like a group of artists being stuck in a room coming up with stuff. Everybody is in the same room all the time, and you know each other super well. The relationships in the writers room are like family.

Is it like a pop art thing, Wendy's art commenting on the monster of the week?

Wendy's paintings are actually inspired by Franz Marc and the Blue Rider Group. A painting called The Fate Of The Animals. Obviously, her style has evolved from there, because we've had other artists do her stuff. It actually evolved out of a Blue Rider post-cubist sensibility. Wendy's group is like an artists' collective from the 30s.

Another comic-booky thing about The Middleman is that it takes place in a world where magic and science coexist. There's even a gadget that detects magic. So magic turns out to be scientifically measurable, sort of.

It's interesting, because it turns out that [Wendy's roommate] Lacey is sort of the hard-bitten rationalist in the show. She namechecks the Carl Sagan book, The Demon-Haunted World, in one episode. And someone gives her a look, and she's like, "What? I'm a vegan, not an idiot." What I'm not is either a religious fundamentalist nor a hard-bitten atheist, I believe in tolerance, and that doesn't mean accepting everything at face value... What I imagine is that there's a rational explanation for everything, we just don't know it yet.

When I heard about the "cursed tuba" plot in advance, I have to admit I wasn't that excited. And the actual contours of the plot didn't excite me that much once I encountered them either: A tuba player fled the Titanic, pretending his tuba was a sick baby, and now he's cursed to live forever as long as the tuba is intact. And whoever hears the tuba played will die by drowning. And there's a Titanic memorabilia collector who wants the tuba, and various other crooks running around, and twists and turns. But for some reason, the zaniness whole tuba thing just sounded a bit (sorry) flat to me. At least last week's episode had some clever bits, like the duck trapped in a space-time warp, and the funny tween bounty hunter who's close to retirement. I think a silly plot like the tuba thing or the boy-band thing requires just tons of inventiveness and energy, sort of in a Hitchhiker's Guide vein, or you risk leaning on one gag for too long. And it felt a bit like that was happening this week, especially with some jokes getting repeated a bit endlessly.

On the other hand, it was nice to see our favorite succubus, Roxy, again. The glimpses of her demonic fashion empire are so great, I would love to see a whole episode set in the demon fashion world.

Okay, so that's all my quibbling out of the way. Basically, this was an episode about Lacey finally making her move on Sexy Boss-Man, and actually making some headway for a while there. The tuba stuff was just to fill out the rest of the episode. And wow — I actually kind of do want to see those two get together. It probably would kill the show, but it would be fun to watch anyway. They just have such a great odd-couple chemistry — he's in many ways the embodiment of everything she hates, but she also learns to fetishize his old-school manly-man ways. And the moment where he pulls out some Vegan cruelty-free candy to give her is just perfect. They have awesome chemistry — to be fair, they're both unreasonably hot, but there's also genuine chemistry there. I think I'm turning into a bit of a MM-Lacey shipper.

And the clip above, where Wendy finds out her boss has been kinda-sort dating her roommate, is just awesome. I think it's the first time we've ever seen MM try to lie to her, and his discomfort is perfect. And the fact that they're handcuffed and facing certain drowning death certainly doesn't hurt either.

In some ways, this episode felt like an early Buffy episode — in both good ways and bad. One of those Buffy monster-of-the-week eps, like the one about the ventriloquist dummy and the head-sawing monster, that doesn't quite "click" as a story but is still worth watching for all the funny bits and character stuff. I doubt Middleman is ever going to want to go as dark as Buffy did in later seasons, but I do hope there's a second season where the show finds a similar balance of clever plots and engaging character stuff. For now, it's definitely moving in the right direction, most of the time. What did you think?

So are you the straight man to Natalie Morales (Wendy Watson)'s funny woman?

I would say Natalie is the wry sensibility that allows the audience to identify with what she's going through, the conflict and the story. And the Middleman is the thing she gets to react against, the Middleman is such an extreme character you would never quite find him in real life, yet he has enough human elements to make him approachable.

So in the latest episode, we almost find out the Middleman's real name. Do you know what it is?

I do.

But you can't tell me, huh?

We've been saving it for one of the episodes, where Wendy goes on a search to find out what his real name is. She follows him and finds that he hangs out at the creamery, the church, and gives food to the poor.

So Wendy obviously has huge daddy issues, but what about the Middleman?

The Middleman has family issues. We've never explored this. I do say [in one episode] I correspond with my mother thrice yearly via formal letter. I had a rocky upbringing. I adopt [the android] Ida as my crazy mother and Wendy as my wry commenting daughter.

Daughter? Or Sister?

Sister, daughter. We've kind of gone back and forth. The Middleman becomes the closest thing she's had to having a dad. [But over time he becomes] more like an older brother.

It's definitely not your traditional sidekick-hero relationship between MM and WW, how do you work that with Natalie?

