Malcolm in the Middle
Malcolm in the Middle is an American sitcom created by Linwood Boomer for Fox. The series premiered on January 9, 2000, and ended on May 14, 2006, after seven seasons consisting of 151 episodes.
Not to be confused with The Middle (TV series).Malcolm in the Middle
"Boss of Me" (instrumental)
- Charles Sydnor
- They Might Be Giants
United States
English
7
151 (list of episodes)
- Linwood Boomer
- Matthew Carlson
21–23 minutes
January 9, 2000
May 14, 2006
The single-camera series is a dark-humored family comedy that follows a dysfunctional lower-middle-class family and stars Frankie Muniz in the lead role as Malcolm, a child prodigy. The ensemble cast includes Jane Kaczmarek and Bryan Cranston as Malcolm's parents, Lois and Hal. Christopher Kennedy Masterson, Justin Berfield, and Erik Per Sullivan appear as Malcolm's brothers, Francis, Reese, and Dewey, respectively. Typical plots revolve around the family's dysfunctional relationships and inability to fit into society, with Malcolm regularly making asides to the camera to comment on their failures. Another brother, Jamie (James and Lukas Rodriguez), was introduced as the fifth son of Hal and Lois at the end of season four. The show was notable for its pop punk influences and portrayal of 2000s youth culture.
Malcolm in the Middle was produced by Satin City and Regency Television in association with Fox Television Studios. The show has been syndicated worldwide. The show received widespread critical acclaim and proved a popular draw for Fox. It is placed on several lists of the greatest TV and sitcom series of all time.[1][2] It has won a Peabody Award, seven Emmy Awards, one Grammy Award and seven Golden Globe nominations.
Premise[edit]
The series revolves around a boy named Malcolm (Frankie Muniz), who is revealed in the first episode to be a genius with an IQ of 165, which places him in a class for gifted students (also known as "Krelboynes"), originally taught by Caroline Miller (Catherine Lloyd Burns). He is the third-born child in a comically dysfunctional family of four (later five) boys,[3][4]
of Lois (Jane Kaczmarek) and Hal (Bryan Cranston). As of the first season, their delinquent oldest child Francis (Christopher Kennedy Masterson) has been sent away to military school; while his brothers Reese (Justin Berfield), Malcolm, and Dewey (Erik Per Sullivan) remain at home with their parents. With Francis away, Malcolm becomes the middle child of the family. In season four, the character Jamie (James and Lukas Rodriguez) was added to the show as the fifth son of Hal and Lois. The show's early seasons centered on Malcolm dealing with the rigors of being an intellectual and enduring the eccentricities of family life.
Later seasons expanded the show's scope by exploring the family's interactions with their extended family, friends and colleagues in more depth, including Lois' tyrannical mother (Cloris Leachman); Craig Feldspar (David Anthony Higgins), Lois' hapless coworker at the Lucky Aide drugstore; Malcolm's best friend Stevie Kenarban (Craig Lamar Traylor) (who is both a wheelchair user and highly asthmatic), and Stevie's dad Abe (Gary Anthony Williams); as well as a series of continuing subplots detailing Francis' misadventures at the military academy, from which he subsequently disenrolls to work in an Alaskan logging camp, before finally landing a job on a dude ranch run by an eccentric German couple.
The series differed significantly from the standard TV sitcom presentation commonplace at the time. Malcolm routinely broke the fourth wall by both narrating in voice-over and talking directly to the viewer on camera. The distinctive look and sound of the series relied heavily on elaborate post-production, including fast-cut editing, sound effects, musical inserts, the extensive use of locations, and the unusual camera styles, compositions and effects (e.g. overhead, tracking, hand-held and crane shots, and the frequent use of a wide-angle lens for both close-ups and ensemble scenes) that would be generally impractical or impossible to achieve in a standard studio-based video multi-camera sitcom production.[5][6] The show employed neither a laugh track (which was standard in other TV sitcoms) nor a live studio audience.[7][8][9] Emulating the style of hour-long dramas, this half-hour show was shot on film instead of on video.[10][11][12]
Another distinctive aspect of the show is that the cold open of every episode is unrelated to the main story. Exceptions were episodes which were the conclusions of "two-parters"; each part two episode opened with a recap of its part one episode.
