Talking Simpsons - Talking Simpsons - Malcolm In The Middle Pilot With Nathan Rabin

Episode Date: September 9, 2020

You're not the boss of this surprise podcast this week as we welcome back the great writer and podcaster Nathan Rabin (check out his new Weird Al book)! We discuss the show that aired alongside Simpsons for over six years, Malcolm in the Middle! How did the show come to be and why was it arguably The Simpsons perfect timeslot counterpart? Listen now or we'll repeat the question! Support this podcast and get dozens of bonus episodes by visiting Patreon.com/TalkingSimpsons and becoming a patron! Check out our new shirts on TeePublic! And please follow the new official Twitter, @TalkSimpsonsPod!

bling blong everyone our new podcast mini-series talking mission hill is now exclusively on patreon put on your spicy pants every friday with a new podcast covering each episode of the cult series from simpsons legends bill oakley and josh weinstein five dollar subscribers at patreon.com slash talking simpsons can hear every episode plus plus all of our previous mini series about Futurama, King of the Hill, and The Critic. So don't be a beardsley, and welcome to Talking Simpsons, the podcast where we roll into a ball and stay in a ball. I am one of your hosts, creepy little loser Bob Mackie, and this is our chronological exploration

of The Simpsons, who is here with me today in the same room. Why, it's Henry Gilbert, and Bob, I am ready to share with you my Savage Dragon comics. Oh, and who do we have on the line? My name is Nathan Rabin. Thanks for having me back. And today's episode is the Malcolm in the Middle

episode pilot. My name is Malcolm. You want to know what the best thing about childhood is? At some the Middle episode pilot. My name is Malcolm. You want to know what the best thing about childhood is? At some point, it stops. This episode aired on January 9th, 2000. And as always, Henry will tell us what happened on this mythical day in real world history. Oh, my God.

Oh, boy, Bobby. 2000 is starting with a bang as Little Big Mom airs alongside this, that episode of The Simpsons you heard two weeks ago, listeners. At the same time, Sixth Sense and Big Daddy win at the People's Choice Awards. And Janet Reno decides that Elian Gonzalez must go back to Cuba this week in the news. I did not vote on those People's Choice Awards. I was not even offered a ballot. Are those still going?

I wonder on those People's Choice Awards. The people nixed it. The people decided that it was no longer their choice. They wanted it to not exist any longer. The Blockbuster Awards seem the most valid to me, I think. Yeah, that was the voice of the people but uh but yeah the guy's choice awards uh from spike tv oh yeah this is very legitimate finally there was uh voting for men finally but but then they took it away from us but yeah i mean i think adam sandler won a lot of people's Choice Awards at the time. Big Daddy's where I checked out.

I wasn't a fan of that. It's one of his less terrible movies. I think it is just we both turned 18 this year in 2005. So I think that is the cutoff for most people. Tom Sharpling had this great opinion about, like, oh, when you complain about Adam Sandler movies, like, he'd ask people, oh, but you like those ones, right? How old were you when you complain about adam sandler movies like he'd ask people oh but you like those ones right how old were you when you like the ones you did like oh you were 13 okay well there you go this one seems like uh the one that sandler fans would pitch to me is like no no it's more down to earth it's more about you know he's growing up it's a little it's a little schmaltzy or you know you know but then he goes on to make a little nicky right right after this

i think so yeah i think i remember uh big daddy egregious, even for Adam Sandler and his product placement. A lot of scenes had in Hooters. Oh, yeah. And that movie gave us the Sprouse Boys. Oh, yes, yeah. An interesting thing to bring up when this is all about child actors, this episode of Simpsons. Well, talking malcolm i guess or talking in the middle how about we call it that yeah but hey welcome back to nathan rabin

uh rec contour yes professional writer podcaster of nathan rabin's happy place and the author of the weird accordion to al soon to be available in a new expanded edition. Oh, it's already available. Okay. You can buy it from my website for cheaper and you don't have to pay for the shipping and the handling and taxes and whatnot. Yeah, my website is NathanRaven.com my name dot com backslash shop

or you can buy it from Amazon and it's 500 pages because it now covers every single song and every single weird al yankovic album and his entire tv film uh and a good chunk of his life uh career i wrote about uhf i wrote about the complete al i wrote about every episode of uh comedy bang bang and the weird al show my goodness oh. Oh, a great, great deal to The Simpsons. And then I wrote about his big 2018 tour that I went to seven stops on.

I had a really, really amazing, amazing, amazing experience on that. And it's funny, actually, when I was working on him on Weird Al's book, that's where we began our professional relationship. He talked about how when he was working on him on Weird Al's book, that's where we began our professional relationship. He talked about how when he was working on a Weird Al show, he was conceptualizing it. There was an ambitious young animator who came up to him and pitched him on a series of shorts about an evil baby and a sardonic hard drinking dog. And Weird Al said, wow, that that's a really really good and nowhere near appropriate for a kids show on saturday morning and of course that young man was seth mcfarland

and he was pitching the family guy and and who knows al could have you know been the tracy olman oh world had he only been i did the wayow show was great in part because it wasn't that appropriate for children. So this would have just been one more egregiously, egregiously unfamily-friendly element to his family show. Seth MacFarlane made Family Guy like three times

before he made Family Guy. I think the other one was called Larry and Steve. Was it the Cartoon Network pilot? That's right. He didn't really break through until he was I think the other one was called Larry and Steve. Was it the Cartoon Network pilot? That's right. Yeah, yeah. He didn't really break through until he was like 22, 23. You know, it's a lot of struggling. A lot of work, a lot of... I feel sorry for him, you know.

Just life is very difficult for him. He's only got 17 shows on the air. Some of them end after only three or four decades. I think we should have a GoFundMe. He was rudderless for like two years after Rhode Island prep school. It was very sad. Yeah, I think his situation right now is that he has three shows currently on television with Fox, but he also signed an overall deal with Comcast.

So he's actually making a shitload of money from two giant companies right now so i was i mean with this old uh squid billies thing a number of kind of fascinating things about that one of which is that squid billies has been on the air for 15 years question mark i find that very hard to believe uh you know squid billies it comes and goes i think it's it's whenever willis wants to make more Squidbillies. I think I just got news somewhere that there's a new Seth MacFarlane album coming out. He's got like six of them. Hasn't he covered every standard by now?

He's got to just be repeating them at this point. I think like one Vanity album is enough, but he's making this just part of his life now. I mean, he gave his sister two Vanity albums as well. I think so. Haley Sings. Yes. I think it would be fascinating if they did kind of a meta move and Seth MacFarlane put out an album of big band covers of Doobie Cock songs. Oh.

I might actually buy money for that. Certainly not any of his straight laced uh yeah you know albums of jazz standards and whatnot i'll take that over irving berlin covers any day but nathan you know uh what what is your experience with malcolm in the middle in this break of format we're doing here that is a good question my experience of that is that my wife who is the mother of my two rambunctious boys uh she really really liked uh malcolm in the middle growing up and she always enjoyed it and then i would sort of catch bitches i would always get bits and snatches of it uh at the end of you know when i was waiting for the simpsons and it was always good it wasn't like uh you know when i was waiting for conan and

i would have to endure three or four minutes of the show. Every minute was like, oh, why? Why? Why? Whereas with Milk in the Middle, it flew by very quickly. And I'm like, you know, if I watch a show, I probably would enjoy it. But I just, for some reason, never got around to watching it until I had a reason to, a professional obligation. And it's terrific.

I was very, very impressed with the big knock in the middle television program. Now I hope we've turned you on to it more but even though you don't have a big history with the show we are going to lean on you

for parenting observations in this. I have them. Yeah, definitely. And you know in addition to your general like extreme deep knowledge of pop culture as well.

There aren't too many punishments in this episode. I don't think there are any. Like, the show is famous for showing off the many punishments that children have to go through. There's a mention of spanking. Yeah, they speak to spanking, but there's no creative, like, as I watched other episodes, I'm like, there's not as much, like, physical things done to Malcolm

and the brothers as punishment, because I think they knew, like, oh, that looks bad to actually see a pair like to see lois spank malcolm on screen that it looked bad but instead they just had like extreme timeouts yeah uh i i follow this entire series from the beginning i had really grown out of watching sitcoms despite growing up on them by this time but i loved this from the very beginning and it felt like the path to this for me was like the adventures of Pete and Pete and then strangers with candy and then this and then like arrested

development for like high higher concept higher budget single camera sitcoms without a laugh track it feels like they're all part of the same like universe of tone and theme and darkness and a little melancholy in there as well well that timeline really matches up of like Pete and Pete kind of ended right when Strangers of Candy began. Strangers of Candy ends right around when this begins. Then like three years into Malcolm in the Middle, then Arrested Development debuts. It's like a passing of the torch. And what I really like about this then and now is that despite how cartoonish it is, I like how it very accurately portrays a lower middle class family as someone who grew up

with like very limited means the first 10 years of my life all the talk of like leftovers the state of the house the state of their yard reminded me of my family and many of the families i grew up around uh very accurate in that sense and i do like seeing families depicted in this way where i feel like it's so rare to see a family like below middle on television, and it was even rare back then. Despite the wave of the Roseannes and the Grace Under Fires of the beginning of the decade, 2000s were just like, no, everybody's rich. We all have money.

It's all going to be great. Let's forget about 2001 and what that will bring. I grew up poor enough that I'm like, what, they own a house? You know, for me that was, because I also grew up in a group home uh for emotionally disturbed adolescents so i had a bit of a different growing up experience than other people did but i also you know lived with my dad uh when he was very poor and yeah there was always a thing where

it's like god if you own your own house that kind of set you apart yeah it feels like they are just on the lowest of the lower rung of the middle class where they can just barely have this house. And it's always just like, we never have enough food. We don't know if Christmas will happen. They have trouble paying bills. There's multiple episodes in the first couple seasons where it's like, we can't afford this doctor bill. Or this cancels a vacation because a person gets hurt. It feels like this is where the Simpsons started financially and soon grew out of.

But they were always stuck here. They never just forgot about the money issue and let them have crazy adventures. They were always like just barely hanging on by their fingertips. Well, it's interesting because there is so much inherent drama and conflict in being poor and trying to get by in a world where you need a lot of money. And yet you see it so rarely in television shows and sitcoms. And I think there's just a measure of how much we hate the poor. We don't even want to see them, even if it's inherently easier to depict their lives as being full of

struggles and conflict and things that you need to get over than people who are upper middle class, which seems to be kind of the default in television, particularly in sitcoms. Yeah. And the financial aspect, I think really informs the characters, especially Lois.

Like that is why she is so fierce. And I think a sitcom 10 years ago would portray her as like, what a bitch. But this one is just like, she is fierce and defensive and protective for a reason. Because like one of her children is the one that will save the family and she has to just keep watch over all the other freaks and they have to get by on so little yeah and yeah the i i think to the you know the class that it speaks to and how few especially just network or mainstream sitcoms would deal with class issues like this i think of uh dan harman talking

about when he was making community and how he made it's not that show isn't a show about class but it is a show about like challenging viewers and he felt like uh you know some people get home from a really hard job and want to put on the tv to make them feel better for a little bit they don't want to be challenged. And maybe they also don't want to see like, oh, this family also is incredibly stressed out by almost missing one bill. Or they're like, you have to deposit this paycheck before you send these bills away because we are on the edge like that.

That kind of thing. You know, I could see it stressing uh, stressing out people, uh, in real life too. My viewing history with this show is I did fall off in about the fourth season or show, but so, but as I was watching Simpsons at the same time, I watched this every night when it was partnered together with it. And I think, uh, you know, if, if I don't, I don't think we need to justify doing this in the show because we've done, we've done family guy and we did mission Hill as well.

