Was Malcolm in the Middle one of the best sitcoms of the decade?

Lately myself and the wife have been DVR'ing a few re-runs of this show and I've been a little surprised by how good I'm finding it to be. It was always marketed as kind of a family sitcom with a lot of mischief, but it's actually a pretty dark comedy (or at least, it really turned into one). Like, every character in the family is basically depressed and narcissistic in some way, and seem to get more damaged as time goes on. I know the plots are pretty predictable - first impressions are always wrong, the family never quite triumphs, and nobody really ends up changing. But I found the writing to be pretty good besides that and right now I think it's definitely one of the first-tier sitcoms of the decade. I mean, it's not as good as say, Arrested Development, but the writing is sometimes on the same level. Anyone else feel the same?

the overacting destroyed this show imo

have you seen the ending with the big reveal behind Malcolm's destiny?

basic contemporary family sitcom formula = dad is a dreamer, an arrested adolescent; mom is the sensible one, the glue that holds family together; and kids are basically decent but prone to mischief. interesting how MitM darkens (as you say) but never really subverts or even questions this basic structure. mom and dad fulfill their assigned roles, but are driven from within in ways that make them weird islands that the children can only ever observe. social behavior as the interaction of individual pathologies. i never got totally on board with the show, but enjoyed it here and there. smarter and funnier than most network TV of the early 00s.

but omar OTM. it almost always oversells itself. too cute, too madcap, too pointedly clever, too "crazy."

"but never really subverts or even questions this basic structure"

did you watch the last episode where this structure was revealed to be a sham?

did like the episode about "kid charlemange."

never saw the series conclusion. so no. what's the big reveal behind malcolm's destiny?

SPOILERS, but everything the family did to malcolm was a conspiracy to mold him into the perfect future President of the United States. they were all in on it.

haha i had forgotten about that. i always loved episode where malcolm goes bowling and we see what happens when his dad takes him vs. what happens when his mom takes, sort of a Melinda & Melinda type thing.

huh (xpost)

http://images.craveonline.com/article_imgs/Image/St-Elsewhere-finale.jpg

classic-est moment: crotchety babysitter bea arthur tango'ing to "fernando" with the youngest kid

I never saw the ending either, so I'm not sure how they wrapped everything up. I know they suggested that Reese would go into the military but that's as far as I have seen. BTW I do agree about the overacting, I've always felt that it kind of made them like a cartoon family, but the characters do have a lot of depth to them. I definitely like how they point out the similarities between the kids and the parents without making it too obvious or heavyhanded.

and hey, if nothing else, this show introduced the world to Frankie Muniz!

Has he really done anything since?? I heard that Reese is now doing production work but I don't think the kids were really talented actors.

haha that was kinda the joke

just googled him, found some images I didn't need to see ( http://twitpic.com/3pfgz7 !!!) and a basically-depressing twitter:

Chatroullete is pure comedy....
about 14 hours ago via Twitter for Android

find that picture more hilarious than depressing. that's exactly what he should look like circa now.

kinda hated this show

anyway: I liked the show a lot, but at the same time I remember being kind of reserved about it — not sure why, but it felt like a 'guilty pleasure'. possibly just narcissistic desire to destroy the wise-cracking smart kid in the TV

yeah the overacting made it unwatchable, which i blame more on the creative decisionmakers than the actors based on what i've seen of them elsewhere, breaking bad especially natch.

t contenderizer: yea okay but you didn't see this one first:
http://blog.kaushikbiswas.org/wp-content/uploads/Frankie-Muniz-Elycia-Marie-2.jpg

yeah the overacting made it unwatchable, which i blame more on the creative decisionmakers than the actors based on what i've seen of them elsewhere, breaking bad especially natch.

