What's The Middleman's real name? I was promised we'd learn this, at Comic-Con. Matt Keeslar promised me to my face! Did we learn it and I just missed it somehow? Was this an example of the actor not having the same degree of steadfast honesty as the character he plays? Or was it in the 13th episode of the season, sacrificed to bolster the budget for this one?

What happened to Wendy's dad? We get an answer to this in the graphic novel, but it's not one I was very happy with. I was hoping for a way better answer in the TV show, which has improved in many ways on volume three of the graphic novel. (But you should still pick up the omnibus graphic novel anyway, because it rules and has lots of extra stuff you didn't see on TV.)

What is Barbara Thornfield M.D. PhD's superpower? We know she has one. It's just going to be nagging mystery.

When will Wendy figure out that Manservant Neville is evil? It was strongly hinted last night, since the mirror-universe Neville is a would-be liberator who wants to save everyone and go green. It just makes sense that his counterpart in our universe is evil to the core. (Plus, he acts evil. Plus, he's evil in the graphic novel.) Why don't we get to see the final confrontation between them?

How long will it take Manservant Neville to turn Tyler the glib boyfriend evil? I'm guessing that would have happened next week, if there was a next week. That tennis bracelet thing was so setting up the inevitable turn to evil. In fact, the bracelet itself probably has mind-controlling properties. And evil lasers. (I loved that line about dating Matt Damon from the Bourne Identity, and suddenly having him turn into Matt Damon in The Good Shepherd.)

How did the Middleman become such a straight-edger? This is definitely something we were promised for next week's episode, if it still existed. Maybe the staff could act out that episode with finger puppets?

When will Lacey find out what Wendy really does? It seems really unfair and maybe a bit unrealistic that Lacey hasn't already learned the truth. Especially after all the speeches in the latest episode. And if Lacey's fit to be the Middleman's alternate-universe sidekick, then she's definitely fit to be part of the Middle-team in this universe.

Who is the other woman the Middleman loves? Is she still in the picture somewhere?

Actually, forget the other woman. When will the Middleman and Lacey get together? They're legally married. It's the law. By not being together, they're actually being lawbreakers.

When will the two Idas team up and fight pan-dimensional crime? I know that alternate-universe tanning-booth Ida transformed herself into a duplicate of our universe's at the end of this episode. (And did that make sense to anybody? I didn't quite get it.) But the two versions could still team up and travel the multiverse, stopping anti-robot crimes and stuff.

There are other things, but those are the main ones that come to mind right this moment. I'm not particularly eager to learn the backstory of O2STK or anything, since a little mystery is a good thing. But last night's episode definitely did leave me wanting more. I'm not sure any of the shows starting up in the next few weeks are going to compensate for not seeing any more insanely funny and awesome stuff like last night's virtuous alternate Pip and competent alternate Joe90.

I watched last night's episode with a friend who'd never seen The Middleman before, and I'm pretty sure the mix of clever Star Trek and Escape From New York jokes got him hooked, or maybe it was the razor-sharp dialogue like, "I am the Palindrome, feel my power my feel Palindrome the am I!" Anyway, let's hope ABC Family (or someone else) sees reason and gives us a second season of this show. And a third. And a fourth.

I actually just got done reading the Middleman Omnibus, so it was interesting to see a different version of archvillain Manservant Neville. I might do a whole blog post about the differences between the comic and the TV show, because I'm obsessive-compulsive, but suffice to say in the comic, M.N. is a glorified henchman, as his name implies. He gets killed by Wendy, who hurls him into the gullet of a giant man-shark. He does indeed look very suspiciously like perennially shifty actor Mark Sheppard, who plays him on TV. (Shifty? Or slippery? Maybe slippery is better.) In the TV version, he's suddenly a huge Steve Jobs-esque CEO, and secret organization F.A.T.B.O.Y. is suddenly Fatboy Industries, which is sort of like Apple. (And I'm guessing Fatboy's version of the iPod, the uMaster, is going to have some kind of mind-control application. Or something evil.)

So after weeks of rooting for Tyler to develop some kind of flaw, I was thrilled to see him hoodwinked by the obviously blatantly evil Manservant Neville. Although my hero Lacey was taken in as well, and even Wendy didn't seem to notice anything amiss. I'm really hoping there's time in next week's season finale for Tyler to become totally corrupt and evil. Or at least somewhat corrupt. He doesn't have to die or anything. Necessarily. Okay, actually I kind of like Tyler despite his weird flawlessness. And it was fun watching him navigate through all of those weird corporate tests with aplomb, especially the silent montage with the bomb picture. And the fake board of directors was a hoot.

