I’ve pretty much given up on network television.  Ever since I discovered Dish Network about five years ago and the sweet glory of direct to video movies about seven years ago, there was just no point in that banal wasteland of network television. Oh, sure, there were some high points as I would discover later.  Even a broken clock is right twice a day, and one of those times is called The Middle, the first season of which Warner Brothers sent me on DVD.

The Middle follows the Heck family, a lower-middle-class family in the midst of Indiana, literally, the middle of the state which is at least within striking distance of the middle of the country. And the Hecks live a life that is by most standards insane. Let me lay this out for you: Axl, the eldest son, is a football-playing sluggard who thinks everything is lame except sex and driving. Sue, the middle daughter, is virtually invisible except for when she’s doing something spectacularly embarrassing, which she will do an average of twice an episode or more. Brick, the youngest boy, has a photographic memory of everything he reads, carries ketchup packets as a security blanket and whispers the ends of his sentences as a soothing mechanism.

Oh, and the father is the janitor from Scrubs.

If you’re not screaming by now you’re made of sterner stuff than I am. Because this is a recipe for hilarious horror on a grand and epic scale, and the recipe goes down nicely. I was thoroughly amazed at how hilarious this show actually was; I spent more time laughing at this than many movies I’ve seen lately. It’s a huge compressed pile of funny as baffling things happen on a regular basis and in rapid fashion as the Hecks tackle the horrors of modern life, including pushy child service officers, domineering bosses, demanding relatives, and plenty more besides.

Everyone is handling their parts well and being thoroughly believable in this, and the plots are the key winner here. You’d never imagine that a show set in Indiana could be this funny, and yet, here it is.

The Screenhead Ten Scale, in turn, will stop laughing long enough to gasp out a “nine out of ten!” and then choke on its own spit and laughter. It might recover long enough to help out with tomorrow’s review, but I’m not counting on it.