Letting Them Talk with Will Harris - Ep. 12 - Eden Sher and Brock Ciarlelli (The Middle / Middling with Eden and Brock)

This time I’m letting two people talk. Better yet, it’s two people who starred in one of my favorite sitcoms in recent memory, and now they’re the hosts of one of my must-listen podcasts.

If you’ve ever watched The Middle, then you already know Eden Sher, a.k.a. Sue Sue Heck, and if you watched The Middle on a semi-regular basis, then you also know Brock Ciarlelli, who played Sue’s bestie, Brad. I think just about everyone who listens to this podcast already knows this, but I reviewed The Middle for the AV Club from season three through season seven – plus the series finale – and during the course of that time, I was able to interview Eden a few times and Brock once, but the last time I interviewed either of them was during season seven for Brad’s coming-out episode, and that episode celebrated its 10th anniversary back in October, so...it’s been awhile.

As you might reasonably expect, I end up talking about my connection to The Middle a decent amount during the course of this episode, but in my defense, I was interviewed two podcast hosts, and Brock did not hesitate to turn the tables on me to satisfy his own curiosity, and I have no complaints. We talk about how both of them got onto The Middle in the first place, we talk about the Middle spinoff, Sue Sue in the City, that never made it to series, and, of course, there’s a whole lot of Middling…albeit in a general, non-episode-specific way that in no way steps on the toes of what they’re doing on their wonderful podcast.

I’ll also give you fair warning that there’s a point in this episode where Eden’s dog makes a cameo appearance, and at the time it was happening, I was considering editing it out, but after the fact, two things occurred to me: 1) it’s actually going to be pretty funny for the people who are watching the video version, and 2) it felt more than a little bit like a sitcom moment, so given the episode, why would I edit it out? So if you’re feeling lost as you listen to that portion of the proceedings, just remember:

If you sign up for either a paid subscription to my Substack newsletter – http://willharris.substack.com – or for my Patreon campaign – just go to Patreon and search for "Letting Them Talk" – then you’ll get access to the video version.

Okay, that’s enough of an intro. Let’s get to…letting Eden and Brock talk.