Speaking of which, I have a thought: I know Manservant Neville sends Wendy to an evil alternate universe a la the Star Trek episode "Mirror Mirror," but does that mean we get an evil Wendy in "our" universe as well? I didn't see a trailer for the next ep, so I don't know if that was covered or not.

For a change, the episode's main plot was totally awesome, with plenty of Interrodroid/Ida action. We learned how you can tell the difference between Regular Ida and Evil Ida. (You can't.) And we got to meet a bunch of cute-ass Clotharian nano-bots, who should totally become Wendy's pets and follow her around trying to demolish stuff. I would so totally watch that.

Was it just me, or was Matt Keeslar suddenly putting a lot more grumpy into his usually jovial performance this time around? It was sort of jarring, as if the Middleman was just in a really bad mood throughout the story. I don't think it was in the script either... he was the same weirdly chipper guy as always, but Keeslar put a definite undercurrent of anger into him this time around. It made me realize how much the cameraderie between the MM and Wendy usually drives the show's engine of awesomeness. But then at the end of the episode, they had that incredibly moving scene together, where Wendy gives her boss her farewell speech and admits that he's like a father to her. I seriously got all choked up.

I loved the glimpse inside Ida's brain... who could have predicted that her inner Ida was a much sassier, more glamorous version? With actual decor and nice hair? She obviously needs to actualize a bit more. I'm not sure if I want to keep learning more and more about the inner workings of O2STK, the secret organization that employs the Middlemen. On the one hand, it would be cool, in a hypothetical season three or four, to visit O2STK headquarters at last and discover its inner workings. On the other, I have a feeling the more we learn about it, the less cool it'll seem. But maybe I'm wrong?

And oh yeah, the Doctor Who references! Series creator Javier Grillo-Marxuach has already enumerated them (in the link above), so I don't have to. But I was especially glad to see poor pusillanious Peri getting a peace treaty named after her, after the way she got treated on the show (strangling, head-shaving, braindeath and arranged marriage, among other things.) Also awesome was the shout-out to Terry Bisson, whose "Made Of Meat" story is well worth reading, and doubly worth hearing him read aloud.

But the single most important thing we learned this week: boxers. Camouflage, in fact.

Obviously all my cries for a bigger role for Lacey were rewarded, and the loss of Tyler for an episode was an acceptable sacrifice. Tyler's back for the last two episodes of the season, and I'm worried Lacey will be shuffled back to the backdrop once again. In an ideal universe, we'd see some further development of the Lacey/MM romance — and after last night, I believe I can call it that — before the season ends.

So on the off chance that you've somehow failed to see "The Vampiric Puppet Lamentation" yet, there were two Lacey-related shocks. First, that she's been having some very impressively lit sex dreams starring Pip, the evil plagiarist son of the building owner whose property Wendy, Lacey and the others rent illegally. Actually, Pip is quite cute, despite being evil and idiotic. I was just thinking the other day that I was sad we hadn't seen much of him lately. And then the Middleman's reaction to hearing about Lacey's Pip-sex dreams was the best part.

And then, just when I'd finally recovered from the crazed Pip sex fantasies (is this show really on ABC Family?) there was the second shock: The Middleman and Lacey are in love.

Oh, and there was a third Lacey surprise, which wasn't a surprise to me because show-creator Javier Grillo-Marxuach mentioned it in our interview: the emergence of the super-skeptic ultra-rationalist side of Lacey. The Carl Sagan-reading, spiritualism-doubting daughter of Dr. Barbara Thornfield MD PhD. I like that side of Lacey, just because it makes her seem less of an airhead, and it'll be interesting to see how she deals with the inevitable revelation of the truth about Wendy's job.

Okay, so this episode wasn't all about Lacey. As I mentioned, the "A" plot was another one, like the tuba one and the boy-band one, that felt a bit like something to do in between all the cool character stuff. As the show acknowledged by mentioning Buffy The Vampire Slayer early on, the vampire puppet thing has been done before, and it's a tough comparison to invite. I don't think this episode's puppet-Vlad-The-Impaler storyline was quite up to the comparison with "Smile Time," one of the best two or three Angel episodes ever, I'm afraid. It had a few funny moments, especially the great old TV footage of the ventriloquist putting on Vladdy and going on a killing rampage.