But this is a related to Simpson show because it is the most successful in terms of ratings, the most successful show that ever got partnered with the Simpsons. And I think barring like a little bit where they went to Thursday night in the sixth season, Malcolm was pretty much always on the same night as the simpsons oh yeah on sundays like it was and as the simpsons was going even more into captain wacky town in in the post season 12 here's you know malcolm in the middle being so grounded and real while also being funny like it does feel like in um you know a worthy successor to the simpsons that now the Simpsons is outlived by 13 years. And Malcolm has kind of unwittingly assassinated

all the animated shows that they were running because they were always looking for an animated partner to the Simpsons that wasn't King of the Hill because that was already a hit. And everything failed, but this is what stuck. And it was way cheaper than making, let's say, Family Guy because Family Guy was not a hit it was only a hit when it came back thanks to the cartoon network reruns uh but here why are we going

to the history of how malcolm in the middle came to be and why it was partnered with the simpsons so the story of malcolm in the middle is the story of the show's creator linwood boomer and he was he was born in 1955 so literally a baby boomer he really wow hashtag okay boomer i was thinking of uh whoever heard the pitch to this to this uh pilot was like okay boomer i like where you're going see that's why in my notes i constantly i normally address people by their last name in my notes but i kept having to go like just write lynnwood it's gonna be too distracting to read uh but so lynnwood uh was born in vancouver but his family moved to the bay area in the 60s and he was the third of four sons uh had a very strong-willed working-class mother and uh it was it could be a tense situation of not you know know, being lower middle-class kind of a kid there.

And he, with all those troubles, Linwood is then cursed with the worst thing imaginable. The pain of being a gifted kid. No, it's a pain. I know all too well. Yeah.

As, as recovering gifted kids, me and Bob, no, it's the worst thing you can be. It's so it's not, it's my, my imposter

syndrome is terminal i have a gofundme for it lately it's not easy to hear that i'm one of those as well of course that's why we're all hosting a podcast exactly gifted kids with podcasts are the curse of gifted kids uh growing up yeah no i mean it's our revenge on the world i mean look as a gifted kid i am tired of hearing people complain about the pains of being a gifted kid but it did come with its own like bullshit of that is expressed through this show very well i think and it definitely when i saw this pilot i was like oh this really speaks to me as a i was just finishing my high school career as a gifted kid when this show debuted

but yes the lin linwood's not faking it he's not stealing uh valor here he's a real gifted kid too but unlike malcolm he actually was even more anti-social and um and unpopular he tells stories about how being in the gift gifted kid program made him a very anti-social teen who mouthed off to teachers and principals and didn't have a lot of friends. He also went to an all-boys Catholic middle school where he had slightly longer hair than a crew cut, and so he was mercilessly teased for that. So sounds like the recipe for a very surly antisocial young man in Linwood's life.

Unlike Malcolm, he would not end up a valedictorian or going to harvard he actually would go to hollywood he would work in uh work his way up in acting very quickly to be cast as a recurring character in the later seasons of little house on the prairie he was like the husband of one of the girls on that show like when she got married on the show she got married to linwood he didn't really have a big role after a couple seasons of little house he was like you on imdb it's like one episode of fantasy island one episode of love boat like not not uh stardom wasn't on his path little house on the prairie was like the waltons and that if

that was a rerun on tv it would just go go off. It would go away. It just put me to sleep immediately. I'm like, God damn it. Another Little House on the Prairie. There has to be a Lassie on at least somewhere. So Linwood, though, makes a big career switch in the mid-'80s. He's going to go behind the scenes, starts working in sitcom writing. His first credited writing gig is on Silver Spoons in 1986. And from 86 to 88, he was a writer-producer on Night Court.

Wrote a number of episodes on that. On this show, you can feel a little spirit of Night Court's wackiness, I think. I think so. It's quirky. I would use the word quirky to describe the shenanigans in Night Court and the shenanigans in Malcolm in the Middle. And, you know, also Night Court was really driven by, like, great actors who constantly got nominated for Emmys as well. Like, you know, John Loracat was the Bryan Cranston

of the 80s. I think so. Did he make a dramatic turn later in his career? You know, I don't think he tried to, actually. Well, no, the John Loracat show was actually quite acclaimed because it sort of dealt with his real-life alcoholism. His character was an alcoholic as well. So, yeah, that definitely was one.

And he's a really compelling actor. He's one of the all-time great sitcom actors, I would go so far as to say. That's why Rest of Development had that joke that Kitty met John Lorquette at AA. Oh, right, yeah. Including in his tenure in night court if you remember i only know right night court through watching it like 800 episodes in a row on tv and reruns but if you remember a four-parter where harry loses his job and is

going to hang glide to the statue of liberty oh yeah that he wrote all four parts of that. Wow, that was like Nightcore the movie. Yeah. And Linwood also is credited as the writer on the first failed U.S. adaptation of Red Dwarf. Okay. He was the writer on that failed pilot. And then he made his way up to executive producer on the first season of Third Rock from the Sun. Yeah. And several longtime Malcolm in the Middle writers will have met linwood there and he takes him over to malcolm but that was the closest he got to show running to that point in his career uh he bounced around some more after that i don't know why he left after

the first season the third rock but uh in the late 90s he worked on his even animation he worked on the doomed the god the devil and bob show we'll forgive him oh you just like any pro bob show though i mean they disparage my name with that awful show but while executive producing that show he was working on a spec script that he didn't think would turn into a series it was just something he was hoped would sell him as a writer that could work on single camera sitcoms because he was working on all these multi-cams and you know single camera sitcoms they weren't dead but in the late 90s they weren't as big like i think the larry sanders show brought it back in a big way yeah the sitcom boom was all like multi-cam audience stuff though i

mean single camera sitcoms go back to like the andy griffith show yeah they've always been around but they kind of happy days first season of happy days oh that's a single camera show and actually quite good like the first season of happy days was substantially better uh than all of the russian park because yeah it looked more cinematic and visually dynamic and so linwood's spec script it came up with the idea of a a boy not unlike him and a family not unlike his the the pain of childhood and plus the pain of raising a child uh as a fun family sitcom that had a lot of bites to it so that spec script is uh getting passed around hollywood garnering a lot of interest. First of all, from UPN.

This was almost a UPN show. But Linwood felt that it was a bad fit from the start. He's like, UPN has these notes. We don't like these notes. Then a company, Regency TV, gets interested in it. And not only do they get behind it, but Regency is also partially owned by Fox. So Fox is interested in it. And I did a bunch of executive talk in our Family Guy podcast on

Talking Simpsons so you may remember Doug Herzog the briefly tenured president at Fox former Comedy Central guy the killer of MST3K that's right that's why I know his name and he gave us South Park and he took away

Mystery Science Theater but yeah doug herzog in his time at fox he loved this script he made it a top priority uh he also is working with gail burnham at the president of regency tv who gail burnham would go on to be an executive at fox like by the time this aired so there were a lot of good friends for Malcolm in the system there of the executives also like Linwood Boomer would marry Regency's senior VP of comedy Tracy Katsky so uh a little slightly incestuous production in Malcolm but it's a good show so hey I'm glad it exists uh but so not only does Doug Herzog order a script to be produced as a pilot, but he makes an initial order of 13 episodes,

which would actually grow to 16 episodes by the time the first season is finished. So Linwood Boomer gets put in charge. It's his first time as showrunner. He has a very strong vision for the show because it's based on his childhood. So I found articles from when the show debuted of's based on his childhood so i i like i found articles from when the show debuted of the other writers going like boy it was really hard at first to capture his voice because it's just like how do you write for a guy's mom and tell him like no your mom would say this and but one important person in defining the show beyond linwood boomer was director and co-executive producer todd holland

todd holland was coming fresh off larry sanders he's still a very in-demand director uh and he's one of like the pioneers in single camera direction in the 90s for television it surprised me that he is the director of the wizard that is very strange yes yeah and i believe within the same 12 months the wizard was released and then his episodes of twin peaks he directed were released okay wow it's uh yeah it's pretty crazy he goes from like a commercial to the one of the weirdest shows in ever broadcast on networks uh he also directed crippendorf's tribe yep yeah boy he's tv is better for todd holland i think yeah but yeah he directed the pilot and many other episodes and really shaped the voice and shooting style of the series i mean i think he's the one who you know we mock the

wizard but that is a film about directing a lot of kids. That's true. Including ones who have special mental powers. Is Dewey the equivalent of the whiz in The Wizard? I think he's more of a feral child. Yeah. So it was originally announced for a fall debut, but Fox bosses, which then included Gail Burnham, they decided that they were going to save Malcolm for a mid-season debut, which was a bigger deal in 2000. And in the same class as this year of production,

Fox also bet big on action in very similar way. The show Action that is about Jay Moore making movies with Joel Silver. And that show was like what if we put an hbo show on fox oh people think it's too cruel and mean and heartless uh that show's okay it i mean that show i love action i am on on the record i'm thinking that is an awesome show and then incredibly dark if you watch the series finale of that show is about how harvey weinstein is a monster like that is it is entirely about how awful he is which it's one of those things like wow so action could talk about that in 1999 but in 2016 we had to act like who knew this about harvey i think there are also some dirty rock

jokes about him being a monster oh yeah like oh my god no so malcolm in the middle it gets the big boost of being put in probably the best slot you could be put on on fox television sunday night between the simpsons and x-files perfect you cannot ask for a better slot than that and and its debut audience would be 23 million viewers and the next episode 26 million like that's how huge it was bigger ratings than the simpsons like it outdrew the simpsons from from the start wow uh and so uh let's talk about the cast on the show uh a lot of them were relatively new uh originally the character of malcolm was written as a nine-year-old but when they met a young frankie muniz they're like no that's him and he can't play nine he's 14 and he can play 12 but he can't play agent cody banks himself he this would be his launch into superstardom like

and i think they were incredibly lucky with him as a child actor because it's like you are the anchor of this show. You have to do a ton of dialogue that can't really be like hidden by editing sometimes. You have to like talk to camera and then turn back like a lot of and then it has to be produced in single camera format too, which actually is like even more like time consuming and taxing. Like Frankie Munez really he got nominated for an Emmy in the like third season. I consuming and taxing like frankie muniz really he got nominated for an emmy in the like third season i think he really did like earn it and he'd done a lot of small roles prior to this uh but this show would make him a superstar of the agent cody banks franchise and also uh battling paul giamatti and big. All right. He'd make appearance in other stuff after this, but he's much more into car racing now. There's a crazy tweet I found from him of saying that he's maybe the last person Dale

Earnhardt ever talked to because he drove the pace car at the race where Dale Earnhardt would crash and die. Oh my God. And he wished Dale Earnhardt well right before the race and then he's and then he's like Dale Earnhardt then got in his car and we never saw the famous Malcolm curse uh and also uh you know sadly in 2012 to 2013 he had a series of strokes and other brain injuries that have now left him saying that he has no memory of ever working on the show or much of his childhood that's so tragic yeah like they're just all wiped out yeah just gone he's

like he appeared on i think dancing with the stars and just admitted like i don't remember anything i watch i watch episodes and i'm like wow that was me now of course also yes frankie muniz since 2015 has come out as a staunch conservative i do wonder if the horrible brain injuries and that are related. I don't know. It makes it hard to like, there's lots of Republican celebrities that I would say to like Scott Baio, like H or whatever. But I just can't for Munez, his brain, I feel bad for him. I don't know. I had no idea.

And now I'm utterly disillusioned. He experienced a great amount of trauma such a smart character on television i know what happened what happened i feel like malcolm could have just become ben shapiro in the future yeah actually going to harvard at 16 is what uh happened to ben shapiro they i bet i bet ben shapiro watched the show and he's like hey that's me i'm this kid Well if you listen to Adam Carolla A lot of his politics come from being very angry At his hippie mother

So Childhood resentment can lead to some pretty Dark places as an adult He can finally punish all the poor people he had to grow up with And Malcolm becomes an adult He was surrounded by all these lazy people And now he can finally punish them. Yeah.

