4 out of 5

Director: Hammy

The Middleman starts with a sort of MiB-light concept – someone (Natalie Morales) witnesses something out-worldly and deal with it without missing a beat, and thus gets inducted into an organization – the Middleman organization – to deal with just such out-worldly things, trained by boss Middleman – Matt Keeslar – who, yeah, goes by boss. ‘Middleman’ started as a mostly amusing comic, but never really fulfilled the promise of its concept. For where Middleman has room beyond MiB is in its mystery and ridiculousness – the agency doesn’t just deal with aliens, it deals with ANYTHING strange… and no one knows who runs the agency… and it jumps right into Airplane! territory with rapid-fire wordplay and gags. The series momentarily fulfills all my dreams mid-season, like a sci-fi Police Squad – the jokes suddenly get surprisingly risque and the banter pacing is just so quick and smart your jaw drops. The ideas also loosen up outside of normal “weird” concepts like talking apes. But the first episode trips over itself before the actors seemed to settle into their roles, and the last few episodes admittedly drift into more family friendly fare, with more relationships and less jokes. But the series TOTALLY wins for that middle (womp) portion.