Ach, dude, Malcolm in the Middle is sooooo good. It is absolutely true that it is the last great working-class sitcom - and yet I wince when people describe it that way because I think that flattens how great the show is. Like, if you want a laugh, read this HILARIOUS article from Vice about how the show is "Actually a Socialist Masterpiece" : https://www.vice.com/en/article/vvvg39/why-malcolm-in-the-middle-is-a-socialist-masterpiece ... I think my favorite bit is when the writer says Malcolm has a poster of Jim Henson's Dinosaurs in his room (he doesn't), and that this is a tell that MITM was influenced by Dinosaurs (it wasn't), which was also a subversive work of anti-capitalist genius (LMAO no).
(The funny thing about that article is that Malcolm himself is acutely aware of the yawning gap between his intelligence and his social class, and that by the series' end this awareness has poisoned his personality and turned him into a smug, largely friendless asshole. It's funny to realize his bitterness at being an intellectual in the precariat is almost identical to the family patriarch on that *other* show Bryan Cranston was on - but also that, given that he attends Harvard in the show's finale, you can absolutely read MITM as the origin story of a proto-overeducated sour-grapes-socialist a la Chapo. Or of the kind of person who writes half-baked Marxist analysis of network sitcoms for Vice, for that matter!)
So it's a great show with depths that are mostly unrealized by critics. E.g., an understated (but really important) element of the show is that Hal comes from old-money WASP stock while Lois is a first-generation white ethnic, and their personalities stem from those backgrounds (Lois in particular is the sort of hardass-immigrant-background-mother-who-believes-in-the-American-dream that we only now see in pop culture with any regularity, and even now only if the character in question is Asian). I've always thought, hey, I should write about that, but I imagine the audience for that sort of thing, even on Substack, is pretty low.
Interesting! I don't remember if I ever saw later seasons, but I definitely didn't think much about the show when it was on. I think I mostly found it unpleasant to watch! It all seemed so grimy when I was a kid.
Which is part of what I like about it now. It feels so lived in. Like, the house never feels like a set. It feels like a place where a bunch of boys live with two working parents who don't have the time or energy to keep it clean.
Ach, dude, Malcolm in the Middle is sooooo good. It is absolutely true that it is the last great working-class sitcom - and yet I wince when people describe it that way because I think that flattens how great the show is. Like, if you want a laugh, read this HILARIOUS article from Vice about how the show is "Actually a Socialist Masterpiece" : https://www.vice.com/en/article/vvvg39/why-malcolm-in-the-middle-is-a-socialist-masterpiece ... I think my favorite bit is when the writer says Malcolm has a poster of Jim Henson's Dinosaurs in his room (he doesn't), and that this is a tell that MITM was influenced by Dinosaurs (it wasn't), which was also a subversive work of anti-capitalist genius (LMAO no).
(The funny thing about that article is that Malcolm himself is acutely aware of the yawning gap between his intelligence and his social class, and that by the series' end this awareness has poisoned his personality and turned him into a smug, largely friendless asshole. It's funny to realize his bitterness at being an intellectual in the precariat is almost identical to the family patriarch on that *other* show Bryan Cranston was on - but also that, given that he attends Harvard in the show's finale, you can absolutely read MITM as the origin story of a proto-overeducated sour-grapes-socialist a la Chapo. Or of the kind of person who writes half-baked Marxist analysis of network sitcoms for Vice, for that matter!)
So it's a great show with depths that are mostly unrealized by critics. E.g., an understated (but really important) element of the show is that Hal comes from old-money WASP stock while Lois is a first-generation white ethnic, and their personalities stem from those backgrounds (Lois in particular is the sort of hardass-immigrant-background-mother-who-believes-in-the-American-dream that we only now see in pop culture with any regularity, and even now only if the character in question is Asian). I've always thought, hey, I should write about that, but I imagine the audience for that sort of thing, even on Substack, is pretty low.
Interesting! I don't remember if I ever saw later seasons, but I definitely didn't think much about the show when it was on. I think I mostly found it unpleasant to watch! It all seemed so grimy when I was a kid.
Which is part of what I like about it now. It feels so lived in. Like, the house never feels like a set. It feels like a place where a bunch of boys live with two working parents who don't have the time or energy to keep it clean.