{"id":3717,"date":"2011-09-10T22:52:35","date_gmt":"2011-09-11T02:52:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/?p=3717"},"modified":"2014-03-12T22:25:26","modified_gmt":"2014-03-13T02:25:26","slug":"not-eliminating-the-middleman","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/?p=3717","title":{"rendered":"Not Eliminating The Middleman"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>So, we&#8217;re at a some friends&#8217; place for barbecue this afternoon, and friends say &#8220;We know you don&#8217;t watch much TV, but you need to see this&#8230;&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;This&#8221; turns out to be the pilot of <cite>The Middleman<\/cite> a peculiar and unusually intelligent TV series that ran for only 12 episodes in 2008 before being canceled.  The protagonist is a tough-minded female art student who gets recruited into a sort of &#8220;Men In Black&#8221; organization that deals with exotic problems &#8211; mad scientists, invading aliens, supernatural threats, that sort of thing.   Yeah, I know, yet another spin on Nick Pollotta&#8217;s <cite>Bureau 13<\/cite> novels &#8211; but this version has a sharp, surrealistic edge and the kind of script where no word in it is filler or wasted.<\/p>\n<p>The writing style of <cite>The Middleman<\/cite> kind of got into my head.  Here&#8217;s how I know this: afterwards, we&#8217;re disrobing to go to the hot tub, and I looked at my piles of clothes and stuff and thought this:<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I carry a smartphone, a Swiss-Army knife, and a gun.  What kind of problem do you <em>want<\/em> solved?&#8221;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>So, we&#8217;re at a some friends&#8217; place for barbecue this afternoon, and friends say &#8220;We know you don&#8217;t watch much TV, but you need to see this&#8230;&#8221; &#8220;This&#8221; turns out to be the pilot of The Middleman a peculiar and unusually intelligent TV series that ran for only 12 episodes in 2008 before being canceled.&hellip; <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/?p=3717\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Not Eliminating The Middleman<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3717","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-culture","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3717","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3717"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3717\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5470,"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3717\/revisions\/5470"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3717"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3717"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3717"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}