Now I think I have to say I'm looking at his Twitter account and it's not like offensive. Okay. It's not like blood and soil MAGA stuff. But I mean, he is a conservative, but he's talking about wearing a mask. So he's got that going for him at least. What a low bar we have. And he loves his wife. He's a wife lover.

He's a wife guy. He's a wife lover. He's a wife guy. He's a wife guy. But so that's the lead boy in the show. The other kids include oldest brother Francis, played by Christopher Masterson, who is a Scientologist, but seemingly, from my research, seemingly uninvolved in anything related to his brother. Danny is in prison now, right? Or he's been arrested. I think he's the trial. It's the reason why you're not seeing that 70s 70s show anywhere right now that's right yeah yeah but

uh but yeah christopher masterson they they were at fox really investing in the masterson family like quite a lot and and you can assume that a lot of the success of malcolm in the middle brought millions of dollars to the church of scientology. But probably less than My Name is Earl. I bet My Name is Earl funded more stuff in the Church of Scientology. But anyway, sorry, this is just a bum out here. Then there is the next oldest brother, Reese, played by Justin Burfield. He's a really good actor, too. He's actually a few months younger than Munez,

though he can play his older brother he definitely is bigger than he is uh he was fresh off of the ripoff of married with children unhappily ever after that's right created by one of the creators so he was ripping himself off so he was the bud bundy on that show oh you're right yeah i do like how all of the brothers are so different from each other too. They're very distinct. And we're going to talk about Dewey, but yeah, a lot of his stuff is a little too cutesy sometimes, but I do like how just like the state of the family informs the character so well and that Dewey is like a feral child because like there's no time to raise that

one. Yes. He's just like left to his own devices. Just shoved to the side by his older brothers. Yeah. So Justin Barefield, is hasn't acted in a while and that is because he is a production executive at the television arm of virgin okay i sir richard branson makes some movies and he like movie 43 is a virgin production like

but that's so weird to me like how do you go from being a child actor to then an executive at virgin with having no other tv i just don't understand it did he go to school or anything like business school i don't know i i i don't know he produced a jessica simpson's vehicle a directivity jessica simpson's vehicle in 2007 her take on working girl blonde ambition he was like 20 years old yeah that's crazy yeah they're through max kiebel's big move captain writer romance and cigarettes okay that's the right person he's a it's it's an interesting life he's had well meanwhile yes the youngest brother deweyy, is played by Eric Per Sullivan. He basically vanished from acting after Malcolm in the Middle. He has a credit in a 2010 film, hasn't been seen in anything since.

I couldn't find any Where Are They Now article saying what happened to him. He's just gone. There was a, hey, all the actors were in the same place let's take a picture together thing everyone was there except for eric perr sullivan like uh the reese actors just holding up a photo of him like he's here in spirit kind of thing and it i mean it could just be like yeah he left hollywood which you may as well be dead if you do that apparently he's not dead but his career is but that's the kids the real star of the series though is the mother lois played by jane kasmaric yeah both of these actors the parents they were working for like 20 years as

actors before this being their big break it's crazy it's amazing you look at their credits and it's like you know girlfriend in this double appearances on murder she wrote for the crayon man like he's like a tennis hunk in that. Yeah, that's right. They're all in a million things because they were just working actors in Hollywood waiting years to finally land a starring role in some sitcom. And Jane Kaczmarek, a very decorated actress by that point. She was also at the time and for several years married to bradley whitford uh they they divorced about four or five years ago but no so disillusioning well for a time they were the kings

and queens of network television because they got cast within the same week on their shows she got cast on malcolm in the same week bradley whitford got cast in west wing west wing would premiere in the fall of 99 malcolm was january 2000 but produced pilots at the same time and also in the first season jane kasmarek is pregnant which they kind of they film around pretty well okay and uh and she would be the most celebrated actor on the show. She was nominated for an Emmy every year of the show, but never won it. She never won the Emmy. She's a Susan Lucci of the sitcom world. And it's too bad.

There's two times she lost to Patricia Heaton where I'm like, you know what? No. I don't think so. This is not a judgment of her politics. I think Patricia Heaton's fine on Everybody everybody loves raymond but she's she's way better jane kasmarek is so much better at basically the same yeah like a much angrier wife yes but unfortunately uh everybody loves raymond is a real nemesis at award season for from malcolm in the middle it wasn't just jane who got screwed over by it but but she's really the star of the show like she's the soul of the show they she can be this you know

strict enforcer when she needs to be but when you see her like in the second episode called the red dress when she's she just wanted to wear a nice dress to her anniversary dinner with her husband and it's it's taken from her she only has so many nice things yeah i mean despite the marketing for the show being the moms are real you know what uh like the show has so much sympathy for her uh as a person i think it's it's very it could have gone a totally different direction too by making her a true villain but they have so much sympathy for this character even if you're a viewer you're like oh man she went too far that time. Yeah. And you get a moment of her going like, maybe I did go too far. But since the show, though, she has kind of been choosy with her role.

She does appear in stuff, but it's like one-off appearances here and there, not really starring in anything. I mean, she doesn't need to. This show, I'm sure, made her very comfortable uh and at the same time the show was going on she did make eight eight appearances on the simpsons as judge constance harm the uh one of their their new judge character their judge judy character oh definitely yeah yeah did brian kress didn't go on to do anything after welcome in the middle no i don't think so i don't see okay he wasn't he's not that good of an actor i I probably shouldn't point that out here, but yeah, that does not surprise me. Worst part of the show.

Yeah, no, but okay. Bryan Cranston was hired for a quieter role than expected. You see him in this pilot here. Hal is kind of a very just reserved, like nothing guy. Yeah, he is like the checked out father who wants to like just you know escape responsibility he would later become like a total goof vamping goofball they're actually very soon after the pilot yeah having his back shift that's a an audacious way to introduce a character and be an unusual

way to introduce a character especially your dad And Bryan Cranston at the time, he was coming off of memorable appearances on Seinfeld. Twice on there is the converted to Judaism doctor, or dentist. I mean, they're doctors, but you know. They're tooth doctors. Also around the same time, he did a couple voice appearances on Clerks,

the Clerks animated series. It's funny hearing on the commentary on clerks they thought he'd be there harry shearer but after two recordings he's like i you know i got on this pilot and they're like good luck loser i remember this is so weird i remember on the dogma commentary ben affleck talks about uh going home to watch malcolm in the middle and everybody thinks it's bad oh kevin smith scott mosher they're all like that show sucks damn maybe they were just mad about Bryan Cranston leaving I think they're just mad about the crayon man yeah uh yeah and also like he was so on the fringes in Hollywood before getting cast in the show like he would do non-union anime dubbing he did he's in a Power

Rangers episode voicing something not on screen just a voice, which would lead to him being in a Power Rangers movie as Zordon. It says here that he was in Saving Private Ryan. Very impressive. His character is War Department Colonel. So when you don't have a name, probably not that good of a role. It's funny that for a time him and dean norris were on the same level of acting and stuff uh but but yeah so as the writers would tell it in the writer's room they created a challenge of like what will brian cranston say

no to because they would write very crazy things for him to do like get him basically nude and covered in blue paint yeah he's fine with that rollerblading to funky town yeah have him do an entire rollerblading routine and uh they said that when they wrote in the script that he would be covered in bees and he accepted to do that the writer said they're like we have gone as far as we can we will kill him and he won't say no so uh so yeah if you see him in this first season where being covered in bees uh know that he said he was only stung once he was uh he turned out okay i also found some interesting article from like 2003 which was basically about how

cranston constantly was not getting nominated while casmeric was for like three years in a row but it was an article that honestly felt like publicity for him where I was like, but Brian Cranston isn't bothered at all. He's a very understanding actor. But he eventually did get nominated a few times and never won it. He, the Cran man,

he lost to Brad Garrett twice. Oh, come on. Oh Lord. He lost to Jeremy Piven. Oh come on oh lord he lost to jeremy piven oh the only person he lost who i'm not bothered by is david hyde pierce because david hyde pierce was overdue for one as well good stuff i was actually a day one breaking bad viewer because i heard like oh the dad from malcolm in the middle is in this crime uh show i'd want to see that like i wanted to see where he was

going to go next i think breaking bad in the casting it was i mean it was super smart he was so ready for the role but i think it did trade a little bit on like oh yeah his his history as sitcom dad well i think they wanted the two actors they wanted for it were matthew broderick and john cusack but what an interesting choices for it but yeah definitely brian krasinski brought something to the role. He just owns the character of Walter White so much. Honestly, I think the show, to an extent, was too reverent of what Brian Cranston wanted for the Walter White character. I'll just say, if you've seen Breaking Bad, if you haven't seen it, I won't spoil it for you. But I treat the final episode as non-canon. I do.

I know that's a lame fan theory, but I do treat it as a dream. It gets a little crazy. It gets to an insane potboiler. They heat things up to delirious levels. Though I think Cranston is very invested in his character. Same with Hal on this show. I think he brought a lot to the character that wasn't there on the page originally. So he's used to doing that as an actor. And so, yeah, I mean, now pretty much if there's ever going to be a Malcolm in the Middle revival, it will be because Bryan Cranston wills it to exist, like in that he's the one who sells it uh one other actor i didn't want to mention in the in the group is david allen higgins who's not in this episode but of the higgins boys and gruber

that's right yeah was that the comedy channel or was that ha or was that the very early the comedy central that's when they had the two shoes they do two things that were kind of terrible and made something mediocre out of it yeah i think that was the early days of comedy central i recognized him from uh ellen yes yeah or these friends of mine whichever version of ellen he was on that's right yeah i forgot he was he was key in one of the early permutations of whatever the ellen show was he was like the bookstore man right the the ellen show was five different shows yeah but dave allen higgins his brother alan higgins wrote for the show he was fresh off of news radio going from news right so i think dave allen higgins is also in some news radio and of course he co-wrote the wrong

guy with jay cogan a true cinema very memorable uh sporting performance in it and that is our simpsons connection jay cogan i believe was showrunner of the last few seasons yeah so you got judge constance harm and uh kogan was near showrunner but it was a different showrunner but he wrote a few too yes yeah uh so the first season was the best performing of all setting records for anything airing next to the simpsons and also it was the only new show from that season on Fox that got renewed. Every other show canceled. And it's also interesting that the entire first season was produced before it aired. So they couldn't take a bunch of notes or make a bunch of big changes to it as it went

because it was just all in the can. And the ratings were very good, but there was just a steady decline season by season. And, of course, happens in all live action shows and not to The Simpsons. People age and change, especially all the cute kids you hire for your show. There's a ticking clock as soon as you have a show full of children. Even in the second season, everybody's in puberty. Just wait one year. I think Malcolm ages a lot from the pilot, too.

I don't know when they shot the pilot compared to the rest of the series i mean for a growing boy three months changes a lot of things malcolm seems much tinier in the pilot he kind of looks like it like a fetus he's that small on this first episode and and linwood boomer he even cops to it in interviews of like look we we wanted this to be about little boys but when you see how they look at the end of season two you realize you have to write them about middle schoolers and how they are interested in girls and all that stuff it's you just have to write for what they it'd be silly to pretend they aren't they aren't growing boys unless you're a gray coleman or emmanuel lewis and then biology has given him a weird out on that one one of those uh perma children they don't make any uh and uh and also as the show went on francis kind of just went

away like uh masterson just you know wasn't on the show as much he after the 100th episode or so he starts to go away and his stories the francis stories go away that's a it's a brilliant device though just a built-in b story just like well who's going to do something else oh yeah the character who's not on the show yeah he's going to have his own adventure you know he does his own thing somewhere else and it also made it an event whenever francis was with the brothers in like two episodes a season it's like and uh and linwood boomer was showrunner until the final season when he was like finally like you know my kid is he put it i had to step away before my children got so old they hate me and i could just spend time with them uh he left uh matthew carlson in charge for

the final season and he hired on jay cogan and several other writers and in co-ep and ep positions running the ship you know i think the last season gets a little in wacky town and shows they ended it at the right time like all the boys were getting too old but what are we going to do have a season of malcolm in college like no so they uh it ends with his graduation right that's right yeah the episode's called graduation boomer comes back to direct that episode and really shepherd the finale. And it's a really good finale, too. And so 151 episodes, quite a long quality stretch of stuff for a live action sitcom you don't normally get.