The family's surname is never mentioned directly in the series. Linwood Boomer's script for the pilot episode originally included the surname Wilkerson, but it was later removed because he did not want to put "any specific ethnic label on the characters".[13] The surname appeared in early drafts of promotional material and also on Francis' Marlin Academy uniform in the pilot. In the last episode of the series, "Graduation", Francis drops his ID badge from his new office job, which lists his name as "Francis Nolastname". Also, in that same episode, the principal announces Malcolm as the speaker, mouthing "Nolastname" as his voice is drowned out by microphone feedback. A publicist for Fox said that "officially the family's last name should be considered a mystery".[13]
Production[edit]
Development[edit]
The pilot was initially developed for UPN with Regency Television for the 1998–99 television season but when UPN's enthusiasm for the project waned, Gail Berman managed to rescue the pilot by bringing the project to Fox.[28] The show was then moved to the 1999–2000 cycle where it was picked up by Fox.[29]
Opening title[edit]
The show's opening title features short clips from cult films or television shows, with in earlier seasons being edited together with clips from the pilot and early episodes of the show, Updated in season 4 to include clips from later seasons, set to the song "Boss of Me" by They Might Be Giants.
Broadcast and syndication[edit]
The show entered barter syndication in the fall of 2004 one month before the sixth season premiered on Fox and was later aired on FX in the fall of 2007 until the fall of 2011.[38]
The show was launched on Nick at Nite on July 5, 2009, at 8:00 pm with an all night marathon.[39] However, the episodes were either skipped over or heavily edited due to content that was too strong for the network's standards. When Nick at Nite pulled Malcolm it began airing on TeenNick[40] from November 26, 2010, and continued until December 2010. The show returned to TeenNick's line-up on July 18, 2011.
On September 26, 2011, Malcolm in the Middle began airing on IFC.[41]
On March 5, 2018, the series began airing on Fuse.
On April 11, 2019, it was originally revealed that the show would be available on Disney+,[42][43] Disney's direct-to-consumer streaming service, at launch on November 12, 2019. However, the show was not available on launch day for unknown reasons.[44] In March 2020, during the COVID-19 pandemic, Disney sent a survey out to Disney+ consumers asking if they would like content on the site such as Malcolm in the Middle and other "mature" shows such as Firefly, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and Modern Family.[45] The series is currently available to watch on Hulu.
In the United Kingdom, the series originally aired on Sky1 from September 3, 2000, later also airing on Sky2 before finally leaving all Sky channels in December 2010. It also aired on free-to-air BBC Two from April 6, 2001, to March 7, 2009. From January 3, 2011, it aired on Fiver (now 5*) at 6:00 pm and again at about 7:30 pm, later moving to a weekly slot at 3:15pm on Saturday afternoons. Repeats continued until January 18, 2014. Comedy Central UK and Ireland picked up the show in November 2015 and aired until 2018. Nickelodeon UK also began showing the series in 2018. 4Music started showing two episodes daily at 6.00pm and 6.30pm, from 6 July 2020. As of December 2021, the series is available on Disney+ in the UK.
Legacy[edit]
The show is often regarded as influential as a family sitcom that was not filmed in front of a live studio audience and did not feature a laugh track, in addition to being praised for its single-camera filming style which would later be used in The Bernie Mac Show, The Office, Everybody Hates Chris, 30 Rock, and Arrested Development.[12][68][69]
In the 2017 film The Disaster Artist, Bryan Cranston appeared as himself, offering one of the protagonists a guest role on an episode of Malcolm in the Middle.[70]
The series served as inspiration for episode 6 of the Disney+ Marvel Cinematic Universe television miniseries WandaVision, and the intro of WandaVision show in show also parodies Malcolm in the Middle.[71][72] In episode 8 of the series, a DVD box of the first season can be seen among DVDs of other shows.[b] Later in that same episode, the main characters are watching season seven's second episode "Health Insurance".[73]
There is an alternate ending to Breaking Bad released on the complete series DVD box set, where Hal (whose actor Cranston plays Walter White in Breaking Bad) wakes up from a dream, revealing the entirety of Breaking Bad to be a bad dream in Malcolm in the Middle that Hal had after eating deep-fried Twinkies. This is a parody of the ending to the show Newhart.
The series is referenced heavily in the fifth episode of the sixteenth season of the sitcom It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia — "Celebrity Booze: The Ultimate Cash Grab" — which features Cranston guest-starring as himself. Throughout the episode, the gang recognizes Cranston for his work on Malcolm and mistake his Breaking Bad co-star Aaron Paul to be Malcolm himself. The characters Dennis and Frank Reynolds also praise the show, with Frank saying it "changed the game".
Adaptation[edit]
Russian channel STS made a shot-for-shot adaptation called Супер Макс (Super Max) that comprises 1 season so far.[90]
Possible revival[edit]
In 2016, Bryan Cranston openly expressed interest in doing a reunion.[91] In 2021, Frankie Muniz, while speaking on Steve-O's podcast, revealed that Cranston was writing a script for a movie reunion and that the entire cast was ready to return except for one hold out, though he kept the identity confidential. In December 2023 it was suggested that the hold out was the creator of the show Linwood Boomer during Muniz's appearance on Mayim Baliks'[92] podcast.[93]