There is a part during the next episode, where Wendy's character becomes more or less a full-fledged Middleman, and she starts solving the crimes and she starts to come into her own as a character, and you start to see that more as the series progresses. Where once it was a trainee-to-boss thing, it's more a of a partnership, a duo where they're solving the crimes together.

Talking to you, you don't sound like the Middleman. How did you create the character's voice?

I wanted to make sure the Middleman is very articulate and he enunciates very well. He's a very specific person. He likes things to be orderly. I don't know how exactly I came up with the voice. There was something about the voice that evolved naturally as i was working to the show. I made some recordings while I was doing some auditions for the show, and while I was learning the lines. And I went back and listened to it, and it was completely different. It's evolved over the course of the show. Every week we have a read-through of the coming episode, and we have an opportunity to hear how all the characters sound together. [Natalie] has a very Miami kind of drawl, and Ida has the very Midwestern staunch patriarch thing, and I sort of come in with the sort of Dudley Doright with a little bit of Adam West.

That's awesome that you're paying tribute to Adam West.

He's the prototypical hero. The Middleman is an amalgam of so many different characters and heroes, just like the show has elements of [different genres.] We're gong to do an alternate Mirror Middleworld that's like Star Trek, and we've done other... crazy plots that we've more or or less done as homage to other sci fi shows.

One thing I really like about the show is all those moments where the Middleman really ought to be pissed at Wendy, but he's nice instead. Like when she nearly gets the entire world sucked into Hell, and he's very easy going about it. How do you play those moments?

I'm a father myself. Being a parent you see how you really have to restrain a lot of your initial impulses when you have a child, because you know they're in that learning phase. It's the same thing with Wendy: the Middleman has to pull himself back, because he knows she is in in a learning phase. One consistent choice I've made with the Middleman is he always skews to the positive. It really is a choice by the Middleman never to let himself go to a darker place, even when he's frustrated. It's part of what makes it funny, even when he's shaming Wendy, he's still trying to do it in a very positive way, a very gung-ho way. If anything, the Middleman goes too far in trying to be the perfect role model for Wendy.

You keep referring to Wendy as the Middleman's daughter. Do you think Natalie sees it that way?

I doubt it. Natalie and I are completely opposite people, and completely opposite actors. We look at the scenes in completely different ways, which is what makes the dynamic between the characters so interesting. Obviously we're friendly... but it helps us [create] the internal tension-admiration that goes on throughout the series and comes out within the characters.

In the Middleman world, there are plastic surgery addicted aliens, gorillas addicted to mafia movies, and more. But the most random thing Morales has had to do throw down with a fish. "The strangest thing I've had to do as Wendy is punching a fish," Morales explained. "As Natalie it would be getting into a fight with a fish that wasn't actually there." What did this fish do to Morales? Apparently it was part of an illegal energy drink conspiracy where evil creators of an energy drink put a venom that turns you into an undead trout zombie into their drink, along with the antidote. The consumer becomes addicted, so if you don't have more of these drinks you become a trout zombie.

In other Middlmania, Morales explained a bit more on Kevin Sorbo's role in an upcoming episode. "Kevin Sorbo was great on the set," Morales said. "He is awesome he is a Middleman that came before Matt [Kessler] and he's come back to help us out on something. Its a really interesting role and the script is amazing... And the villain is really awesome. The villain in this episode is The Candle and he has a ray gun that can melt a melt a whole city." Besides Sorbo, another new face on set was Todd Statchwik (The Riches) who joins the cast for an episode.

Expect more character development from Wendy Watson, including a new love interest in the very next episode, "You're going to see more character development from Wendy, and loads more layers of her personality." Including a deeper look into Wendy's serious Daddy issues. Morales speculates there may be a big cliff-hanger Poppa reveal in the shows finale (which was a large part of The Middleman comic).

We asked why Wendy sometimes wears glasses and sometimes goes without. Said Morales, "It's kind of a Clark Kent thing. Whenever I'm doing Middleman-type work they are off, but sometimes I take them off when I'm not working."

Natalie Morales gets to deliver most of the show's funniest lines, and she also understands what her role means to other girls out there, "I like the fact that they wanted a Latina for the girl, and that I didn't have to play the stereotypical smoking hot Latina. Wendy is a regular girl, like a lot of my friends." Down with stereotpyical characters and up with the fish beatings. Middleman airs on Mondays at 10 PM, on ABC Family.

In the comic Wendy tries to balance her crime fighting days with a problematic, overly sensitive filmmaker boyfriend (are there any other kind?), a sexy roommate and one freeloading hippie. The Middleman, on the other hand, is 100% hero most of the time, and he's the latest in a long line of Middlemen which Wendy may join after he's gone. Together they battle an interesting mix of villains including Mexican Wrestlers and evil brainiac monkeys. The show will premiere on June 16, 2008. [ABC Family via Comics2film]

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