The final episode would air on May 14th, 2006. And making it, honestly, a blip compared to like simpsons or family guy like even family guy has outlasted it i think by like three times as many seasons by now or even like american dad or squid billies it comes back to squid billies but 15 years is a long time to be on the television yeah uh and uh the weirdest thing though is the for the show compared to simpsons is it only got one season put on dvd in in america anyway yeah i bought that dvd way back in the day and uh i didn't even know more didn't come out i guess they were just like well only certain things can make the dvd cut this is not special enough so and in season two did come

out i think in some european territories and i believe it really the one source i read said it came down to music rights it's just yeah this show has too many songs and watching this on um hulu i was surprised a lot of this music made the cut yeah it's uh i guess they found a better deal for uh digital than they did for dvds back then like in the in the early 2000s it seems like well the simpsons will sell enough to pay for every song and license every song malcolm doesn't sell enough so they i think they did in the first season they had every song they didn't make a cut of a song but then by the second season like we're not we're not cutting songs and we're not paying for songs i saw on twitter today not even looking for it someone had retweeted uh disney plus saying you know we have

malcolm in the middle too but that is not on disney plus yet no yeah it was in april 2019 they said it would be part of the shows on disney plus and i think at some point unspokenly they made the decision that there is a certain level of crudity that they will not put on disney plus which is why simpsons is that line simpsons i think is as far as content is allowed to get dirty wise on disney plus and that's really just because disney plus needs a killer app so they got simpsons streaming and it's an institution too yeah it's it gets away with things other things wouldn't but like family guy x files malcolm in the middle majorly popular things that could be on disney plus but they are doomed to the

dirty town of hulu where's my episodes of ned and stacy well i i find that when you can make billions of dollars off of something like having the simpsons on disney plus uh people don't care about morality that much it's just oh my god money money money money money malcolm in the middle unfortunately is not that big of a cash cow to get past those but so there's always been teases of revivals since the show ended in 2006 uh but the closest it came was a cute fake ending to breaking bad that brian cranston did which uh with jane casmer came back and it's it's basically hal and lois wake up new heart style in a dream of like oh the whole show was a dream of the character of malcolm in the middle and that's only on the

blu-ray set or whatever yeah i mean it's on youtube you can okay yeah but yes yeah so that was the closest and i mean it was cool that cranston was like yeah i mean it's on youtube you can okay yeah but yes yeah so that was the closest and i mean it was cool that cranston was like yeah i'll just do it again he loves he clearly loves this a lot anything you get casperic back for the joke is great too well i yeah i've seen uh i've seen brian cranston as a way too enthusiastic guest on the elf talk show that they did with ed mcmahon was the uh was the sidekick again because they offered to pay him money uh for that role and then he was also in the the least reputable of the vacation movies it was a thanksgiving vacation movie where he was kind of

the randy quaid crazy character and i think judge reinhold was the was the Chevy Chase figure. If you're in those two projects you're probably going to do a whole lot of things. He seems pretty much up for anything. It sounds like part of the vacation extended universe that was airing on like Showtime or something. Thanksgiving vacation. If you ever want

to be insulted, have your intelligence and judgment and taste insulted. Go watch that terrible television movie. I've heard the observation that brian cranston is now so far above his station now that in he's he gets drunk on power and makes wild choices uh or i heard again i'll just say tom sharpling is very funny he had this observation of like cranston when he was doing interviews about his power rangers movies like you know actually i'm trying to bring a lot to the role and he's talking about his process of playing zordon and tom sharpling's like just take the money just enjoy it like it's a big paycheck just do it i'm used to brian cranston being much older and craggier so seeing

him here as a like a young man of 45 i'm like he is incredibly handsome yes yeah he really is uh but but yeah so that is malcolm in the middle they've been teasing more to come but not not so far but uh but all right why don't we take a break and when we come back we'll go through the pilot episode of malcolm in the Middle, premiering Sunday at 8.30 on Fox. Welcome to The Break, everybody. And I won't repeat the question. It's Henry Gilbert. And thanks so much for listening to this week's special installment where we cover the Malcolm in the Middle pilot. And a big thank you to our guest nathan rabin be sure to check out all the cool stuff he writes at nathan rabin's happy place

and check out his new paperback edition of the weird accordion to al and much like nathan rabin this podcast is also supported by wonderful patrons on patreon.com talking simpsons that make it able for me and bob mackie to do this as our full-time jobs where we not only where we cover the simpsons related shows like malcolm in the middle and also our weekly what a cartoon podcast where we cover a different animated series each week you know if you sign up for five bucks a month at patreon.com slash talking simpsons you get access to all of our podcasts a week ahead of time and ad-free, plus tons of exclusives. If you sign up now, you get to hear all of our previous Patreon-exclusive miniseries

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But you also get our monthly What a Cartoon Movie, where we cover a different animated feature film in the same Talking Simpsons style, often for over four hours. You sign up now, you'll get to hear september's what a cartoon movie which is the aladdin sequel return of jafar plus all the previous ones which includes films as varied as beavis and butthead do america space jam the ghost 1995's ghost in the shell the black cauldron and tons and tons more please consider signing up at the ten dollar level to get the most out of your subscription at patreon.com slash talking simpson yes no maybe i don't know can you repeat the question you're not the boss of me now and you're not so big you're not the boss of me

now you're not the boss of me now you're not the boss of me now and you're not so big all right we are back and now it's time to talk about the pilot episode of Malcolm in the Middle in particular. It's a really good pilot, though there's lots of stuff in it, I think, that would be like, oh, they wouldn't do this on later episodes. Yeah, I feel like they're being a lot more brash up front. Like all the parent nudity, I don't think it extends beyond this episode yeah yeah actually multiple articles from 2000 were about linwood kind of defending the parent nudity about how he's like well that was my family we were just like my mom walked around topless sometimes uh my dad would get shaved in in front of us like it was it wasn't he's not saying it was like even good but it was like a childhood growing i think it fits with the cat like they're

just too busy for modesty just like i don't have time for modesty i'm kind of watching this thing about sort of maslow's hierarchy of needs uh and how if you're very wealthy and you have privilege and entitlement and whatnot you can think about the abstract things but when you're this close to the bottom when you're so concerned with just getting by every day you can do without a whole lot and i feel like that includes clothing uh i think that captures the sense of uh perpetual low-level desperation and chaos and anarchy that comes with being the parents of rambunctious boys but apparently other writers were like oh we're kind of disturbed by this we're not doing this as much in later episodes though this opening voiceover thing this feels a little

tacked on like for clarity of like i think the show could just start at the breakfast table after the opening though the show always had uh cold opens yeah yeah usually unrelated and it does set up like the the economic state of the family. All these boys share a room and a bed. And it's like, well, yeah, that was true. When I was of limited means, I shared a room with my mom for four or five years. And then when we moved to a house, I'm like, I get a room? I can have a room that's mine? It speaks to a family that bought a house for one.

When they're like, yeah, we have one kid, one bedroom for the kid. Cool. And then they couldn't go to a bigger house when they had more kids. So like, look, you three boys are just in a room together. Like, deal with it. And there will be another child before the end of the series.

Yes. And also they have a quick note about Francis just so you know he isn't there. Sometimes I wonder with how Francis is like cut away to, I wonder if they like recast with Masterson after the pilot or something. There's, I don't know.

I couldn't find a story about that. Maybe he was always there, but it feels really not the character of Francis feeling inserted, but Masterson's parts feel pretty inserted to me. It was at the season of Three's Company where Susan Summers was off being wildly successful. So she would call in to the show

and that was a way to technically have her be part of the show and have her still remain and clearly just spend 10 minutes shooting your stupid little bits separately from everybody else's. It was ahead of its time I mean every sitcom now is going to be a Zoom meeting yeah

I can't bring myself to watch that new Hulu show, Love in the Time of Corona. Seems too dark. I'm living it. Don't you want to be reminded of COVID-19? I want to see what quirky situations will arise from it. Sorry, Henry. Yeah, no, I mean, this next decade is just going to be,

we had to watch movies about 9-11 for fucking 20 years after 9-11 and now it's going to be this everything will be in reaction to this after not to diverge us too far but it's just like yeah you made your horror movie that's fine I don't want to be reminded of this when it's over I want no memories of this I never want to think about it again

I feel like men in black and just make everybody forget the eight months that this nightmare will exist for. Well, let's talk about a happier thing. They Might Be Giants. Yeah, yeah. I had this whole song on a cool CD I drove around listening to with anime music as well. Very popular in college.

Yeah. I mean, again, we're all white and nerdy gifted kids here i'm sure we all love they might be giants growing up oh definitely this is just so perfect you know it's one of those things that captures the tone of the show it captures the the essence of the show it captures the humor of the show it's just the perfect table setter for what's to come and this is not the official intro this is the one on the pilot the official one has clips of anime and wrestling yes yeah and and it's faster too yeah song it's they uh what i had forgotten was that they didn't just do the theme song they were the composers for the first season

oh i forgot about that the score of the first season is by they might be giants and uh while this show uh opening was so popular it got they might be giants their first grammy and it was easily their most successful song commercially i read a 2002 interview with them where they are as being as nice as possible of saying this job was awful and we hated doing it. They said it was very emotionally taxing and difficult. And apparently it was like, as people scoring the show, they didn't have control over their music. It was just to the demands of someone else.

And they also mentioned like, they had been in bands for 20 years and now they have a boss for the first time in their life. Well, I think I mentioned this possibly the last time that i was here but it always makes me think about warren zevon uh sort of late in life things weren't going so great for him you know until he found out that he had that fatal illness and then he had his big comeback uh but at one point he was reduced to doing the incidental music for Tech War. Which was William Shatner. The William Shatner novels that he wrote,

ironic quotation marks. So yeah, I just imagine being a genius, genius, genius like that. And I'd be like, wow, what music should, you know, accompany this laser gun fight? So yeah, it's not always the most exciting or satisfying creative gig in the world uh doing music well we all gotta learn about tech work sometime yeah

uh but i you know i think they never came up in any interviews i read but i think hiring they might be giants as your you know initial composers for your show. That really has a Pete and Pete vibe to me. They had Polaris do a bunch of songs for the show, not just that. And it is a show about kids speaking to the camera and addressing the audience. And lots of fun cutaways, single camera stuff. Yeah.

