How has your relationship with The Middle’s child actors changed over the course of the show’s first season?
It’s so interesting when you start a show. You’re supposed to be playing a family and nobody knows each other. Even hugging each other is weird! They’ve been terrific since the beginning, but it’s great to have gotten to know them over the course of 20-some episodes. And I’ve seen everybody grow as actors as their characters expand, [and] as the writers find more for them to do. They’re just so up-to-the-challenge, and it’s really fun for actors to see where characters go and what their relationships are. Because when you start something, you don’t know anything about them other than that one script you have.

What can we expect from upcoming seasons?
I’m not sure if this is going to happen, but at my house this year, we had a foreign exchange student stay with us for ten days, and I kept going into work and talking about it and how awkward it was. [laughs] And we were joking about what a foreigner would think of the Heck family. So there’s a good chance that the Heck family might be hosting a foreign exchange student next year.

That would be really fun, especially in a Midwestern setting.
It’s funny because my producer was saying, “Wait a minute, [your foreign exchange student] is going to think every American kid has a mom on television and a swimming pool and this glamorous life. He’s going to go back with a completely skewed view of America!”

Source: AOL TV.

Source: TV By The Numbers

“But the show is not so much about the bad economy,” says Heaton. “It’s about the American attitude of resilience, and trying to find a new way to do things and put a positive spin on it.”

“It’s from the mom’s point of view, and it’s not with a bumbling dad who can never do anything right [compared to "Everybody Loves Raymond"],” she says. “It’s about trying to keep the marriage lively and raise the kids right, but not having enough time and energy to do any of those things.”

Read the full story on cincinnati.com/

Eden Sher is the 18-year-old actress who plays her. She put on fake braces and dressed real young to help land the role on the show.
“I don’t know what came over me, but I just decided to wear fake braces to the audition,” Sher said during a phone interview with The Oklahoman. “When I tested for it, they didn’t know I was any different from the 12-year-old girls auditioning.
“It was really funny when I went in for wardrobe fitting after I booked the pilot. I came in normally without braces, and the director started freaking out. He was like, ‘Eden, did you get your braces off?’ No one knew they were fake.”

Sher already has a favorite scene from the show, though, and it has an Oklahoma connection.
“It was the ‘Kung-Fu Fighting’ scene when we challenged some boys to a fight, and we danced,” said Sher, who was born and raised in Los Angeles and has never been to Oklahoma. “That was so fun and funny.
“And Blaine Saunders, the girl who plays Carly, was in the scene. She is from Oklahoma, and she’s in a couple other episodes, too. We’re friends, and that’s my only connection to Oklahoma.”

Read the full interview on The Oklahoman

Building on its lead-in at 8:30 p.m. (+13%), ABC’s “The Middle” (2.7/8) finished as the No. 1 regular program in its half-hour among Adults 18-49, beating the second half-hour of Fox’s “Human Target” premiere by 8% (2.5/7) and NBC’s “Mercy” by 69% (1.6/5).

“The Middle” achieved series-high numbers among Adults 18-49 and across each of the key Women demos (W18-34/W18-49/W25-54).

Source: The Futon Critic

The Middle doesn’t get a lot of attention, but we’d like to change that, now that we’ve hit the middle of The Middle’s first season.

So if you like to laugh, really, you should check out The Middle, which stars Patricia Heaton and airs Wednesdays on ABC and A.

The Middle isn’t hip and edgy, like Modern Family.

The Middle isn’t rife with sophomoric sexual situations, like Cougar Town.

But that doesn’t mean The Middle is bland, which often is the quick conclusion when hearing the term “family comedy.”

Yes, The Middle focuses on an Indiana family: Mom Frankie Heck (Heaton), dad Mike (Neil Flynn) and kids Axl (Charlie McDermott), Sue (Eden Sher) and Brick (Atticus Shaffer).

But The Middle is surprisingly cynical in its portrayal of an average clan living in “the middle” of the United States.

Heaton is a TV-comedy veteran from her nine seasons as Debra Barone on Everybody Loves Raymond. In fact, Heaton probably can watch reruns of herself 50 times a day if she just clicks around.

“That’s all I’ve been doing for years, sitting in front of the TV, watching old reruns, crying and eating ice cream,” said Heaton, 51.

That’s not true, of course. Last season Heaton was part of a much-publicized but hastily cancelled sitcom with Kelsey Grammer called Back to You.

Heaton seems much more comfortable playing underpaid, overworked and overwhelmed matriarch Frankie Heck. And the great side-benefit of The Middle is that all three of Frankie’s kids are funny in their own right.

Axl is a teenage boy who has entered the stage where everything is “lame.” Sue’s enthusiasm is infectious even though she fails horribly at everything she tries.

Read the full story on Toronto Sun

ABC Repeat Comedies (8:00-9:00 p.m.)
Opposite “American Idol” from 8:00-9:00 p.m., repeats of “Modern Family” and “The Middle” gained Adult 18-49 audience (+6%) for ABC in the hour. In fact ABC was the only broadcaster to grow in the time period.

At 8:30 p.m., a replay ABC’s “The Middle” defeated NBC’s original Mercy by 21% in Adults 18-49 (1.7/4 vs. 1.4/4). Despite facing “Idol,” “The Middle” posted its second-highest repeat number to date.

Source: RBR

For show-runners Eileen Heisler and DeAnn Heline, the early pickup is validation of a gentle and genuinely sweet take on raising kids in an increasingly frantic world.

“It allows us to go forward without the fear hanging over our heads of not being back,” Heisler told reporters at this week’s meeting of the TV Critics Association in Pasadena, Calif. “We get to invest more, as we hope the audience will as well.”

That middle-American setting is crucial to The Middle’s success, Heisler believes.

“DeAnn and I are both from the Midwest, and it started from our yearning for the life we came from. The location is a very important part of the show. We wanted to show regular people in the middle of the country, living more-or-less ordinary lives.”

Read the full story on Windsor Star