OK, don't panic!
OK!
These days, Malcolm in the Middle
is remembered more for giving us Walter White than any
of its actual accomplishments.
How does a sitcom go from being one
of the highest rated shows on air
to being rarely spoken about?
What's even stranger is the fact that Malcolm in the Middle
quietly reinvented the sitcom and no one realized it.
It's said that success has many parents and failure only one.
Well, in the case of Malcolm in the Middle,
it would be hard to argue that anyone other than screenwriter
Linwood Boomer was the authorial voice behind the show's
creative heights.
Believe it or not, Linwood got his start not as a writer,
but as an actor.
After playing Adam Kendall on Little House on the Prairie
for close to four seasons, he segued
into a very lucrative career behind the camera.
He put his mind to writing working
on shows like Night Court, 3rd Rock From the Sun,
and the American version of the British cult classic Red Dwarf.
During his time as a staff writer,
Boomer would regale his fellow writers
room residents with stories about his childhood,
being the second youngest of four brothers, his odd couple
parents, and the bizarre hijinx his family unit regularly
engaged in.
These stories took on such a life of their own
that they developed something of an urban legend status
in the back alleys of Tinseltown.
Development executives would often take meetings with him
just to attempt to learn if the stories they had
heard second hand were true.
Eventually, this led to an official
sit down with his representation.
His manager and agent implored him to write a pilot
based on his family.
He was reluctant initially, but was eventually
won over by a simple sentence his agent said.
I know I can sell this.
After a prolonged period of writing, pitching,
and attempting to get production companies on board,
they did just that.
They sold it to Fox.
The pilot would eventually be produced and scheduled
for release in a time slot directly in between Fox's two
top shows, The Simpsons and X Files.
The show was quickly defined by its immense level of heart
and director Todd Holland's keen visual sensibility.
Malcolm in the Middle premiered in the year 2000,
and despite a healthy portion of fisheye lenses and whip pans,
Malcolm in the Middle was decidedly
not your standard fare.
The common creative rubric of the day
was that sitcoms were shot with three cameras on a stage
and always utilizing a laugh track.
Malcolm in the Middle eschewed all
of that in favor of a single camera cinematic execution.
The show was simultaneously rooted
in the area it was produced in and seemingly timeless.
It had a cinematic style all its own.
It had a bigger, more dynamic visual palette,
which when combined with Boomer's
brilliant characterization and structure, made it
something created completely from whole cloth.
Additionally, the show featured a narrative mechanic
where Malcolm, played by the young Frankie Muniz,
would break the fourth wall, turn to the camera,
and talk directly to the audience.
How can they do that?
He's in a wheelchair.
Again, this was not something that was happening
on TV in the year 2000.
What Deadpool is to the superhero
Malcolm was to the sitcom, deconstructing it
and being a new boundary-pushing entry
into the genre simultaneously.
Additionally, the single camera aesthetic
helped set Malcolm in the Middle apart
from much of what was being broadcast on network TV
at the time.
The show routinely used the single camera
to set a visual sight gags, humorous scenarios that
only worked because of the fixed point of view.
Take, for example, in the pilot, when
Lois is shaving Hal's body at the breakfast table.
Everything is blocked perfectly to constantly
milk the most humor out of the scene possible.
This style of comedy would not have been doable
in a traditional three-camera setup.
No, it would have literally been impossible to block
these visual sight gags while framing
for three individual setups.
In many ways, Todd Holland, who was well
known for his film, The Wizard, and directing episodes of Twin
Peaks, was the secret ingredient of the show.
He was the reason the show consistently
felt as though it was pushing new limits.
While Boomer's scripts were technically and traditionally
avant garde, Holland was the person who
breathed life into the show.
He made things that seemed as though they would
be over the top feel more grounded,
and he would find the comedy in the blocking
of a serious scene.
In other words, Holland's single camera point of view
was the logical extension to the show's idiosyncratic authorial
voice.
The other aspect of the show that
seems like a standard sitcom fare,
but when examined closer, is completely unique
is the very specific family dynamic on display.