So I think there's more than a little, they don't ever speak to it in any interview, but I do think there's a little Pete and Pete in don't ever speak to it in any interview but i do think there's a little pete and pete in this in fact it's not this is not a ripoff or whatever but i know like at least one pete and pete opens with like a shot of the earth and talking about like how insignificant we all are in the grand scheme of things yeah you're right yeah you know what that opening with all the clips in it let me identify each source in here uh so if you see like the three women with the giant turtle and some of the other caveman stuff that is from the 1966 film one million years bc when you see any anime

character in there uh it's from the anime which was fairly new at the time in 1998 nazca n-a-z-c-a i can see that villain smiling right now in my head and uh and the skateboarding too yeah yeah and uh when you see the kraken come out of the ocean that's from clash of the titans the 1981 movie uh the mud monster grabbing the woman that is from creature from the haunted sea of 1961 uh the skiing guy covered in flames that's from the 1999 film thrill seekers uh if you see the robot head being put together that's from 1965's out of the unknown the man beating the brain monster with the axe is from planet of the brain from planet oris in 1957 and uh two more from not from movies the boxer getting knocked out knocking out the referee that is pedro cardenas fighting willie

dewitt but he accidentally ko's referee burt lowes that's from the 1982 north american championships and finally henry's time to shine that is a wrestling match from wcw's world heavyweight championship match from wcw mayhem in 1999 oh fairly new then and that match features bret hart versus chris benoit oh wow so in every intro malcolm in the middle of chris benoit is there yep wow always there the it's bret hart is putting the sharpshooter on chris benoit so you can't even really tell it's him it's just him on his back only if you're a super fan of wrestling who in 2000 was a huge chris benoit and bret hart fan you're like oh my god my favorite wrestlers are in a thing being sung over by they might be giants how great

and uh yeah the show's last episode aired of 13 months before chris benoit's murder suicide thing so oh my goodness yes yeah but that thanks for once again bumming me out and bringing everything down sorry so much tragedy now we know why it's not on disney plus uh that's true but but shockingly i think they signed the deal they must have signed the deal with WCW to have it in there, and it just persisted because, or maybe they had to renegotiate it because that footage is now owned by WWE, but it's still in the Malcolm opening. But anyway, okay, that's the intro dealt with. Now why don't we play our first clip, and it's about shaving Walter White.

Who'd a sock a two? Who'd a sock a two? Stop! I'm not touching you! and it's about shaving Walter White. Food a socket too. Food a socket too. No, stop. I'm not touching. There are only two toaster waffles. One of you has to have cereal. Give me one of mine. Come on.

Give it. You cheated. Give it. Give it. Look at this. They're sending an unmanned probe to Venus and letting a bunch of school children name it. Well, that's going to end badly.

They do this every month. He has sensitive skin. The hair gets itchy under his clothes. You know, I think you can wear underwear while your wife shaves every other thing, and then maybe you both just go to the bathroom after and shave the genital regions. This brought me memories of my mom shaving my stepdad's eyebrows.

Man, my family did not have... We did our shaving privately. We're very private people. Not open grooming. But yeah, the upfront, it's like all the kids sleeping in the same bed. Food is an issue. There's not enough food to go around. Oh, sorry, Nathan.

I'm just saying that I feel know when you have your first child you're like how life is perfect and ideal and pleasurable and educational and wholesome as possible and then by the last kid it's like they have whatever's around you know whatever we are using personally is down to that you know and also i think it's very observational that uh francis is the fuck up because he was the first hit and they had no idea what they were doing yes yeah they made the most mistakes with him yeah well and i also love the that you can see the hierarchy right there when just through their lack of means she says like yeah we didn't buy enough toaster waffles we don't have enough for three toast you each get one waffle yeah and then a third kid is not gonna have it and she's she's not telling dewey you

don't get the toaster waffle but she denies it if he's denied it just because he is kept on the outside by his two larger brothers uh so the hair all over brian cranston that is yak hair he is not really that hairy and it's actually the uh the hairy back is from a crew member who had that who elected to have his back shaved on television i figured it was a stand-in and on the season one dvd there is a slightly extended version of the pilot it's basically two minutes longer the biggest change is that in the pilot they did a scene the scene is lois singing i believe in miracles instead of it's your thing so i i don't know why it was it was two different maybe they couldn't clear it for tv i guess so yeah but then by the time the dvd comes up like you know we will pay for i believe in miracles and also there's there's a lot of

stuff with dewey in here where he just is weird i feel like their original jokes are a little ralph wiggum with him but his character grows so much more and in times he's written to be smarter than malcolm i think in the series or or more conniving i think a better a better planner and uh yeah they just have to see their father's like hairy junk even as he which uh so so gross but uh then we find out that malcolm is having to go to a play date which it's a very 1999 joke to mock the term play date is fruity and this this is all filmed in a real house the show always tried to film in real places instead of in uh on sound stages i like the state of their uh the exterior of the house in the yard as well

very very true to life though apparently they get a different this is a slightly different house than the other seasons they after the pilot i think they couldn't get the same house but it's in spirit the same house which is just a constant mess just destroyed a place of chaos and the second season finale it's the great like series of flashbacks of each child being born and you see how the lie their lives and home were ruined like made worse each child's birth stevie comes up for the first time as malcolm's forced upon best friend in this next clip. obviously meant a lot to stevie he's a human being with human feelings now you are going to be friends with that cripple boy and you're going to like it understood yes ma'am understood if i give up now i won't get the lecture you kids you just take your legs for granted you know like nothing

could ever happen to him well let me tell you something that is just wishful thinking there's meningitis there are car accidents i could be giving you a spanking and accidentally snap your spinal cord. Every day is a lottery. And first prize is that you don't have to scoot yourself around town on a skateboard with your hands. You think about that. I don't take my legs for granted, Mom. I know, honey.

You're a good boy. Stop playing with yourself. That's a great way to get out of that scene. Yeah, that does also feel very real of like kids are gross and you need to tell them to stop doing those things uh this also brought me back to i guess we can now be nostalgic for the year 2000 it's bizarre but it's just like all the fashion like all of the clothes are at least two sizes too big every neck is a v-neck everything has a stripe on it for some reason all pants are built to hold cargo yeah it's uh such a 2000 show i uh the fashion well the thing about 2002 is that you kind of

have the worst fashions of the 1990s and the worst factions of the 2000s definitely like this middle point to like all of the worst and like what was going on how did anybody have sex just astonishingly unsexy astonishingly i gotta just feel like the whole world was norm core uh from like 1990 to like 2003 and we still dress poorly but we and i can remember like at the time like looking back at the 70s and 80s i mean like those people dress silly and now i look back and i'm like oh my god we were literally the worst of any generation we were like all dressed as skaters for some reason. I never skated.

I just bought some new vans for the first time in a while, and it took me back to wearing skater shoes while not owning a skateboard. I see cargo pouches on Henry's shorts right now. Henry, it's 2020. We need intervention time. It's a hot day here. You know I'm a jeans wearer most of the time, but the only shorts i own

are cargo shorts when did you buy these shorts uh like two years okay they still sell cargo shorts yes yeah they feel these also have drawstrings that i can tighten them up if i want to but uh so uh the character stevie too he's he's based on linwood growing up that his mother made him hang out with a boy with cerebral palsy who would become a very good friend of his, at which he was like, my mom was right. That's what Stevie's based on, though. Stevie, I like that Stevie is, you know, they get some special kid jokes in there. But I love how on the show they navigate all this stuff of like stevie is an african american boy in a wheelchair and how do you joke around that like what do you do with that so i feel like sort of the impulse for every other show would be like okay this is a character

he's black he's in a wheelchair uh how do we make him as accessible and easy and appealing, relatable to a mass audience as humanly possible? And they don't do that. They make him an actual character. You know, there's an actual pathos to it and some of the language that's implied here. There's some ableist slurs. Then again, in 2000, I think we're treated much more differently. And again, I feel like this weird paradox where there are a number of moments where like yeesh i

can't believe they said that but at the same time it's such an empathetic it's such a sensitive it's such a nuanced depiction also it's just it's rare to see disabled characters on television at all yeah let alone a disabled character who is black and a nerd as well and every single part of his identity you do complete justice to you know and is complex and interesting and has so many different dimensions to him and those are my children it's like we're living an episode. Because their father is abandoning them. I'm sorry. So I think Lois using that word is the joke that she's like, you should have all this empathy for this kid who I view only as his disability in an insensitive way.

And I think it helps that he just basically has a mystery disability. They don't ever say, like, this is his condition. It's like he just has a vague disability. But he's also one of the smartest kids in school, too. So, yeah, it's... Well, and the name of the class, the Krelboin class, though... Man, his Jersey accent on Muniz really is... It's strong.

...big in this episode. But it's named after Rick Moranis' character from Little Shop of Horrors, Krelborn. Aww. So it's a cute little reference there. But then as the kids go off to school, we get a fun visual gag of, like, every person who lives next to this family is trying to sell their house.

Just like a number of realty signs as they're walking to school. I mean, these are the bad neighbors who, like, this fucking kid destroyed my backyard again like they are not invited to anything and yeah the joke that dewey like needs to be watched and he wet his pants and all this stuff that also feels like you know he's supposed to be a ralph wiggum type in in these early episodes he's he's much more needy in this and i think they figured out like's super independent and super smart. Because he has no supervision, so he just turned super independent.

In that bowling episode, which is one of maybe the best episodes of the series, an incredibly high-concept sliding doors kind of thing. In that one, Dewey is shown to be a master manipulator, but only through like soft application, like not even through words, just gestures. And yes, as they're walking to school, a boy named Richard brings up Francis. And I don't think that Richard character ever really returned. No, I don't think the bully character comes back either. I think at least in his case, it's implied that what happens at the end of this episode is why he never comes back i mean if you're not committed for series for the pilot these none of the other kids were tamped down

to be recurring in the show they they got other jobs child actors are in high demand you know but we do get an introduction to francis which is a clip i can't really the the audio of it doesn't really make sense without the videos but it's really good like the the series the continual monologue that isn't interrupted of francis doing different crazy things that got him in trouble and all just saying every time like oh i learned my lesson yeah the car on fire is the escalation of all of that and i like it's like it wasn't even our car yeah come on who cares yeah it also felt like kind of an arrested development gag too like ahead of arrest yeah yeah and uh and i'm also kind of surprised they got away with a character

named spath not spaz that also ableist word we were saying that on tv in 2000 though oh totally that is true although i did like there were some lines again just uh it's a very very audacious pilot uh one of my favorite lines in there when he's talking about how he's adjusting to military school. And he says, between that and the general atmosphere of simmering homoeroticism, things are looking up.

And again, I just love how in 2000, that is very audacious to concede that a military school for teenage boys is going to be a raging cauldron of homoeroticism and to call out and acknowledge it up front instead of pretending that that tension is not there. And I also like that Malcolm, when they pass by the bully, he's like, he never goes anywhere. Like, he is so mad that the unfairness of francis got punished with all this but here's

this shitty bully who everybody knows is mean to everyone i also like his you know very evil pitch of like you must pick two but if you take all three i'll leave you alone that's your best value for two weeks yeah again a very evil capitalist in this show as well and also it's a funny little gag of him going like wait no never mind and he just starts pounding the kid off screen then there comes a classroom scene which uh all i now just see it as like boy all these child extras like gotta be expensive this is why he goes to the gifted class with fewer kids uh the actors playing his regular teacher uh in the pilot is marin dungy and she would appear five times on the show as stevie's mom oh okay recast yeah i believe this yeah they don't write stevie's

mother to also be a teacher so i believe she's supposed to be a different character it was a good commentary even in the plush days of the year 2000 schools were still uh you know scrimping scrimping and saving teachers are bringing in their own supplies i love i love those jokes but they make me sad of like oh it's actually far worse for teachers now than it was in 2000 uh and that's not even talking about uh risking their lives uh every second they're in a school right now with uh poisonous children and again i liked how it was sort of understated and matter of fact, all of kind of the jokes about her life as a teacher

being kind of crappy, you know, and about like the little things that bring you joy. And yeah, again, I felt that was very subtle. She says, you know, I have to say this is the high point of my day. How is that for sad? And again, it's a very human moment

and this says a lot about the character. It's too bad they didn't bring her back, because there's a lot of specificity and a lot of humor and a lot of pathos to this character who does not have a lot of time or space on screen. They do give a lot of poor teacher jokes out of his gifted teacher as well. Yeah.

But yeah, I think, too, what took her away, she probably would have had more appearances on the show but she got cast as a semi-regular on alias uh like in 2002 so she she i think that took up most of her time uh actually i have the clip of his his regular teacher she's pretty funny those of you finished with your tempera paints may bring your work up here and start on your charcoal still lifes. You may take two pieces of fruit only, and please be careful with them. I bought them with my own money.

