It’s an oft heard lament that the real meaning of Christmas has been lost under a tsunami of mindless gift giving, with the average person more concerned with what they’re getting than what they’re giving.
The Middle decided to tackle that sentiment in their season 2 festive episode, “A Simple Christmas”, which as the title more than ably implies, is all about Frankie’s (Patricia Heaton) decision to re-focus the most wonderful time of the year on the simple act of being together with gifts a very distant second.
Naturally, as with just about well-intentioned decision by Frankie, who’s usually more of a long term dreamer than an effective doer, it all goes horribly, and yes hilariously, wrong.
For a start she makes the strategic mistake of inviting her parents (played by Marsha Mason and Jerry Van Dyke), who are hell bent on putting the “grand” into grandparents with presents to each of the kids of $100 and more presents than anyone can ever possibly open – scratch that; Axl (Charlie McDermott), Sue (Eden Sher) and Brick (Atticus Schaffer) manage to do it just fine – to stay with them for the 12 days leading up to Christmas.
Clearly a big mistake, and thoroughly unnatural as Mike (Neil Flynn), who is barely left alone by his over friendly father-in-law for a second, makes clear to her, reminding her that no animals return home for Christmas in nature.
As if that wasn’t error enough, she thinks that showing the kids how poorly they’ve used past gifts, all of which have been unceremoniously to rot in the basement, will be enough to set them on the straight and narrow path to a simple Christmas.
Wrong again.
All it does is panic them into thinking there will be no gifts at all, which leads to Sue dressed as an elf in an attempt to earn some money to buy a perfect gift, the building of a giant igloo by Axl for Brick in the front yard (but without the reading or kitchen Brick ordered; for shame Axl!), and a complete disregard for the meaning of oranges at Christmas.
Oranges you say? What part do they play in the Christmas story?
In the biblical story of Mary and Joseph, or the more commercial modern tale of Santa and his reindeer, no part at all.
But in Frankie’s idealised world, a place she loves to live in till the real world and comes and slaps on her face and she snaps back to the oddly discomforting normality of her life, oranges, which her mother loved getting during the depression, are the ultimate symbol of a simple Christmas.
They represent everything that is good and right and peace and goodwill on earth to all men-ish of the season and she wants everyone to venerate them as much as she does.
Of course they don’t, and she finds her self trapped between her parents in full giving grandparent mode, her kids who don’t subscribe to the sentiment at all and only see a diminished pile of presents, and her own overwhelming demands to make everything as perfect as she thinks it can be.
Naturally this can only end one way, and it does, with a meltdown on Christmas day, which entails an aborted attempt to steal and hide the toys her children were getting from their grandparents, who didn’t get the simple Christmas memo, or did and chose to ignore it (more likely) and a yelling match with her mother, which she instantly regrets.
Is Christmas, the perfect, pure as the driven snow out of which Brick’s igloo was made, Christmas she dreamed off ruined?
Not so fast Frankie!
For the kids do find a good use for the oranges after all – be gone foul neighbourhood bullies! – and Mike finally agrees to be part of the annual family Christmas skit, goofy reindeer antlers, flat singing voice and all.
It may not be the Christmas Frankie dreamed of having but it ends up being not too bad at all, with all the insanity, hilarity and good old plain wackiness that only The Middle at its best, and “A Simple Christmas” is a one of the truly inspired episodes, can manage.
Just don’t give them oranges next year anyone, OK?
