By Robert Scucci
| Published
When I first heard the news of a Disney+ Malcolm in the Middle revival, I decided to revisit the original series on Hulu with guarded enthusiasm. While I have a penchant for repeatedly watching the sitcoms I grew up with (nobody watches Frasier and golden era Simpsons more than I do), I was reluctant to tune into the happenings of the Wilkerson family because I was afraid the series wouldn’t hold up nearly 20 years after concluding its seven-season run. Luckily, it only took a couple episodes for the memories to come rushing back to me to the point where I was quoting lines that I haven’t heard in decades as if I just watched the series last week.
Malcolm In The Middle Is A Timeless Family Sitcom
Most sitcoms tend to have one or two breakout characters that carry the entire show, but Malcolm in the Middle is cut from a different cloth. From the first episode when Malcolm Wilkerson (Frankie Muniz) finds out he has a 165 IQ and is placed in the gifted “Krelboyne” class, you’d think that he’d be at the front and center. That is, until you meet Malcolm’s lovable yet dysfunctional family.
Living at home with Malcom are his two siblings: his dimwitted and hot-headed older brother, Reese (Justin Berfield), and his innocent yet subtly maniacal and possibly gifted younger brother, Dewey (Erik Per Sullivan). The trio of troublemakers also has an older brother named Francis (Christopher Masterson) who was shipped off to the Marlin Academy, a military school for troubled teens.
Each sibling in Malcolm in the Middle has good intentions, but boys will be boys, so their primary means of showing affection is through beating each other up, pulling elaborate pranks on each other, and getting into trouble with the law on a regular basis.
Enter The Parents
Despite their differences, the boys in Malcolm in the Middle have one common enemy, and it’s their mother, Lois (Jane Kaczmarek). Ruling the household with an iron fist, Lois is a tyrant with a heart of gold, as she’s always looking out for her family the only ways she knows how: yelling, psychological warfare, and humiliation. While a woman like Lois may seem insufferable in any other context, she’s the perfect mother figure in Malcolm in the Middle because of how unpredictably destructive her children are, making her abrasiveness absolutely necessary to keep her family out of trouble.
You may think that Francis, Reese, Malcolm, and Dewey’s problematic behavior is a product of their upbringing and environment (read: Lois is a bad mom), but when you learn more about their father, Hal (Bryan Cranston), it becomes clear that their short-sighted impulsiveness may actually be genetically inherited.
Hal Wilkerson Is More Complex Than Walter White
Living in constant fear of Lois’ short yet totally necessary bursts of rage, Hal often alludes to his bad-boy past, which through stories resembles the present-day behavior of his four sons. Working as a corporate drone, Hal is a slave to his impulses and has a penchant for gambling, smoking cigars, drinking, walking around the house (or his front yard) in his tighty whities, and bribing his kids to take the fall whenever he engages in behavior that may put him in the dog house with Lois.
Hal is arrogant but lives in fear, spontaneous but too short-sighted to keep himself out of trouble, a reckless spender despite living on the verge of poverty, and, somehow, the most graceful technical roller skater you’ve ever seen in your life. Breaking Bad creator Vince Gilligan once described Bryan Cranston’s portrayal of Walter White as “Mr. Chips turns into Scarface,” but Walter has nothing on Hal Wilkerson from Malcolm in the Middle if I had to weigh in.
Think about it … Walter White started at point A, and ended up at point B, and it took five seasons to get there. As a huge fan of the entire Breaking Bad universe, I can’t help but think that Hal as a character goes way deeper than Walt because he’s a living, breathing contradiction of the highest order.
Hal is fatherly but criminally negligent as a parent.
Hal offers sage, life-affirming advice to his sons but fails to follow it himself.
Hal is always the first person to try bailing the boys out of trouble, but almost always makes matters worse when he sees red and acts just as unhinged as his offspring when things get messy.
Hal is disproportionately confident when you look at his living situation from the outside, but he’s self-aware enough to know that he’s absolutely hopeless without Lois reeling him in and pushing him to be his best self.
The Technological Sweet Spot
But perhaps the one element of Malcolm in the Middle that makes it a truly timeless series is the time it took place, which I refer to as the “technological sweet spot.” Malcolm in the Middle is an old enough series to be perfect binge-worthy nostalgia fodder, but modern enough to remain relevant without suspending too much disbelief. Predating smartphones and internet culture taking over our day-to-day interactions, the series focuses so aggressively on the family dynamic that it feels like something that could come out today and be just as effective without seeming dated.
Francis’ payphone calls to home from Marlin Academy may seem old-hat, but these exchanges are simply showing the audience how a homesick young adult wants to stay connected with his family even though they decided he was too volatile to live under their roof. More often than not, whatever B story plays out at the academy influences the behavior of Malcolm, Reese, and Dewey back at home as they plot against Lois with guidance from their beloved older brother, so these phone calls are absolutely necessary, even if this one aspect of the show seems a little dusty.
In other words, a cell phone wouldn’t change the narrative in any significant way, so these interactions still hold up.
Binge Malcolm In The Middle On Hulu
The Malcolm in the Middle reboot is slated to come out sometime this year, but as of this writing doesn’t have a set release date. If you’re ready to see what Malcolm and company will be up to during the upcoming four-episode run, then it comes with strong recommendations that you go back to the year 2000 and blast through the entire series instead of watching Friends for the 100th time.