The Middleman recap: "The Palindrome Reversal Palindrome"

Typical supervillain horsefeathers. Can’t wait to hear this guy’s monologue. ‘I am the palindrome. Feel my power. Power my feel. Palindrome the am I.’ Peter Piping weirdos. – The Middleman

Middleman HQ 6:16pm

Etched mirror pictograms are being left at crime scenes and the Middlegang are trying to work it all out. Unsuccessfully, it seems. They’ve been at it for hours and the theories are getting worse and worse. “Sometimes putting your nose to the grindstone just gives you a bloody nose.”

Wendy’s illegal sublet 9:59pm

Wendy cooked. A Cold Pocket is on offer to Tyler because after all, “Hot Pockets are the American empanada.” Because Tyler’s three hours late, he brings a diamond tennis bracelet. His problem is that he spent too much of his childhood watching badly dubbed versions of Dallas and always wanted to bring his lady diamonds. Plus, he kinda loves her. Normally, that might be considered an unfortunate turn of phrase, but she kinda loves him too so he pulls it off.

The Middlewatch and Tyler’s phone go off simultaneously and both young lovers agree to take one last call before putting their respective communication devices on ice for the night. Middleman’s got a truly crazy theory but Wendy puts him off. Unfortunately, Tyler has to go, but he’s there until his ride arrives. Oops. Manservant Neville sent a chopper. He’s going *now*.

Wendy’s illegal sublet 9:39am

Wendy and Lacey discuss Tyler’s confession, but Wendy’s worried Fatboy will change Tyler. Lacey tells Wendy it’s only his circumstances that have changed, not him. Just like when she started her job, Lacey had to learn to cope by putting fewer eggs in the Wendy basket. And Tyler does love her.

Wendy and Middleman en route to a toy factory. After stealing a beryllium sphere and an oscillation overthruster, the mysterious mirror-leaving thief has hit a toy factory? What could he possibly want there?

Duke of New York Toy Factory 10:01am

The thief has left a third etched mirror at the scene, this one of a river. Putting the pieces together, The Middleman realizes it spells out the palindrome “a man, a plan, a canal.”

But he doesn’t care about the palindrome or the inevitable palindromic monologue once he finds out what the 100,000 baby doll eyes the thief made off with were made of. Turns out the factory owner “went green before Ed Begley, Jr. made it cool.” So he’s made the eyes out of polydichloric euthimal (a popular imaginary chemical: Google it!) Middleman loses his cool!

Back in the Middlemobile, Middleman has Ida run a search through the OCD. With the materials he has, The Palindrome can build a machine to create a quantum singularity, opening a door to another dimension. All he needs is power. Ida tracks a source spiking to 1.012 GW to…

Carpenter Rd. Transformer Station 88 seconds later

Middleman and Wendy spot The Palindrome and his final mirror – a (Panama) hat. Wendy heads around back while Middleman takes the frontal approach. No one can shoot because of the ionized polydichloric euthimal in the air, but Middleman figures he can get the villain to wax on and on and on about his plan. He’s oddly reticent. No long monologue, no clever gloating. Nothing. He turns on the device and is sucked through the quantum singularity.

The Middleman is knocked out by a piece of singularity-sucked debris and Wendy is pulled through.

Where am I? How long have I been out?

Wendy comes to in a horrible aerosol-soup parallel universe where Fatboy Industries runs the world. Manservant Neville wears a goatee! He must be evil.

Wendy gets into immediate trouble with a jackbooted thug. She’s got no Fatboy ID and has to hide out from black-visored security.

“I’m pretty much trapped in Alan Parker‘s 1982 theatrical film version of The Wall.”

An evil hallway in an evil parallel universe. 11:52 am

Huh. First time chyron in the episode that isn’t a palindromic time. Not sure why, but with this being The Middleman I have to assume it means *something*. Echoing the first scene Wendy had with Noser, evil Noser asks about Shaft. That’s doubly cool, as Isaac Hayes was in Escape from New York as the very Duke of NY. Of course this time, losing beat the band means getting a bellyful of buckshot.

Wendy enters the apartment and finds it to be an exotic lounge run by Lacey. Joe 90′s there. He’s an evil lawyer who works for Fatboy Industries. Lacey hates Wendy for getting her sent to Fatboy Darning Camp. Wendy was supposed to meet Lacey for a protest rally but sold her out.

Noser comes to throw her out but Fatboy strorm troopers show up. Wendy and Joe 90 take off outside and Joe 90 bails. Wendy hops into a Hruck Bugbear driven by Father Pip. Oh yeah, that’s right. Pip’s a celibate, honorable, heroic man in the evil parallel dimension. Wendy finally, completely realizes she’s in a mirror universe and tells Pip, explaining it as being like Star Trek. “You mean the sci-fi series from the ’60s starring the great George Takei?”

The regular universe. Middleman HQ 12:21 pm

Middleman keeps watching the recording of the events and he and Ida figure out The Palindrome is probably The Palindrome from another universe.

Evil parallel universe Middleman Headquarters, 12:33 pm and 21 seconds…

Heidi Marnhout, playing the evil-verse’s version of Ida, does a fantastic impersonation of Mary Pat Gleason. Spot on, other than being hot and all. She tells Wendy to skip the backstory; as long as she’s got money, she can hire them. Evil Middleman is shirtless and working on the Middlehog while Ida gets into a tanning booth.