But mostly the vampire puppet storyline seemed like an excuse to get the Middleman and Lacey to admit to their aforementioned mutual love... which I'm fine with. And that wedding scene was both creepy and touching. I liked the glimpse of a puppet MM too. I wonder if Lacey really doesn't remember anything about it. I'm assuming we'll learn more about the other woman the Middleman loves in the next two episodes. (As long as it's not Wendy. In that case, I'd rather not know.)

I'm still not that crazy about Noser as a character, but at least he's no longer just a one-joke guy. He has a thuggish roommate, Anvil, and a very silly secret past. And a hidden talent. But it's funny that, in an episode which focused on him, he still wasn't that much of a presence, since he was missing most of the time.

So pretty much everybody, except maybe Wendy, got some development and revealed some new facets this week. Even Pip — although I really hope he doesn't get redeemed or anything. Pip should really stay Pip. It's why we love him, or at least want to have embarrassing sex dreams about him.

The great thing about Kevin Sorbo's portrayal of the out-of-date Middleman was that he never crossed over into being just an annoying asswipe. He captures all of the fun — and all of the flaws — of the Connery Bond, without quite straying over into caricature territory. It's great having two stylized cartoon alpha males running around for a while, instead of just one.

And the real joke of the episode wasn't that Kevin Sorbo's Middleman was too old school. If anything, it was the reverse. Matt Keeslar's Middleman is the truly old-school one, as the Eisenhower reference at the very end of the episode makes clear. Sorbo is the new-fangled whippersnapper bring his up-to-date 1960s hedonistic ideas to the hallowed Middle-HQ. Even though he was Ida's boss first and she totally fawns over him, he's new to us, the viewer, and he seems more modern in some ways — maybe because a lot of spy movie/superhero cliches were last updated in the 1960s and haven't changed much since then.

It's a weirdly conservative moment when we realize we prefer the 1950s(ish) Middleman to the 1960s version, except that one big reason why Keeslar's Middleman is better is because he's quietly sorta-feminist. He never doubts Wendy, never questions her ability and never tries to punish her for having a sex or romantic life. He always supports her choices. He's like a 1950s guy, if the 1950s had been way less lame.

The way this episode tied the A-plot and the B-plot together was (sorry) sheer elegance in its simplicity. Sorbo's antique Middleman gives Wendy some advice about love (as we showcased yesterday) and even though she sort of knows he's full of it, she takes it on board. She's already nervous about her new relationship with Tyler, the weirdly flawless former almost-rockstar. And being told that Middlemen can't have love seems like an easy way out, or an easy explanation of why it'll never work with Tyler. And then you have that great scene where the real Middleman tells Wendy that Sorbo's version is full of it. "My choices are my own. And make no mistake, I've loved and been loved. If true love turns up on your doorstep and you turn it away, that's on you. Not the job or anything else." Keeslar's delivery actually got me a bit misty.

And yet Sorbo's Middleman is right about some stuff, too — like the fact that Wendy doesn't have to wear that dorky uniform any more. And just seeing that there are other ways of doing things, that the past Middlemen weren't just cookie-cutter versions of the current one, is liberating. Especially since we know that Wendy's supposed to take over as the Middle-person at some point, and she can't be a carbon copy of Matt Keeslar.

The few 1960s jokes we got were genuinely, brilliantly funny. The Star Trek thing, for example, was great. They're looking at Sorbo like he's an insane dork for quoting Trek, and he thinks it's because they've never heard of this obscure canceled show. All of the spy-mission stuff, including the zany card game, the catsuit, the bikini-clad landing in the supervillain HQ, was just spot-on perfect.

My main complaint about this episode was the lack of Lacey and Sorbo interaction. In fact, there wasn't nearly enough Lacey in this episode. I like Tyler, in his weirdly flawless glory (seriously, why does he have no flaws??) but if he's going to push Lacey out of her position as main supporting character, then he's got to go. I wanted a whole sequence of Lacey and Sorbo's Middleman going on a date together, perhaps with Keeslar's version scowling from the sidelines. Although I think Lacey would have seen through Guy by the end of the evening.

