4 out of 5

Created by: Linwood Boomer

7 seasons, twenty+ episodes each, and literally not a single one that I would consider a waste, or that I would skip on a repeat viewing.

MitM managed to successfully cross an interesting divide in tv, from the formative pre-internet (as we know it) era of the late 90s – the show started in January of 2000 – to the post-2001 wariness and beginnings meme-fueled culture.  This represented an overall emotionally tumultuous time, for sure, of wild swings from relative naiety to confusion and anger, which the show navigated through by… remaining the same bitter, moral-less pill it had started out as.  Malcolm was an interesting take on the dysfunctional family sitcom trope, with a close parallel being Married… With Children, minus the laugh track and with a husband and wife who actually love one another. Ostensibly focused on Malcolm (Frankie Muniz), a middle-ish child out of four, the first couple seasons allowed Malcolm to commentate to the camera (a la Dobie Gillis, or Ferris Bueller) as he episodically plucked his way through school and family travails.

Something that notably stuck out – in that it didn’t stick out – in earlier episodes is how the show didn’t fall back on easy plot elements it had established.  The main example of this is Malcolm’s intelligence.  While this is the justification for steering him to a special smart kid class, the show’s writers avoid making it a show exclusively about a smart kid, as though realizing from the start how great of a cast they’d scored, such that no tonal back-pedaling was required when the show started to branch out and let any given family member carry an episode.

Meanwhile, Malcolm was the only one who could acknowledge the camera, another example of the show’s stability.  The family is always poor, always at  odds with one another, and always subverting any given lesson learned for some type of self-service.  Perhaps the most “growth” comes from eldest brother Francis, who grows up mostly off-screen through military school and then various odd jobs (and yet is still plenty capable of being the star of whole episodes or plot lines), but the moment that maturity is acknowledged, he’s back to bickering with mom or advising his brothers on a scheme.

The show’s willingness to stretch to all forms of comedy is also a boon, making any venture fresh with possibilities.  It might get gross, go underplayed, go really goofy or surprisingly straight – but have no doubt there’ll be X other gags to back it up regardless.   Along these lines, this was a very game cast: Indulging in every iteration of a pratfall and dragged through / splashed by a million combinations of gunk, no one, main cast or side character, is above their role: they all come across as an imperfect mess, full willing to be whatever the show needs them to be (within the well-defined constants of their roles) to best serve a laugh.

So, yes: It’s constantly hilarious, and always entertaining.  And yet we see a docked star, and thus must ask: Why?

Well, while praising the show’s stability, there’s equally a missed potential for some gags that could’ve been built on over time, without sacrificing the show’s core tenets of, like, characters never betraying their own quirks.  They did a fair job of this early on, with Francis’ military school antics, neighbor Joe’s accidents, and a pet hamster gag – background churn that kept the world feeling cohesive – but later seasons would remain firmly episodic in terms of references, to the extent that some things start to feel like they happen in a vacuum.  The show is first and foremost a comedy, so it’s not a horrible crime, but Malcolm seems like he’s almost in college forever, or as somewhat opposite example, the family’s jobless woes at one point just seem to disappear.  If the show hadn’t started with a foot toward ongoing plotlines, it might not have been as noticeable, but there were multiple opportunities to reference an old gag that flew by, and again, it just felt like a missed opportunity.

But you go back to that 150 episode track record, which is something my favorite shows (Almost Sunny, Ren and Stimpy) can’t come near boasting.  Malcolm in the Middle is thus – by them scientific numbers! – one of the greatest comedies to date.  For an extra kick, watch it after binging breaking bad to appreciate how awesome Bryan Cranston is.