Middleman guesses that Wendy’s a Middletrainee and got sucked through a quantum singularity. He won’t help unless Wendy pays. But Wendy’s only got greenbacks, not the pinkbacks of the Fatboy controlled world. She does, however, have the diamond tennis bracelet Tyler gave her. That buys Middletime. Sidebar: this mirror Middleman’s a bit of a potty mouth and it strikes Wendy: “Wow. Profanity really does cheapen the soul and weaken the mind.”

Both universes’ Idas figure out who the Palindromic opener-of-wormholes is at the same time. He’s Ivan Avi of 1997 Plissken Circle.

The home of Ivan Avi. AKA “The Palindrome”, 1:21 pm

(Simultaneous in both universes, of course.)

Middlemen come to take Ivan Avi into custody and he destroys his machines.

Regular Universe Middleman HQ, 2:59pm (and one minute later in mirror world)

Interrogation commences. Ivan-without-goatee was born in the mirror world. A horrible universe. At the age of 13 during his bar mitzvah, he had a freak limbo accident and severed his pineal gland. Those led to visions of a better world of “anti-trust laws, lead-free toys, non-aerosoled soup.” He realized he was seeing this world through the eyes of his mirror – who also lost his pineal gland in a freak accident. They learned to communicate – the sensitive artist born in the horrible mirror world and the not-so-nice twin born in ours. They decided to switch places.

If Middleman and Wendy could fire phased polaron cannons at the same black hole at the exact same instant…

Ivan-with-goatee gives Wendy the message, then takes her weapon. Evil-Middleman shoots him dead. Ivan-without-goatee only knows his brother is dead.

Evil-Middleman doesn’t have the phased polaron cannon anymore. He sold it to Fatboy Industries already. And he’s not going to help Wendy steal it from Fatboy. Wendy’s disgusted by him and can’t understand how he and her Middleman can share the same bodies and minds, but Ida clears things up.

Evil-Middleman wasn’t always so evil. Not until he lost his Middleboy – Tyler Ford. Tyler was killed by an unknown gunman with a red, anodized ray gun and this mirror Middleman hasn’t been the same since.

So Wendy asks Lacey for help.

An evil loft in an evil parallel universe, 5:15pm

Wendy offers Lacey the apology the mirror Wendy couldn’t offer. Lacey accepts and blackmails Joe 90 to help them sneak inside…

Fatboy Command (in an evil parallel universe), 6:16pm

Joe 90 helps them in. Oddly, there are no cameras allowed on Fatboy premises. He can’t get them into Manservant Neville’s private offices, but Wendy hacks the lock. She does recognize the combination, though.

Back at evil-MiddleHQ, Ida tries to convince her Middleman to do right and help out Wendy, but he’s a hard sell. She finally gives up and walks out on him.

Wendy grabs the cannon and is about to leave when Lacey presses a red button – seriously people…never, never, never press the red button, even accidentally – and wakes Manservant Neville from cryogenic sleep. But wait…isn’t he running the world with an iron fist?

Mancicle Neville recognizes Wendy. He tried to return control to the people but ?she? betrayed him?

Oh. Evil-Wendy.

Evil-Wendy doesn’t like things happening beyond her control, not since her father disappeared when she was 14. When she realized Fatboy was going to run things, she joined them and worked her way up. Then when Manservant Neville was going to return control to the people, she put him in cryofreeze and took over, running the company and the world.

She kills Joe 90 and is about to kill Wendy and Lacey when Sensei Ping’s training comes to good use. Wendy knocks her out and takes her glasses and jacket. She and Lacey will be escaping with one of the classics: the pretend to be your evil doppelganger with a gun to your friend’s head ploy. But Evil-Wendy comes to too quickly.

Fortunately Middleman remembered he’s a hero. And Lacey realized he’s hot.

The geographical center of an evil parallel city, almost 9:29pm

Middleman and Wendy set up the cannon as she thanks him. She tells him he can fight. Tells him he should fight. Wendy steps through to her Middleman who salutes his twin. Then evil-Middleman offers Lacey a job fighting evil.

There’s no place like home, 11:11pm

Middleman’s a bit unsettled. Thinks he’s close to being like his mirror, but Wendy reassures him. Tells him his inherent goodness in all versions of him is what saved her. Which becomes clearer back in the mirror world. Middleman has taken off his facial hair, joined forces with Lacey, and reverted Ida to her proper Mary Pat Gleason form.

And Wendy’s happy. Really happy.

Shout outs

One look at evil-Middleman should tell you who he was modeled after. And knowing that, it’s no surprise that as Wendy tried to Escape from the Mirrorverse, there were a lot of references to another classic escape movie.

• Officer Russell and Officer Van Cleef
• Duke of New York Toy Factory
• Carpenter Rd. Transformer station
• 1997 Plissken Circle

Final Thoughts

Man. What an awesome finale. We might not get another season (boo!) but at least we got a solid 12 with a satisfying ending. Having *finally* gotten my copy of “The Collected Series Indispensability”, and read it this past weekend, I’ve got to say that as much as I enjoyed it, I’m happier with the ways the TV path diverged. I’ve loved this show since the pilot and it never got old for me. It just got better and better as the season progressed.

Everything, from the goofy pop culture references to the repetitive time and location chyrons to the way it wasn’t afraid to wear its heart on its sleeve once in awhile made this the best new thing this summer. So let’s get our M&Ms and send them to ABC Family with very polite requests to return the show next year.

R.A. Porter is an aspiring television writer who currently toils away in the software mines. He can be found at his personal blog and stalked on Twitter.