What Did You Say Your IQ Was?
A fascinating thing about Malcolm in the Middle is the way you can watch the child actors growing up as it goes along. They're all so good in their roles, too!
I rewatched the scene from the pilot episode where Malcolm and Stevie become friends, and Malcolm is an incomprehensibly tiny baby. We didn't watch the pilot that long ago! And yet he's so young I can't process it. Surely he was never that young. Has anyone ever been that young?
(We've just finished season three, which is the first season in which Malcolm and Reese actually start to look the ages I remember them as.)
Stevie's portrayal, incidentally, has been a pleasant surprise to me on this rewatch. I didn't have high hopes for a sitcom from the year 2000, but he's not depicted as either pathetic or a saint; he's allowed to be scheming, self-serving, sarcastic, human.
I'm a big fan of Malcolm's panic and increasingly bad decision-making in 'Poker II', the episode where he spots a gun in a house guest's handbag. If I like a character, I want to see them terrified, and Malcolm in the Middle delivers.
Another great moment of terror from Malcolm, for very different reasons, comes in 'Company Picnic': his desperate, cornered-animal efforts to escape the conversation when the girl he has a crush on snaps and actually answers his persistent 'why don't you like me?' demands. He struggles unsuccessfully to untie himself from her, while being bombarded with everything that's unlikeable about him, and eventually just breaks down in tears.
While I'm talking about Malcolm struggling around girls, I have to mention 'Bowling', one of my favourite instances of Malcolm feeling too much. Beth laughs at Malcolm and then asks 'do you want to kiss me?', and he can't even get through his indignant 'What? You think you can come over here, make fun of me and-' before launching himself desperately at her.
'Straight boys are so embarrassing,' Rei commented, watching Malcolm have a breakdown on the playground after his first girlfriend broke up with him. 'I love him,' I said.
Basically, Malcolm's an absolute catastrophe around girls, and his behaviour with girls he likes is frequently awful. But I'm a big fan of characters having way too many feelings and being unable to handle them, so it just makes me like him more.
I'm weirdly touched whenever the brothers show that they actually care about each other. They get into a full-blown physical fight on the floor of the therapist's office in 'Clip Show', but, when Malcolm says he doesn't have a place in the family, Reese and Dewey are quick to point out that he does, and they're outraged by the thought that he might be sent away.
It feels very weird to be rambling enthusiastically about Malcolm in the Middle in the year 2022, but it really is a fantastic sitcom, and I can't believe how exactly my character type Malcolm is. What a mess. I love him.
I rewatched the scene from the pilot episode where Malcolm and Stevie become friends, and Malcolm is an incomprehensibly tiny baby. We didn't watch the pilot that long ago! And yet he's so young I can't process it. Surely he was never that young. Has anyone ever been that young?
(We've just finished season three, which is the first season in which Malcolm and Reese actually start to look the ages I remember them as.)
Stevie's portrayal, incidentally, has been a pleasant surprise to me on this rewatch. I didn't have high hopes for a sitcom from the year 2000, but he's not depicted as either pathetic or a saint; he's allowed to be scheming, self-serving, sarcastic, human.
I'm a big fan of Malcolm's panic and increasingly bad decision-making in 'Poker II', the episode where he spots a gun in a house guest's handbag. If I like a character, I want to see them terrified, and Malcolm in the Middle delivers.
Another great moment of terror from Malcolm, for very different reasons, comes in 'Company Picnic': his desperate, cornered-animal efforts to escape the conversation when the girl he has a crush on snaps and actually answers his persistent 'why don't you like me?' demands. He struggles unsuccessfully to untie himself from her, while being bombarded with everything that's unlikeable about him, and eventually just breaks down in tears.
While I'm talking about Malcolm struggling around girls, I have to mention 'Bowling', one of my favourite instances of Malcolm feeling too much. Beth laughs at Malcolm and then asks 'do you want to kiss me?', and he can't even get through his indignant 'What? You think you can come over here, make fun of me and-' before launching himself desperately at her.
'Straight boys are so embarrassing,' Rei commented, watching Malcolm have a breakdown on the playground after his first girlfriend broke up with him. 'I love him,' I said.
Basically, Malcolm's an absolute catastrophe around girls, and his behaviour with girls he likes is frequently awful. But I'm a big fan of characters having way too many feelings and being unable to handle them, so it just makes me like him more.
I'm weirdly touched whenever the brothers show that they actually care about each other. They get into a full-blown physical fight on the floor of the therapist's office in 'Clip Show', but, when Malcolm says he doesn't have a place in the family, Reese and Dewey are quick to point out that he does, and they're outraged by the thought that he might be sent away.
It feels very weird to be rambling enthusiastically about Malcolm in the Middle in the year 2022, but it really is a fantastic sitcom, and I can't believe how exactly my character type Malcolm is. What a mess. I love him.