Jane Kaczmarek played Lois, the matriarch of the family,
and typically, half hour comedies
gave all the big laughs and the domineering narrative
presents to the fathers, Archie Bunker, Al Bundy, or George
Jefferson.
Well, Malcolm in the Middle handed that role squarely
to Kaczmarek's Lois.
She was the head of the family, no questions.
She was both a stern authoritative figure
and a loving mother all in the same time.
Which paired perfectly with Bryan Cranston's Hal,
who was a sweet, quiet, brainy child trapped
in the body of a 40-year-old man.
These dynamics took what could have been a run-of-the-mill
show and propelled it into something completely different.
However, the aspect of the show that truly set it apart
was that it was constantly willing to reinvent itself.
Yes, it premiered is the second most watched debut
in the history of Fox, but we all
know how quickly stars fall and rise in Hollywood.
By the time season two got rolling, Todd Holland
and Linwood Boomer were eager to push into new territory,
and they did.
The episode titled Bowling, the 20th episode
of the second season, was perhaps one of the most
artistically adventurous episodes
to ever air on a network show.
The premise of the episode is that the boys
are going to be taken bowling by their parents.
However, this conventional setup quickly
escalates into the avant garde where
we split into two alternative timelines, one
where Hal takes the boys, and one where Lois takes them.
We then see split screen adventures
of how the two parents have radically different parenting
styles.
Hal has a more lackadaisical, laid back
approach to rearing his offspring,
while Lois is controlling and aggressive.
And this episode is as technically brilliant
as it is shocking that they actually pulled it off
on a mainstream network show.
It's one thing for Rick and Morty
to do a split screen parallel timeline episode on Adult Swim
in 2019.
It's another when it's on Fox nearly 20 years ago.
Not only did Malcolm in the Middle
reinvent when we thought sitcoms could
be, it kept reinventing it.
The show continued to push the boundary of what
was accepted on network TV, from episodes like season seven's
Lois Strikes Back, which features
Lois seeking revenge on a group of teenage girls,
to season four's If Boys Were Girls, which
sees Lois daydreaming about a family filled
with a well-mannered young girls.
Malcolm in the Middle consistently pushed and pulled
at what audience expectations of a 30-minute comedy should be.
That's to say nothing of the fact
that the structure of the show always evolved.
Initially, pitched as a show where the child protagonist
really is the central character, Malcolm in the Middle
rapidly evolved into a full ensemble piece.
The entire cast, both parents and children,
were vital to the show's growth and evolution, which
is expanded on by how quickly it introduced characters
like Stevie, the Black asthmatic wheelchair-bound best friend
of Malcolm, Comdt Dan Spangler, and Craig, Lois's lovesick
co-worker, or even Francis, the eldest
brother of the family who is constantly removed
from the family's day-to-day struggles,
but still feels like a vital part of the show's narrative
landscape.
The conventional wisdom of sitcoms
is that you shouldn't introduce new reoccurring characters
into the show's run because it could upset the equilibrium
of the established characters.
This was not something that Boomer and Holland ever
seemed concerned with at all.
They consistently threw monkey wrench after monkey wrench
into the show, almost as if getting themselves out
of the narrative corners was half the fun.
Overall, Malcolm in the Middle is not looked back
on as being a high water mark in the early 2000's sitcom world,
but it should be.
It has the heart, inventiveness, and charisma
of any of the shows that are consistently
being heralded as boundary pushing,
but with the added fact that it actually did push boundaries.
The deeply flawed characters, the inventive cinematography,
the undeniably unique authorial voice
captured the hearts and minds of the viewers across the globe.
It's almost unthinkable that a show this creatively unique
and specific was able to achieve the heights that it actually
did, and it's doubly bizarre how it
has receded into the shadows.
If nothing else, the show's lack of laugh track
paved the way for Scrubs, Arrested Development,
and 30 Rock, plain and simple.
Which is why we should all revisit the shining achievement
of comedy filmmaking.
Malcolm in the Middle, whether anyone wants to admit it
or not, reinvented the sitcom.
And, well, that's all for Nerdstalgia.
Let us know in the comments what you think.
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