"The Ectoplasmic Panhellenic Investigation" had a weird spin on the common science fiction trope of science and gender mashups. For starters, we had the fratboy in drag, who could see ghosts thanks to his recent brain surgery. (And was it just me or did he look much, much cuter the second time we saw him dressed up? Did Wendy give him a makeover or something? I have suspicions.) And then we had a bitchy sorority girl/physics genius inhabiting the body of the Middleman and using it to open up a can of catfight on Wendy's ass. And finally, we had the Middleman's awesomely weird "think of me as your girlfriend" speech to Wendy at the end.

(Middleman star Matt Keeslar may have told me he thinks of his character as Wendy's older brother, but I'm beginning to think Wendy's the big brother in this equation, what with all of MM's boyish aw-shucksness and her staunch pragmatism.)

But the main plot, about geeky girls having their brains implanted into the bodies of five sorority girls in order to bring down the Greek system, was sort of gender-smushy as well. The geek girls get found out because they're incapable of doing all the dumb sorority girl stuff, like the chants and the secret handshakes. They're "in drag" almost as much as the brain-damaged frat boy, because they're trying to pretend to be this super over-the-top version of femininity that isn't who they really are. (Although I would have welcomed more geek-girl appreciation in this episode. But at least we got our second evil female science genius in the span of three weeks. First the teenage boy-band hunter and now Eleanor the physics whiz. Which, yay.)

I almost wished we could have had more Lacey in this episode, but we had almost the right amount. We got the many sides of Lacey, from the sorority-cheer/childhood damage version to the staunch vegan activist version. Although, was that a hint of passive-aggressiveness from Lacey at the end of the episode? Seriously. It was painfully obvious to everyone that there was no chemistry between Lacey and Tyler, the guy whom Wendy had bonded with before his untimely bout of amnesia a month ago. Tyler and Wendy are clearly meant to be together, and it was just an accident that he ended up with Lacey. So why does Lacey make such a big deal out of her noble self sacrifice at the end? Are we beginning to see a more manipulative side to our favorite idealistic spoken word artist? It can't be!

This episode had lots of fantastic scifi touches that I loved, especially the duck trapped in a space rift. The whole episode was worthwhile just for that one moment. And even though the alien dictators living on Earth as a boy band didn't quite live up to its potential, I liked the foul-mouthed teenage girl rebel sent to hunt them, and her bullied physics professor "dad" who had no clue what all her advanced tech was for. Any story about academics being lured into venality by the promise of tenure is always a win, as far as I'm concerned.And really, the "Superfan" alien rebel teenager plot was just an excuse to have Ida in peril, making us all realize how much we've grown to love the cranky old robot. And any chance we get to see the Interrodroid back in action is a big plus. I love how it sort of looks like an old-school Cyberman. But honestly, this was an episode where the alleged "B" plot really was the "A" plot... I struggled to care about the hole in space-time, when it wasn't trapping a poor helpless duck, but I was totally on the edge of my seat to find out how Wendy was going to deal with the plagiarizing evil Pip, the author of the worst slam poem in existence, "Hey Mr. God." He who copied her paintings and got a gallery show for them, and then threatened to have Wendy and her friends evicted from their illegal sublet if they blew the whistle.

And that really brought home one of the reasons why I love The Middleman more than similar shows about glib pretty people dealing with sciencey shit. It's a show about artists. The thing of Wendy and her friends being artists just out of art school isn't just a throw-away gag: it's a big part of the show. We're always seeing Wendy painting and talking about her creative process with Lacey and Noser (who's growing on me). And all of their wacky games and pastimes are sort of art-related, like that "name that stanza" game. I need to hear dialog like "Ginsberg's ass is mine!" more often. Really.

I was a little sad that Wendy didn't solve the plagiarism/eviction problem on her own. But I loved the way MM solved it. It was a lovely big of wish fulfillment. And I loved the random people wandering up to Wendy afterwards and confessing their random secrets. (What was Joe90's secret? I couldn't make it out.) And I loved the Middleman's searing hatred towards plagiarists — Sexy Boss Man is so right on!

Oh yeah, but most of all, I love Lacey. I love her "reap the whirlwind" fervor and T-shirt silk screening and stare of truth. And most of all, I love her dance to Varsity Fan Club.