― omar little, Wednesday, January 12, 2011 2:28 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

yeah, even down to the set design and stuff they were going for a v. different aesthetic for a sitcom--i just didn't think it worked at all.

xp also note that the mustache pic is INSIDE A CHIPOTLE RESTAURANT and he posted it to twitter with the comment "Hell yes!!" only he messed up and typed "Help yes!!" and then corrected it a second later

i never found their mansion of a house to be believable for a family living on a store clerk's salary.

the sense of humor was really weird, and the characters were all totally unpleasant in a way that was for me not fun to watch, whereas something like seinfeld had unpleasant characters who were a blast. actually MITM even had its own "newman" type character iirc?

smh at all those ppl in LA eating at chipotle

help yes!

and yeah that other picture is awful

i never found their mansion of a house to be believable for a family living on a store clerk's salary.

The dad had an series of office jobs (the main one being for a faux-Enron outfit).

they were supposed to be poor, though, right?

there were three boys in one room...

And I didn't think the house was really that big. Two bathrooms, two bedrooms, kitchen...basically a 70s-80s single story tract home.

The thing about them being poor came from having so many kids. They did a flashback ep where they showed the family devolving from serious yuppies to white trash as each son was born.

*The Middle* is so Malcom In The Middle they should have called it *Malcom In*. but i like the middle. and malcom in the middle. but i might like married with children best of all. and i like the cast of malcolm in the middle. unlike some shows i think they were actually trying to appeal to kids as well as all you arrested development slacker-types. which is why it was cartoony. i think.

i keep spelling malcolm wrong. im typing too fast.

haha that was kinda the joke

well yeah I get that, I just thought he was some kind of teen celebrity for a while, last I heard he is now going bald and bought a bunch of racecars, damn that makes me feel old (approx. Frankie's age)

Wait, what?

It is also revealed that Dewey, Reese and Malcolm, no matter what, had to look out for each other due to them all sharing a secret - knowing they tricked their mother into thinking she had cancer in order to have her sign bad report cards without properly looking them over. They all referred to it as a "nuclear option," since any of them could have used the evidence to bring down all three if pushed too far. Knowing they will never need this bond since everyone is going their separate ways, they opt to burn the X-Ray which contained the true results of Lois' exam, and bestow the honor upon Dewey, knowing he'll soon be the oldest of the children at the house. Dewey doesn't actually destroy it (just the cardboard cylinder that contained it), due to the sentimental value it holds, and Francis has to narrowly save it from reaching Lois, and tries to blackmail him, but Dewey counters the blackmail and promptly gets the X-ray back.

My favorite episode of Malcolm In The Middle is the one where the dad flips out and starts painting this giant Jackson Pollock-esque mural in the garage, and eventually it's some kind of astonishing masterpiece (which of course the audience never gets to see), but he's layered so much paint on that it's like six inches thick and peels away in a massive slab and collapses on top of him. Also, the more you watch the show, the more you can see that it's not that big a stretch for Bryan Cranston moving from the dad to Walter White on Breaking Bad. The flashes of psychotic rage are very much the same.

http://image.xyface.com/image/e/artist-erik-per-sullivan/erik-per-sullivan-347906.jpg

awwww...

they all look nice!

http://www.officialjustinberfield.com/images/home_04.jpg

http://www.malcolminthemiddle.co.uk/images/erik16.jpg

Yeah most of my favorite plotlines involved the Dad. The one where he gets into speed-walking was hilarious. Such a weird and obscure sub-culture to make fun of but I'm glad they did. The episode where he gets framed in an Enron-type scandal was great. I loved that seemingly his only source of joy came from playing hooky with the kids.

they should have a show where lois and hal are dead and all the kids live together in one house. as adults. i would watch that. and they are all on drugs.

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2409/2145384584_757f7a3c69.jpg

i just saw cider house rules thinking it was a recent release and thought dewey had the emmanuelle lewis perpetual toddler disease

I never could watch this show because they were all so hard to look at. Has there ever been an uglier cast?

Seinfeld (minus Elaine of course)

this post:

they should have a show where lois and hal are dead and all the kids live together in one house. as adults. i would watch that. and they are all on drugs.

― scott seward, Wednesday, January 12, 2011 7:56 PM (43 minutes ago) Bookmark

just made me make this face:
http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2409/2145384584_757f7a3c69.jpg

also this

unlike some shows i think they were actually trying to appeal to kids as well as all you arrested development slacker-types. which is why it was cartoony. i think.

never imagined Dewey would grow up to be Danny Bonaduce w/ a fauxhawk

it definitely started as a more kid-oriented show. as the kids grew up (probably around season 3) they shifted their focus

...to german nudity subplots?