My own money. God, Malcolm, that's so good. Oh, Malcolm, this is wonderful the perspective is good the composition is clean and it even shows signs of actual technique i have to say this is the high point of my day how's that for sad that also that she it says something about how empty her life is that she's saying these things to the kids because it's like you have no one at home to say this to, perhaps. I think, too, that the little blonde girl, do you recognize her, Nathan? I think you've come across her in your work in Nicolas Cage films. I probably have, but I'm totally blanking on it.

Oh, what is this? Well, in the film Con Air, if you remember Nicolas Cage's character Cameron Poe, he only wants to get home to his daughter. I just want my daughter. And that is her. Landry Albright is her name. She's also in the Ron Howard Grinch. She's the flashback version of Christine Baranski's character. If you remember seeing The Little Grinch and how he has a crush on a girl, that's her.

I wish I could forget. That shaved Grinch. That was a particularly terrible part of what I hold as the worst movie ever made. All of his problems were due to a shaving incident when he was a child. That was really weird. Why was it shaving why

else well they improved on dr seuss with that very necessary backstory we need lore yeah seuss needed more lore what a heck i mean the the cat in the hat movie so must be is worse than grinch though grinch uh at least no no the cat in the Hat movie at least is surreal and weird and like very druggy and like why is Paris Hilton here? Whereas the Grinch of Stole Christmas is like makes you hate movies, makes you hate capitalism, makes you hate Christmas, makes you hate life itself

and also just unrelentingly ugly. I will watch Cat in the Hat ten times in a row before I would watch the Grinch of Stole Christmas. If you close your eyes, the Cat in the hat movie is the coffee talk movie as well it can serve dual purposes but i but i'm so enraptured going through the grinch town or whoville on the universal studios ride oh man that place has seen better days though the grinch and cat in the hat one's got alec baldwin one's got je Tambor. Who's the worst of the two?

It's hard to measure. But unlike a lot of the kid actors in the show, Landry Albright actually is still pretty active as an actress. She's not in any major roles, just like one-off appearances here and there, but she was in an episode of Picard last year. So, you know still still at it yeah but yes as malcolm goes back to his seat he gets a very like 1960s prank of paint put on a chair i guess little kids could still do that today if teachers pay for paint to give to little boys i guess uh but i also blame the teacher though that she just lets him walk around in his red pants instead of like punishing someone. I guess, you know, she's busy, whatever. That sounds like work.

And then we meet another recurring character for the first two seasons of the show, played by Catherine Lloyd Burns. Her character gets written out in the third season. I think they had bigger plans for her because she's in the intro to the show. But yeah, my favorite stuff with her is when she thinks thinks she's like this savior of children but she's actually just incredibly naive and and let down by the system at every turn but she she totally came into being teaching as like oh i'm gonna help all these kids and then it's just disappointment after disappointment wearing her down uh but she gives malcolm a gifted test which i remember the only thing i remember about my gifted test was they have a bunch of little toy

colored bears around and like how many yellow ones are there it was like a test to count something fast and i do think i had some sort of like what's different in this picture thing or i was shown a picture but that's all i can remember from my gifted test that got me in but this this felt familiar hi I'm Carolyn want to have a seat are you Malcolm yes and I didn't do anything you're not in trouble Malcolm you're here because some of your teachers think you're um you know I just want to play some games with you, okay? Puzzles, stuff like that. Why? Boy, oh boy, you are a suspicious little... Now, you can look at this picture for 60 seconds,

and I want you to tell me everything that's wrong with it, okay? The man only has four fingers. Right. But this time, I want you to take your time and really look at the car shadows going the wrong way the steering wheel's on the wrong side there's no brake pedal the words in the mirror should be backwards the guys watch when it's a 12 o'clock if he's looking at a sunset and i have red paint on my ass that's right red paint all over my ass kids swearing is also a big part of the show and I love his New Jersey

ass it's such a Jersey ass yeah I mean I feel like in 2000 I was still shocked seeing on network TV a little boy saying ass but it's so realistic there's a good joke a little later in season one where the relaxed swearing of the boys happens at the dinner table where Reese just says damn

and everything just stops and Lois goes like all right and she just grabs dishwashing liquid and pours it in his mouth and she's like all right spit like that's uh it it shows that the kids do relaxedly swear until they get caught in front of their parents doing it, which also feels very real, real to me. Well, I also love one of the things I like about Frankie Mina's performance is that he always seems angry. Yes. Yeah. He's not cute. You're not supposed to even like him.

Sometimes he's just like fed up, like, all right, fine. What do you want? Like, he's just screaming all the time. I mean, I feel like this is not like an attack on his looks or anything but i feel like they chose a non-cute child to be in this role on purpose i think he's a cute kid i think his uh his dialogue this person on his attitude sort of work against that because yeah i definitely you want to pinch his cheek but again i think it's true to the character that he just seems frustrated and angry and kind of put upon all the time, which you would be if you lived with a bunch of kids and you went to this school and everything in the world seemed designed to aggravate you. And I can identify with this frustration from my school days of like, look, I know this already.

Can we like let's speed this up guys i just finishing a test and then having like 40 minutes to kill yeah i know this is bragging about like being good at school which who cares but i i can identify with that frustration which then actually makes you into like kind of a very annoying person to everyone around you and i don't you know i don't blame some of my bullies. I was probably a little annoying. Yeah. I can see why.

I blame other bullies, sure. Actually, a friend of the show, Scott Gairdner from Podcasts Arite, he had this story that was incredibly familiar to me of having a teacher in school, like in elementary school, telling you to like, hey hey just tone it down just a little bit because you're just too excitable like but i have to tell everybody about everything i saw yesterday and it's only to help you from not being picked on as much but you can't understand it at the time we all became podcasters yes yep the next scene starts uh it goes to commercial break we come back our first scene was stevie uh played by actor craig lamar taylor who i believe is able-bodied and he's he's playing a part here

there's one really weird thing late in the series where he's able to walk because they like make pneumatic legs for him or something so the actor gets to walk around it's i i haven't seen the episode itself only the clip in and it's very weird looking out of context. But I think, too, what a challenge for a young actor to be like, you have to do this speech impediment that is all about timing. Apparently, if you look real closely, this pilot was not filmed entirely knowing it would be in widescreen later so you can spot the director directing stevie out of the corner because just his timing has to be so precise for for this joke here and uh i also do it's a very dark joke they make but i do love that the reaction malcolm has just like you have all these problems and your parents won't

let you watch tv uh how horrible i love the quote television makes you normal i love that yeah because yeah there are two two lines one of which is he says my mother uh says that television makes you stupid and then malcolm says television makes you normal which are both very really incommensurate sentiments uh and yeah over the course of his music you find the idea that television makes you stupid uh and that television makes you normal as an american and everyday average citizen uh kind of at the same time and just sort of how television is at the center of all of american life particularly if you're a kid in the year 2000 oh yeah like uh when i was a young

malcolm uh when i was like a free-range child my parents were too busy working to like set boundaries so like if i would go to a friend's house and they had like tv rules i would be like oh my god you poor thing come with me we'll watch ren and snippy we'll watch beefs and butthead it's all happening in my place you can see on the show malcolm is the kid that the other parents are mad about like by hanging out with my malcolm you get to break the rules i set for you and i don't like this uh yeah no i mean you have to how do you exist in american society if you don't watch television talk about what is on television you you are fully ostracized from it it's it's the same of like i don't know i think parent i've heard parents today say like how much do i expose my kid in childhood to like ipads and computers

and stuff because they're gonna need to have these skills to exist in society but i also feel weird exposing them to this so early it's a tricky it must be a tricky balance as a parent these days oh totally well just also i mean just in terms of like um the latest incarnation of elmo's world on sesame street uh they have a character named smarty and she's a smartphone and she teaches you how to look things up on the smartphone and part of me when i first saw that being like philistines you should be teaching about books and whatnot like no actually in, no, actually in terms of 2020, like media literacy,

like Googling is a very important skill to have. It's way more important than a bunch of other kind of drier things. So it does make sense to teach kids how to sort of access resources and technology more effectively. I'm shocked to learn of smarty this is this is crazy news i mean all of our all of our education we're a bit younger than you nathan but all of our

education did not account for the internet like none of it it was just happening as henry and i were leaving high school but they're like ah forget about that it's it's not uh reputable you won't need to use that yeah well i mean i learned about computers when i was a kid but it was because the world of word processing will be changed forever by computers nothing else think of the banners you could print yeah uh so this next bit here though is when stevie and malcolm really connect over a love of mine as well a frock goes into a box. You want to watch TV?

Can't. Not allowed. What? You mean ever? Mom says TV makes you stupid. No, TV makes you normal. How can they do that? He's in a wheelchair. So what do you do all day? Homework? Mostly read comics. You have comic books?

Whoa! You really have Youngblood number one? wanna read it no way i reckon oh did you read the last savage dragon when they split him in two yeah brilliant i like how we never have to learn a lesson or anything he just gets all image comics too yeah yeah that i really noted that that they i wonder if they tried to go to marvel or dc and they wouldn't allow it but in this case they like image was like hell you take every comic say our comic names i also love that it's real comics they didn't just make up some every sitcom would just make up a superhero and

just be like oh do you have the newest issue of like sponge man or whatever super guy i love that they bring up like young blood number one is pretty rare and if you're a little kid you'd be like oh my god young blood number one that's one that's the first image comic ever published and and savage dragon is just a violent comic where nobody learns a lesson like Like, that is true for him. And Malcolm is clearly not used to having nice things or having his brothers ruin everything. So he's like, I can't even touch these. I'm not worthy to touch your comic books. Yeah, that's true.

And Stevie's an only child who he can keep all of these comics from being destroyed and has his own closet to keep comic books in. Like, Malcolm can never dream of those things well it seems both nice and realistic that you know the way that they would find common ground would be that they could sit there reading comic books in silence for hours and hours and hours and have that be like a wonderful shared experience in part because they don't have to communicate and when you're that age you don't want to talk you know talking if you can get away with it uh so yeah that definitely felt like you know they could be together separately alone reading comics at the same time that was a very uh truthful and again i just feel like so much of

this just rings true and that was definitely one element like that and uh that was basically my exact closet as a kid except my comics were pretty much all spider-man comics you would have some savage dragon i i see now that i'm more stevie than malcolm in this show next morning it's a saturday morning and it is realistic that a bunch of boys would hang out in their just underwear watching cartoons on saturday morning but i do now i just feel uncomfortable for the child actors being asked like yeah be filmed in your underwear it's not even i think they're filmed very carefully not to even really show anything but it's just it i feel weird for the kid actors now yeah but that also felt very realistic you know especially if you're if you're

if you're uh yeah you you do what you have to do the lack of modesty is very important for this family yeah no i mean i'm sure i walked around in my underoos all the time watching cartoons so well modesty is a luxury oh yeah now well modesty is not a luxury that these people have and it's not like lois yeah and so lois in the background she's just walking around topless i forgot about like the mall the mom nudity in this episode and it goes on for quite a long time in this scene and i but i think it really just is like i am washing every top i own because i got to do it all at once and maybe she only owns one bra so she's just like look i'm washing my one bra okay uh she's and she doesn't seem to mind the kids are also like who cares like my topless mom

that's like super brave of her of jane kaismeric too for this first episode yeah yeah i mean i'm sure she was taped up you know in the in certain places but still to just go for that in your first episode uh and that's when she gets a call from francis in our one real francis scene of the episode hey francis how's school? Oh, couldn't be better, Mom. My new roommate showed me how to kill mice with a hammer yesterday, so between that and the general atmosphere

of simmering homoeroticism, I think I'm really starting to turn around. Honey, it's only until summer. Come on! Push it! Give it up, prom date! Yeah, listen, I know I shouldn't ask, but would you be able to send me my allowance, like, a couple weeks early? Oh, my God, are you smoking?

