Malcolm

I see the previews to this show when it was beginning to screen... and I must admit I hated it. I never bothered to watch it.

But I started watching the repeats of season one and have now grown to love it! It's original, extremely funny, outrageous and unpredictable - everything you could want in a comedy.

Jane Kaczmarick and Bryan Cranston both fill each episode with their a brand of unique hilarity all their own, while the brothers Christopher Kennedy Masterton, Justin Berfield and Erik Per Sullivan are all just great.

Special mention to the one and only Malcolm (Frankie Muniz) - star in the making.

A real-life version of The Simpsons - and that line right there should be enough to get people to watch.

"Malcolm in the Middle" may have lost a bit of steam recently, but some of the earlier episodes are absolutely, side-splittingly hilarious. Although Malcolm (Frankie Muniz) may be the titular character, it is really Bryan Cranston's characterization of the father figure, Hal, that makes the show so fun to watch. Cranston turns Hal into a boy at heart (as all fathers are) - only, like everything else with the show, extends it into a complete satire and goes completely wacky. This show, for lack of a better word, is crazy.

It's absurd. And it couldn't be any better. The wild antics and over-the-top gags are similar to a cartoon, and even the fast-cut editing between scenes (with the "whoosing" sound) is reminiscent of an animated program.

Like "The Simpsons," "Malcolm" manages to successfully interweave everyday family/social topics into silly plots involving all types of nonsensical stuff. Some of the physical gags are absolutely hilarious - the episode with Hal running out of the supermarket, a parody of "Raiders of the Lost Ark," is gut-busting - but at its heart this really is a tender and witty comedy that manages to be effective on more than one level.

The rest of the cast are great too. It really "feels" like a genuine family. They bicker, they complain, they whine and moan and fight - this is America today. If we were to go back fifty years in a time capsule and present this to the "I Love Lucy" crowds, they'd be shocked.

For whatever reason when the show originally aired I never watched it, but flipping through the channels one day I started to watch it then set it to record everyday and then eventually caught up with the whole series. The show is absolutely awesome with all the hijinks that Malcolm and his brothers pull. Plus Bryan Cranston is cast perfectly as the dad.

What makes the show so great is you can actually see most of this stuff potentially happening in real life. If anyone grew up in a house full of boys we can all admit that they can all be a bunch of sh**disturbers. Even Malcolm who's a prodigy is as bad as the rest of them. Reese who's not book smart can be just as crafty at pulling off pranks as the rest of them.

Malcolm in the Middle is an incredible show. My feeling toward the show was rather mixed when they began showing promos. It looked funny, but silly and unoriginal. After all, the concept of a family that doesn't get along is nothing new. The show turned out to be better than I expected. It's not a live action version of The Simpsons like some critics claim, but it is very funny. Don't be quick to judge the show or you might find the jokes go over your head. Thumbs up on this one.

Can you repeat the question? You're not the boss of me, now etc.

I guess everybody remembers "I'll be there for you" from "Friends", but how about that catchy intro made of clips from the show and inter-cut with other excerpts of Manga and TV/movies gems, as if it foresaw that the show itself was going to evolve to the same cult-status, after having ensured a qualified transition between "Married with Children" and "Modern Family".

"Malcolm in the Middle", a creation of Linwood Boomer, is one of the first sitcoms to set itself apart from the usual family-friendly clichés and feature a totally irredeemable, dysfunctional family, and in the process, get rid (for the first time?) of that annoying laugh-track. indeed, the show is so confident on its comedic quality that it doesn't need to tell you when to laugh. And as far as laughs go, this is one of the funniest and most entertaining family series that is not "The Simpsons", and coincidentally, the closest live-action series to "The Simpsons" goofiness without that meaning the material isn't any fresh or original.

Indeed, if I had to nominate a show that is totally devoid of clichés, well, "Malcolm" is the one, starting with its titular character, played by blue-eyed Frankie Muniz: a genius and the middle-child of four bratty siblings. Boys of his intellectual condition are called Krelboynes, in homage to Moranis' character in "Little Shop of Horrors", but this is where the comparison stops. There have been eggheads or misunderstood middle- children in the past, but Malcolm is as mischievous as his brothers and he's a genius who hates his intelligence, or at least its social repercussion on the field of school popularity.

Malcolm is like Lisa Simpson trying to act like Bart. But no matter how hard he tries to pretend having nothing to do with his Krelboyne friends, composed of so many natural misfits (his best friend is a wheelchair-bound one-lunged kid), he's inevitably branded as so and has no other choice than keeping the lowest profile. The film uses a fourth-wall breaking device allowing him to share his fears, concerns and comments on the peculiar habits that inhabits his family's house. The character strikes for his self-centered nature, but as the show progresses, he became more of an occasional Greek Chorus and the foil for his brothers or father's funnier antics.

Meanwhile, Malcolm's blessing (or curse, depending on how you look at it) is the source of his funny interactions with the normal world, and I'm not sure I want to include his mother in. Because he might be the titular and central character according to the title, he's got a great competitor in Lois, played by Jane Kaczmarek. She's a TV mom like no other TV mom, maybe the fact that each of her four boys, and a fifth one over the course of the show, is as ill-behaved as his predecessor and/or follower, have to do with it. Still, calling her strict is an understatement as the woman is the ringmaster of a real menagerie-like family, and who can blame her? she's in a position that can't afford any sign of weakness.

There's a scene where Reese, probably the worst of all, says he wishes she was dead, which is something you'd never hear in a sitcom. A shocked Lois leaves the room, which astonishes Reese who's used to hear "I'll take you with me". And that's very typical of the show, just when you think it rings the same emotional notes than your typical soppy sitcom episodes, it delivers a line that reminds you this is "Malcolm". In another episode, Lois admitted to her husband, Hal, that she didn't feel any love toward her newborn child Jamie, to which Hal stoically answers that she never loved any of her sons as babies, and that's what helped her.

And before you're shocked, remember they're all boys, no girls for love or gender equity issues. The oldest one, Francis (Christopher Masterson) is an irresponsible and immature teenager who keeps blaming every failure on her and seems incapable to transition into a normal adult, Reese (Justin Berfield) makes Bart Simpson feel like Milhouse, Dewey (Erik Per Sullivan) is the eternal punching ball and perhaps the most immune to sadistic mistreatment, if he doesn't strike for a malevolent spirit, his behavior is sometimes enough to drive anyone crazy. And I must also count an infatuated loser and colleague named Craig and of course, Hal, the goofy but lovable father who picked the option of never interfering with his wife's methods.

Hal, played by Bryan Cranston, as a time where Walter White wasn't even a concept on a piece of paper, is the good cop to Lois' bad one, and when you see that Lois is surrounded by such specimens, you gotta give her credit for not letting the house fall apart. She might have taken that from her Polish mother, Grandma Ida, who's nothing like the usual grandma you see on TV (boy, do I feel like a broken record) and whose portrayal by Cloris Leachman is absolutely priceless. This is one of the great delights of the show, to provide some memorable supporting characters, from a sadistic army trainer to a sweet ranch owner played by the late Kenneth Mars (my only complaint from the show is the way he was written off).

Each character, each situation is like an inexhaustible source of gags, yet the show ended after 6 years while it was doing well. And this is another great thing about it, it never had to jump the shark, it was nice the time it lasyed, it grabbed many Golden Globe and Emmy Nominations (mostly Muniz and Kaczmarek) and it launched Bryan Cranston's career.

Indeed, without Hal, there would probably be no Walter White... another (of the several) reason to love the show.