Author: Emma Loggins
Date: 2008-06-02

Interview:
Wendy Watson thought mindless temp jobs were tough. Then she bravely faced a creature way beyond the bounds of her reality, and in so doing, impressed the straight-laced hero known as the Middleman. Hello, new career! Now she's balancing her art, her friends, and saving the planet while battling alien evils for the world's most ludicrously secret organization. The Middleman -- fighting evil so you don't have to.

We had the honor of sitting down with the creator and executive producer of The Middleman, Javier Grillo-Marxuach. Here's what he had to say:

Can you explain what the Javi-centric worldview is?

J. Grillo-Marxuach: I believe it was something that was written by somebody who wrote on my Wikipedia entry.

No, you know what, honestly, it reads a little more arrogant than I probably originally intended it to sound. When I first wrote this pilot, I was trying to define my own voice as a writer. And I had worked on a number of shows at that point. I mean, I wrote this pilot in '98, I was on Charmed, I had worked on SeaQuest and The Pretender and a few other series. I was really trying to define myself, and a lot of the dialogues and stability for this thing came out of that effort more than anything else.

There's a combination of weirdness, but also kind of earnestness to the show. The show is very unabashed and it's very much what it is and the characters don't really apologize for being who they are, and they talk the way they talk because that's the way that I would like reality to be. So it's really about those two qualities, this sort of earnestness and weirdness, and if I were to throw a third one in it would be optimism, that I think make up what the show is about.

If you asked what the Javi-centric worldview is, it's pretty much about that. I think, tonally, Middleman is different from a lot of science fiction shows that exist today because it is so lighthearted and it is so optimistic, rather than being as tragic as so many shows are right now.

I know you're used to writing and working with other people's characters. How does it feel to finally be creating your own ideas up there with your own characters?

J. Grillo-Marxuach: I mean, obviously it's the best thing ever. I've had a lot of fun working in other peoples' universes, you know. I mean I've had a really great ride and I've worked on a lot of really fantastic TV shows. But to be able to finally see this come to life has been like immensely - not just gratifying, because it's gratifying to write on something like LOST obviously - but it's like there's a real sort of validation to it. Especially because the show has been in my head for so long and I wrote the pilot so long ago, and the initial response to it - people always thought it was just too quirky, too weird, too out there, just not televisual and mainstream and broad enough to really work. So to finally see it get on the air and so closely to what I originally wrote is a tremendous validation for me.

TV writers tend to be very over-validated anyway, so for validation to be that size is actually quite a thing. So more than anything else I just feel relieved that it works. I sort of sat on this project for so long that finally seeing it up is just one of those things where I go okay, I kind of marvel at the existence of this thing and I'm really happy that we're getting a chance to do it so true to the original vision.