What? I can hear you smoking. You're smoking, aren't you? Mom, I'm not smoking. Jeez. After seeing the anguish your father and I went through to quit, did any of that register with you? Okay, listen, I'll talk to your your dad maybe we can send you part of it honey i have to go i'm late for work i'll call you later okay thanks mom i love you oh i love you i like the realness of that like she didn't mean to hang up before saying i love you

she was super busy but that's another of these moments that cuts uh that separates francis and lois's characters like francis thinks oh she hung up without saying i love you i i i hate my mom and then she's like no i just forgot i was too busy but they have this it's just more drifting apart between them the the francis and lois stuff is some of the best like character stuff in the whole series because like you can see lois and francis they both push each other so far but also that like francis he has an entire complex about like oh you're out to get me everyone's out to get me like it's also seeing a teen boy smoke on tv like it's shocking to see now. It really is. I mean, it was, again, realistic.

That's something else I don't think stuck in the series. All of their most brash stuff is really up front. That would get a little bit softer, just a little bit softer in the series. Smoking definitely goes away, yeah. That's one of the things about watching movies from the 1970s and 1980s. To see a character smoking on an airplane or smoking in a restaurant, it seems like something from science fiction you know like that seems as as hard to believe as something in star wars it's like wait people used to be able to smoke anywhere they wanted like how did that possibly

happen and tarantino movies he still they still smoke quite a lot in it which makes him feel special in a way sometimes well you won't see that filth on netflix smoking is only shown when it's plot important for the kids oh thank god uh but uh yes as francis gets off the phone the kids that i love that a doorbell ringing just starts a fight like lois just says like someone get the door like you get it you get it and they completely forget about the door and they are just hitting each other yeah well it's like reese and malcolm are like rolling around on the ground and dewey's just like whacking the ball of people yes it rolls around uh and just screaming and just having and then poor uh you see here like this scene which you see like lois doesn't she doesn't want to be a tyrant of the house but like these boys are completely uncontrollable and it seems like she has no other option than just trying to rule in fear it's all it's all she's got uh but she is

confronted at the door by the krelborn teacher and uh lois and the teacher have a funny relationship there's a good moment later in season one where they're hanging out together and she's like the teacher tells lois oh i've learned so much from you or like i i see now i i underestimate what kids are but i like how uncomfortable the teacher is just seeing her boobs and she's like please put on a top she's like what yours are probably better than mine and i also like that when lois first thinks that malcolm's gonna be put in a remedial class she's like why do you have to put labels on everybody? And then the next scene, she's like, he's gifted.

What a great label. But you can see how immediately defensive she is. So she loves her kids. Yeah. She's so defending of her kids. She is the only one who gets to torture them like the world. And it's only to toughen. In her mind, she tells you like, I want you to just be tougher for the world that will's only to toughen in her mind she tells you like i want you to just

be tougher for the world that'll treat you way worse than me uh and so after she gets the news from uh the from the teacher and puts a shirt on uh it kind of fades to black for a commercial which is also not how the show is edited most of the time usually the act breaks are always signify with the door slamming noise yeah Yeah, yeah. Then it comes to dinner time. And another thing, it's like all these actors are just chowing down. Like they're really eating. They're not like playing with their food or whatever. It's another echo of The Simpsons.

It's just like a lot of slop and noisy eating. Just a giant pan of macaroni and white bread. Just like, oh, it's a very simple meal they're having. And this is when Lois reveals to everyone malcolm's gift i thought we weren't going to mention that until after the biopsy it's not that it's about malcolm i didn't do it you see that i saw him a teacher from school came by and she ran some tests with malcolm he has an an IQ of 165. Who? Malcolm.

He's going to special class. What? Malcolm special? Where do you think that came from? They have a special program for gifted children. They have advanced textbooks and devoted teachers and all sorts of good things they don't want to waste on normal kids. You start on Monday. You're going to put him in the trailblazing class? Mom, no! I don't want to.

What are you talking about? Of course you want to. No. I want to stay in my own class. I don't want to be a Krelboin. Mom, seriously. Krelboins get their butts kicked. Wait, just stop one minute.

I love the statement of not wasting it on normal kids. Like that. That is kind of a problem with gifted classes yeah I mean mine were held in a trailer outside of school for some reason the gifted kids had to get off the property to be taught properly

and it's like oh the computer and the trailer was better the books were better like the games you all played were better just like wow and then you go back to school like this is all trash yes yeah this sort of captures the way that when you're this age, being extremely intelligent makes you different and it makes you special,

not necessarily in a good way and not necessarily in a way that you will be embraced. You're more likely to be mocked and ostracized. It's kind of an albatross as much as it's something to be proud of, kind of in our society. And I like lois's defensiveness too she's like you have to do this because we have never been handed an advantage ever like you so take advantage of this like we're never given a good thing you're finally being given a good thing yeah like the finale of the show is just like an echo of this where she's like

no you are going to college and here is your life like here i planned your life out for you this is how you're going to become successful yeah it's i see the clip on twitter because they're all just like covered in mud yeah and uh it's a great clip i mean it also echoes the feeling as a kid where you're just like no please i don't want to do this in school or i don't want to do thing x and a parent just goes like well too bad the end and like it i think uh munez is really good at showing off his frustration at the whole thing and his distaste for that buffalo metaphor he's like what yeah and then comes like the most acting that brian cranston gets to do in this episode which is still him being like nothing like that he's a just a vanilla force of who just gives up everything to his wife. But it's a speech about iced tea.

We have to do what's best for you. Mom, please. Don't make me go. Please. Malcolm, calm down. But it isn't fair. That's right. It isn't fair.

It's the first time anyone in this family has ever been given an edge and you are not going to waste it. Dad. Honey? Look, honey. Malcolm. You see.

Crying out loud. How come there's never any iced tea in this pitcher? I make a fresh batch every morning. It's gone by the time I get home. He's just fully distracted by his empty pitcher of iced tea. Hal is more active in other. I kind of like how Hal kind of grows into like, oh, this is where the boys get it from because he also likes to make trouble.

In some episodes, he's just as much trying to get away with things, away from things with Lois as the kids are. Though also, I love that he's written as like constantly horny yes yeah that they there's a bit i had forgotten about where he like had a bad day and he's saying he's not in the mood and then lois is like you're always in the mood he's like no i'm not just a machine yes you are like i can't get ready at a snap of your fingers yes you can right now and he's like oh all right you're right it explains them the many children yes yeah they with more

to come they also argue in the show that their lives would be way better if they would stop fucking but they just can't they they're like two to i think in one episode hal says they do it twice a day every every day uh but yes the uh that scene ends with a cute little scene of malcolm being comforted by lois it lets you see there's some vulnerability to the character she's not just an enforcer and you can it's a it feels like a moment given to let you know like lois loves her kids too she's not she doesn't just hate being a mother or is tortured by it also i can only notice in this hd viewing of it of like oh yes malcolm has savage dragon posters on his wall it was true like that

yeah he loves that dragon and uh yeah it's a cute little speech he gives about like hey you know there's those ugly kids next door and these dumb kids you're better than them you you deserve this and and i also do love that she says like nobody will treat you different instant cut to his teacher going like and he's different and better than all of you every single one of you you know when i had my gifted class i did have a teacher who i had a regular teacher who she didn't like us going to gifted and kind of complained out loud about how it was a waste and how it was a bad program which i mean just bring that up at your meetings lady don't put it on the kids that's that's how i look back on that like maybe there's you can there's there's

things you can say wrong about gifted classes but it's don't complain to a child about it's always the children's fault isn't it seymour uh yeah i had a guy when i was in seventh grade in chicago remember a particularly misguided teacher being like oh you guys will make fun of nathan and you bully him and you treat him differently but if he grows up he's gonna be so much more successful than all of you gonna be like a lawyer a writer he's gonna make so much money and you're gonna feel so bad for you know mistreating him and you could just see them getting angry or angry like oh so now you're saying that he's better than us twice as hard and in your name you bastard you yeah I had teachers thinking that was a positive thing yeah but it

turns out all your bullies are successful because that's what you need to succeed in business yeah cruelty every boss i ever had was uh the majority of bosses i had were like oh you were a bully you threw yourself like they always tell you like oh your bully's gonna grow up to be washing cars it's like not if your bully goes to a specific college and is in the same frat with a bunch of other guys who all just hire each other into every job then they might run every website and ruin them that might happen although i did i did appreciate uh that she says that if you're a loser you're gonna end up working at a at a uh car wash uh considering what brian cranston would do and breaking bad and where uh he ended up making some of his money uh the one not uh directly related i guess not it is right because you were laundering money through yeah uh but yeah so that would just seem

like it like a weird uh weird coincidence that she would single that out yeah and lois is like a a clerk at like a walgreen so there's a bit of self-loathing there like don't end up like me and like a dead end go nowhere job almost there is a great joke about her job when she loses it that Malcolm just says the thing any kid is thinking. Like, can't you get unemployment? Didn't I hear about that? And she says, well, I work 38 hours a week, so technically I'm part time. It's like, damn, damn, a show joking about that is crazy. So then Malcolm heads to the Krel boine class where he is

i kind of i keep wanting to say krel born but it's krel boine and uh and you see his other classmates but none of the regulars will be in the show uh which includes dabney which is i think the character that was most like me the child me the glasses-wearing, artistic one of the group. But I love Malcolm's delivery of like, so I'm the freak of the freak show? And here's Malcolm being like straight-up bad. Why do they keep doing you? You're new.

Oh, great. So I'm the freak of the freak show? Just chill out. Don't tell me to chill out. You chill out. Nobody can live like this. I'm okay. Oh, sure.

You're okay because it doesn't make any difference to you. You've always been a freak. I used to be normal. Wait, who just said that? You're going to take that the wrong way, aren't you? You suck. I like that the wrong way, aren't you? You suck. I like that. I like Stevie.

It shows Malcolm like, you know, Malcolm, you're being an asshole too here. A lot of the series is about how Malcolm needs to be humbled because he is too smart for his own good. And it makes him think he's better than people. Yeah, he has too high of an opinion of himself sometimes and needs to be brought down i i loved in the uh in the episode where she loses her job that the shame he feels about being poor and when his classmates decide to help him with a food drive and he's just more humiliated by it it's really great and then he just screams about like yeah i don't like being poor is that so wrong like and then even after people helped him he's like you know stop feeling sorry for me okay i don't like being poor is that so wrong like and then even after people helped

him he's like you know stop feeling sorry for me okay i don't care that you help me it's just he's he's really good at delivering just that anger at everything uh so we come to the final scene of the episode where it's at recess we hear the recurring song by citizen king better days and the bottom drops out i'm a bad 90s kid. I thought this was sublime. I had to look this one up, honestly. I thought it was, for a second, the Butterfly song. Oh, okay.

This is, again, the world that I came up with. They were a Wisconsin band. Citizen King, if I'm not mistaken, from Milwaukee, I believe. So yeah, that definitely digs right back to the year 2000. And not only was our fashion all time low, but our

pop music also was spectacularly stupid and cheesy and terrible. And also kind of great at the same time. I take it that Citizen King has not played The Gathering at any point then? No, no, no. Not to say they've seen better days the song was true uh this this

song would recur a lot in the series i think they just liked it as a good tone setter and i'm also just so impressed with like they have an overhead shot of like dozens of child extras like this had to be way more expensive than any random episode of that 70s show you know well apparently this won the emmy for best writing and best direct uh prestigious as you can get and there's also as often tends to be the case uh tend to be for the best and then also the most because this is a very written very directed show uh and there's just something very wonderfully dynamic about it and it really does i guess had a presage although a lot of the shows

that would follow like your arrested developments which obviously learned a lot from the show and the way that it kind of broke free from the whole kind of visual format the visual vocabulary of what it means to be a television sitcom it set the tone for single camera comedies at least on network for the next 20 years like i like i said the larry sanders show does predate it as a single camera comedy of that generation but i think this for mainstream this really set the tone of what what this how you tell those jokes and stories well that was kind of a bit of a mockumentary type thing where this is obviously engaging i also thought it was interesting that i felt like there were a lot of jim helfert looks uh that malcolm gave you know

that whole idea of i have this relationship with the audience and with the camera that nobody else has yeah it's nice that he can do it instead of everybody doing it like every other sitcom. Like what? I mean, that Modern Family cheats it the most of like, well, okay, are you a documentary? Who are you talking to? Or I guess, you know, Parks and Rec cheated it quite a lot too. The conceit of the documentary falls away after three years, you know? But in Malcolm, they don't even explain it.

