On August 25, 2014, Modern Family, the acclaimed ABC sitcom, won its fifth consecutive Emmy Award for Outstanding Comedy Series. It has won 21 Emmys in all—and been nominated for many more—and has been the darling of most critics since it debuted.

The Middle? It has been nominated for exactly one Emmy, for Outstanding Make-Up For A Single-Camera Series (Non-Prosthetic) in 2012. (It lost to Game of Thrones.)

I don't understand this at all, because The Middle happens to be the masterpiece in the ABC Wednesday night comedy lineup. It's this show that should win all the awards, that should be on the cover of TV Guide and Entertainment Weekly, and that should be held up as the way TV shows should be done. It's the finest American sitcom on TV right now.

ABC

And I say "American sitcom" not to separate it from any foreign sitcoms that might be on the air right now (though I think it's better than they are, as well). No, I specifically say American sitcom because The Middle really is the most American of sitcoms. It's a show about Middle America (hence the title), and really about all of America—how we get by day-to-day, raise families, go to work and school and homecoming games, drive each other crazy while loving each other, and hope for the future if only the kids could get into college. (Side note: I don't know if it means anything that two of the great recent sitcoms—The Middle and Parks and Recreation—are both set in small towns in Indiana, but there must be something to that beyond random geography. I wonder if Orson and Pawnee are near each other?)

'The Middle' really is the most American of sitcoms.

If the premise sounds a little bit like Roseanne, that's not a coincidence. The Middle was created by former Roseanne writers Eileen Heisler and DeAnn Heline, so it has that lower-middle-class-family-tries-to-get-by-vibe (and the families on both shows even have three kids each). But the differences between the two shows are rather obvious. You can tell there's a strong element of Roseanne that was taken from her standup, and there's a confrontational bitterness that stands out. The Middle is the fuller-realized show, and even though it can be go into slapstick/surreal territory, it's actually the more realistic one.

It all starts with the cast (and maybe the casting director too, because there were brilliant choices made). The parents, Frankie and Mike Heck, are played by Patricia Heaton and Neil Flynn, respectively. Are there more believable parents on a comedy right now? One of the strengths of the show is how they play off of each other. It would have been easy to write both of them as off-the-wall, or even more clichéd, make the husband the dumb, beer-drinking one and the wife the calm, reasonable one. But Frankie is actually the one who is often frazzled in her attempts to get the kids off to school, make it to work on time, and keep the house together. Sure, Mike drinks a lot of beer like Dan Conner and would rather watch football than talk about feelings, but he's the pragmatic one who often has to talk Frankie down from her latest worry. Where Roseanne was sarcastic about everything, Frankie intensely tries to "have it all" (until she realizes she can't). Flynn is simply fantastic, as usual, and Heaton could have just copied Deb from Everybody Loves Raymond's but excels as a whole new character here.

[youtube ]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w06RNBozHu8[/youtube]

The kids are great, too. The oldest is Axl (Charlie McDermott), the football player who lounges around the house in nothing but boxer shorts; Sue (Eden Sher), the middle child who goes through life completely ignored and unsuccessful at everything she tries out for yet keeps a insanely positive attitude; and Brick (Atticus Shaffer), the youngest kid who likes to do nothing but read and has more quirks than the parents or the school can keep track of (including whispering words to himself after he says them). These kids aren't just "cute" or good reactors the way that a lot of kids are in sitcoms; these kids are actually good actors. They don't simply inhabit their characters, but rather they devour them, and it's a rare show in which you can't imagine any other kids in the roles. They bring these characters to life, which is something that kids are doing and not simply a matter of the writing or direction.

This is a comedy with a beautiful mixture of sharp humor and heart.

This is a comedy with a beautiful mixture of sharp humor and heart. It has tons of quotable one-liners but just as much sweetness. I'm not quite sure how it does that, actually. A lot of sitcoms attempt it but fail in either the humor or the heart category (often both). Friends is another show that does this extremely well, but do you remember the dozen Friends clones that just couldn't pull it off? All the best shows work this way. I think it's a conspiracy between the writers and the actors and the director and the people behind the scenes. The Middle has a special "feel," a special pace, something that so obviously separates it from 99% of other comedies.

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Too many sitcoms nowadays, whether it's 2 Broke Girls or Mom or New Girl, go more for cleverness than wisdom. This show happens to have both. It's classic comfort food, but it also has edge and bite. One of the recurring characters on the show is Reverend Tim-Tom, a guitar playing, freelancing sage who travels around to various Midwest schools delivering advice (he's one of the few people who listens to Sue and really "gets" her). In other shows this could have been a character that is just there to be dumped on, or one to just come in for a few laughs and exit. But he's a real part of the show, not just a punch line. His episodes even have some talk of God and our place in the universe (the Hecks even try to go to church when they can), with Sue a particular believer.

ABC

There's a scene in the season three episode "The Wedding" where Mike's irresponsible brother Rusty (Norm Macdonald) is getting married at the Hecks' house. People are asked to say a few words but the only thing Rusty can think of is a quick "thanks," and their father can only muster a "ditto." Mike is asked to say something and is going to just say a quick word too, but then he decides to actually say more. At first his speech is awkward and painful, and he's getting looks from his wife to get to the point. But then he does get to the point. He talks about how when we die it will say on our tombstones that we lived, say, 1963-2038, and it's in that dash in between that we live our life. After laughing at the episode for 20 minutes and then hearing this incredible, simple wisdom, I started to cry.

[youtube ]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q_TyK-asbfY[/youtube]

Even watching that scene again just now I started to tear up again, and I'm not afraid to admit that. When a sitcom can do that to you—make you laugh out loud and cry out loud in the span of 22 minutes—you know you have something special.

I think we can all agree on what the best TV comedies of all time are. While we might rank them a bit differently, any list we each came up with would include classic shows that defined the format like I Love Lucy, The Dick Van Dyke Show, and The Mary Tyler Moore Show; Cheers, which solidified the workplace comedy and ultimately inspired later fare like Newsradio, The Office, and 30 Rock, the latter of which skewed the genre with an absurdist bent; and, of course, '90s staples like Seinfeld and Friends. That "best of" list now has to also include The Middle. When most of the other current sitcoms are forgotten or grow to look dated and gimmicky, it's the one show we'll look back at and smile and say, "Wow, that was a great show, wasn't it?" I'm happy it exists in my life.

While The Middle's seventh season just ended, you can catch up on the show before its eighth season starts in the fall. Stream The Middle on ABC.com.

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