Oh let's hear it for Frankie
Oh Frankie Frankie
Oh Frankie Frankie

http://www.celebitchy.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/10/muniz.jpg

that's our Frankie

Ah, hes just a little bitter and confused cos his dad has started cooking meth.

he's kinda rockin a jesse pinkman look if you look real closely

how much do you think the kid from Two and a Half Men made???

muniz is an idiot but that's a pretty good zing

nice work if you can get it

Two and a Half Men kid makes 250,000 an episode. Yikes

#occupytwoandahalfmen

if 2.5 men was cancelled after 3-4 seasons there's no way that kid finds more work, but man good for him, sick life

tempted by 'who is a more dispiriting pos frankie muniz or half man' poll

that would be a half man landslide

true, taking iHeartMtnDEW as yr twitter handle is p gross

what's wrong with the half man ?

Muniz had 'mini-stroke' the other day

he really seems like a dude who should not have access to money

http://i.imgur.com/c4N5c.png

http://i.imgur.com/9uHeSUP.png

:/

http://people.com/tv/frankie-muniz-memory-loss-malcolm-in-middle/

I guess it's cool that he gets to essentially watch all of Malcolm in the Middle for the first time again, it's a good show

he's such a weird guy. like how he shrugs it off as just some weird thing but it's clearly a major brain injury related thing

well goddamn that is fucking sad

it is very sad. he doesn't remember being on malcolm in the middle, which was 7 years of his childhood?!

life is unfair

i mean obviously the concussions and car crashes and 9 strokes (??) probably caused it but still, wtf. what happened to him playing drums. i remember watching a clip of him playing drums, he was really good

forget drums, whatever happened to him trying to buy the Clippers?

He has forgotten the drums. That's the whole point.

memento in the middle

(srsly tho wtf take care big man)

welp

https://i.redditmedia.com/ROY3wv_B9JbzkEXEmTheGrAH_dJ-PsfUMFftaJsAJjc.jpg?w=600&s=08d2d630fc67faf67ffb04bacd0c0518

Who's the lump on the right? Arpiao?

yeah

just noticed this is from 2014 tho

I'll go out on a limb and assume that the enthusiasm behind that handshake still stands three years later. Assuming he even remembers having met Arpaio.

well yeah, that's a big if

Life is unfair

I arrived home from my uncle's funeral to find 4 of my 5 story brownstone home under 3 feet of water. Everything I own, destroyed. Every wall, piece of artwork, personal photos, furniture... All because my cat accidentally turned on a sink a few days ago while we were gone.

— Frankie Muniz (@frankiemuniz) November 15, 2018

^ livin' la vida sitcom

Damn...

leaving a cat alone for several days is cruel so lol

The guy is obscenely rich. He couldn't hire a catsitter or get the poor kitty into boarding for a few days?

maybe he forgot he had a cat

doesn't he have severe brain damage? CTE?

Regardless, he has a five story brownstone.

Can't believe it: my carpet is completely ruined, and all because my stupid dog had to go and die at some point in the month and a half since I was last home.

New profile pic of @lizzo and me. Credit to Strawberry_cherub on Instagram. pic.twitter.com/LAsa6U4Vzl

— Frankie Muniz (@frankiemuniz) September 27, 2019

were you wondering what to do tonight ?

did you want to watch a full hour of craig clips ?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lr3ohfYPjTg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ADN9mhG9Xtw

The episode where Craig is all beat up and his helper monkey is trying to kill him is pretty darn funny.

No mention of Christopher Lloyd having the best guest star appearance in a tv show.

Been thinking about Cloris Leachman on this as Lois' mother, and one of the most savage putdowns in network TV history when she described Lois as "the one with the imbecile factory between her legs".

Oh WHOA!!! Yes. Incredible line

this line still pops into my head all the time

https://i.imgur.com/Ze5OwDH.png