Like, yeah, he can talk to the TV. No character can else. No one sees him talking out loud it's just his inner monologue said to people out loud he's a witch secretly i feel like kind of the implication of a lot of his looks are can you believe what i have to deal with yeah yeah well what Did you hear that too? Yeah. He's good at the hapless look. Yes, yeah. So Malcolm is on edge. He finally tries to apologize to Stevie, but that's when the bully comes back.

And I like that Malcolm, when he snaps at the bully, he not only is like mean to him, he hurts the bully's feelings, which actually that's what pushes him over the edge. What'd you call me? You heard me! I don't care anymore! I just don't care, Spath, okay? All you ever do is

make everybody miserable, except for you little monkey slaves over there, who by the way, only pretend to like you. They hate you as much as everyone else does. And you're just too busy being mean and stupid to ever figure it out. I keep trying to run, but my legs won't work. Mom was right. They are important.

Wow. I don't know about you, but the Krell boy nearly hurt my feelings. Hey, go away, Stevie. It's good you two are friends. you won't mind sharing his wheelchair okay this is where something good happens finally so we're gonna slow down and make it last as long as possible and then comes the they might be giant song pencil rain which uh it's not even one of their like sea level songs i feel like you have to be a mega fan to know the pencil rain which uh it's not even one of their like sea level songs i feel like you have to be a mega fan to know the pencil rain song uh but when i heard it in 2000 i was like oh my god i never thought i'd hear this they might be this song on television and uh and also that malcolm calls out the slow-mo coming is that's fun too it's it's a nice way because it's like you get

all this wall breaking but he's like i can control the reality of the scene to like really make this good for you the viewer it borders on zach abilities throws putting in the face of spath spath then takes a big swing too far and even though he loosened his fist to not actually punch him it just taps stevie's chin and stevie takes advantage of the situation and pretends to be knocked unconscious and spath is destroyed yeah by that that's even he went too far it's so great like because this this resolution here fits so many malcolm in the middle of resolutions which is the system fails them at every turn living within the system fails them the only way they succeed is by breaking the rules themselves and like cheating the system in a way which includes stevie like taking advantage of his position as a disabled kid to destroy the life of

a bully who deserves it and the epilogue is about how like here's the big lie we told to get out of this and it worked uh and and i love the like spath like he his life is ruined because you know you're allowed to pick on so many people but not a kid in a wheelchair like there's a level of morals on the schoolyard that they that he broke it's very true uh and just so great that like stevie does that for him too that he fakes an injury and i'll let you know that stevie is a fun kid too that he's a rule breaker too as well he's not just a heavily protected kid by his his parents who keep him on a short leash yeah i think again i feel like there's kind of uh the impulse with a lot of shows like that's what did kind of make him noble you gotta make him a paper saint and like look how he's suffering so uh silently and heroically and it's like no he can be

a jerk he can cheat he can throw himself on the ground like he's a human being and that is a wonderful thing and it's not disrespectful or offensive to acknowledge and to understand somebody's humanity and uh then the ending comes with Malcolm doing a thing again they didn't really do in other episodes, which is Malcolm fully talking to the audience and explaining everything else that happened, like basically him wrapping up the story here. So then the principal comes out

and everyone's all talking at once. So the story he puts together is that Spath attacked Stevie for his lunch, and I'm like this hero that stepped in to defend him. It was beautiful. Okay, it wasn't funny when Spath started crying. No, wait, it was. Dad's hair. Yeah, I know. It's gross.

But hey, if a bunch of birds can make the best out of what they get, then so can I. Malcolm! Like have them go to special class. I can make it work out, right? Malcolm! Not now. Or my family.

We're not the greatest family in the world, but we could get better. I mean, it's not impossible. Malcolm! What? Can I get out? No, stop asking. greatest family in the world but we could get better i mean it's not impossible malcolm what can i get out no stop asking so basically i think everything's gonna be okay so what do you want me to do about it i like that he's actively being a bully while explaining how he like triumph over the bully it's great that is great yeah it's but hey that's the rules it's a little brother it's what you're allowed to do that to your little

that's what they're for i was the little brother so injustice i'm older brother position here but the ending's cute and i i like you see the dewey the dewey's under a trash can the whole time is funny it adds extra humor to a basically just and the moral of the story was kind of livery and also how i do appreciate that malcolm loves a bully's tears i'm into that but the show wouldn't really do post-credit gags after this it's really just like that's slam to black end of episode like also the episode the pilot ends with them kind of like panning up to the sky and it's like uh like almost forrest gump style which the show didn't the show is about ending even the third act with like slam door yeah but uh it's still a great you can see why this won emmys and

all these accolades like this probably was the best pilot of that season. Like I'm not a West Wing liker. So I'm going to say it's definitely better than that. I was like afraid to go back to Malcolm in the Middle because I enjoyed it so much. But I didn't know like is it a product of its time? Is it like too precious or does it think it's smart and it's really not? But I think after watching this pilot, I'm going to go into it and rewatch it as a fun quarantine challenge or a like side quest or whatever, because I was like,

Oh man, this is still really good. And this is going to be my prestige television binge watch over, over the next, however many months of quarantine there is. But yeah, I know Sopranos for you. No Sopranos.

This is, this is the height of television as far as I'm concerned, but yeah, so good. So good. I'm so happy. It's still holds up. Well,

it just struck me as a show that knew exactly what it wanted to do and did it you know it's very fully realized yeah and i think it i think it brought up the game of the simpsons too just by being next to it you know i think it it pushed them or it showed maybe too it hurt the simpsons and that older viewers like us who are like oh i watched the simpsons and I'm starting to get disappointed with some episodes. Then you see Malcolm right after like, oh, is Malcolm the better show now? I'm not used to I'm not used to liking a show on Sunday night more than the Simpsons. But but that was the position I was in starting around season 13 of Simpsons, I think, or maybe even 12. But no, this was such a great series that I think definitely is worth returning to. You know, obviously, look, I don't like Frankie Muniz's politics either.

But if you can just see him as the cute young boy, Malcolm, having adventures. If you're to watch one other episode and you haven't watched it before, I do think that bowling episode might be the best one. Yeah, season two bowling. It's a high concept episode where you see it's sort of like a sliding door style scenario in which you see how a knight goes depending on which parent is in charge. The way they hand off different realities is very clever and well done. It won the Emmy. It's fucking advanced chaos theory 12 years before Community did their dice episode yeah so though it's and i i dare say

it's even more ambitious than just how it's filmed in split screen at a bowling alley with a ton of extras like malcolm in the middle was not hurting for money as a show compared to community which had worse budget every year they did the show and And ratings. Nathan, thanks so much for joining us and sticking around for so long. Please plug everything you're doing. You're so busy. You've got Patreon, podcast, a book that's out. Please talk to our audience about everything you're doing. I will very happily plug my various

projects. My main thing is I have a website called Nathan Raven's Happy Place where I write a whole bunch of stuff every single day. It's the home of my world of flops. I call him that is currently in his 13th year of existence, where I write about the very worst of everything. And then I have a book called The Weird Accordion to Al, Ridiculously Self-Indulgent Ill-Advised Vanity Edition.

It's a 500-page book about Werdell Yankovic's life's work with an introduction by Werdell Yankovic. He also copyedited it. He also fact checked it wow uh yeah yeah it's both because you know we worked together on his coffee table book the book and then also he was horrified by my grammar uh so those two things caused to say i will uh copy edit your book for free which is very nice and it's 500 pages so that's an awful lot of copy editing then i also have a book called postal about the video game and movie postal and their creators uh then stezie

the video game you eat bowl uh the movie i wrote that with my friend brock wilbur it's out on boss fight books and i've got a podcast called travolta cage and in it me and my co-host Clint Worthington we go through John Travolta and Nicolas Cage's filmography chronologically to determine who the better actor is spoiler it's Nicolas Cage a great deal oh my god he's amazing and that's a lot of fun we're about

not quite halfway through the process we're up to about Pulp Fiction and Pulp Fiction and It it could happen to you nicholas cage is so thoroughly himself meanwhile travolta's always you know keeping it inside keeping it in the closet there's a purity to nicholas cage whereas on travolta you know he's kind of wrapped up in this idea of who he should be as opposed to who he actually is. So that kind of tension makes him interesting, but not as compelling or as pure a performer as Nicolas Cage.

You know, I'd be worried about having Weird Al copy edit my book because I'd fear he'd spoof me. Well, thankfully he did not. It would be an honor of a lifetime if he were to write some sort of, that would be in honor of a lifetime if he were to write some sort of... That would be insanely meta if he wrote a parody of a book that was written about him. Well, we will release you back to the custody

of your children at this point. I also have a family that I need to pay attention to now. Thanks so much for having me, guys. Yeah, thank you too. So thanks again to Nathan Rabven for being on the show he's one of our personal heroes always so great to have him on please check out all of his stuff but as for us if you want to check out more of our stuff and get all these episodes one

week ahead of time and ad free please go to patreon.com slash talking simpson sign up there for five bucks you'll get just that but also access to everything behind the five dollar paywall that includes all the stuff we've done behind the paywall for the past three plus years. You get access to that instantly. Over 100 podcasts, too many to list here, but the most recent thing that we did behind the paywall is Talking Mission Hill, our exploration of the Mission Hill series across 14 or maybe 15 episodes. I forget. We did a few more past the run of the series, including a look at the last episode in an interview with Bill Oakley and Josh Weinstein. That's all located on patreon.com slash Talking Simpsons. But if you sign up for $10 a month,

you get all of the $5 stuff plus one mega long podcast once a month, only for patrons of that level or higher. And what is that, Henry? Well, you're talking about the What a Cartoon Movie podcast, where me and Bob talk about an animated feature film in the same way we talk about The Simpsons and animated tv shows on what a cartoon recent ones have included space jam the black cauldron and ending out this

last month in august we did the 1995 anime classic ghost in the shell you sign up at the $10 level you get all that $5 stuff bob mentioned and over a hundred hours now of what a cartoon movie greatness where we talk about a different movie sign up now 10 bucks a month for the premium level at patreon.com slash talking simpsons so I've been one of your hosts Bob Mackey you can find me on twitter as Bob Servo my other podcast is Retro Knots that's a classic gaming podcast about old video games find that wherever you find podcasts or go to patreon.com slash retronauts and sign up there for two exclusive episodes every month at patreon.com slash retronauts henry how about you why i'm henry gilbert follow me on twitter at h-e-n-e-r-e-y-g

to stay up to date with all the cool stuff going on with me and if you want to stay up to date with this podcast and its sister podcast you should follow at TalkSimpsonsPod on Twitter. At TalkSimpsonsPod on Twitter, you'll know when new episodes of Talking Simpsons, What a Cartoon, and all of our exclusives go up on the free feeds or on Patreon. If you follow that on Twitter, please do, at TalkSimpsonsPod. Thanks so much for joining us, folks. We'll see you next time for the Simpsons episode, Faith Off Off and we'll see you then. And I just can't say enough about how proud we should all be of Malcolm for getting into the gifted program. Now Malcolm may not look different than the rest of us, but he is very different in his

brain. And I think we should recognize him for that. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.