The Hulu series Malcolm In The Middle: Life’s Still Unfair starts out with Bryan Cranston’s voice saying “Previously on Malcolm In The Middle,” which leads to a montage of mostly cartoonish violence from the 2000-06 series. Then Cranston says, “And someone actually asked for more of this.” The fun thing, of course, is that the person asking for more of this was mostly Cranston, with the help of his co-star Frankie Muniz.
Opening Shot: Malcolm (Frankie Muniz) is talking to an intern at his non-profit, which connects supermarkets to food banks.
The Gist: Malcolm then turns to the camera and starts to explain why he seems so calm. “All I had to do was stay completely away from my family.”
Back at Malcolm’s parents’ house, his mom Lois (Jane Kaczmarek) and dad Hal (Cranston) are about to celebrate their 40th wedding anniversary. Of course, the first time we see them in 20 years, it’s a familiar scene: Lois shaving Hal’s body — though now his hair is white. They’re FaceTiming with their fourth son Dewey (Caleb Ellsworth-Clark, replacing Erik Per Sullivan), who isn’t sure he can make it to their anniversary party.
Hal is desperate to give Lois one of his big romantic gestures for their anniversary, but he settles for doing things like getting his buddies to surprise her with a rendition of “Locked Out Of Heaven” at the Huge Mart. While she appreciates the gestures, she wants the party to be the first time she plans something celebratory on her own.
Malcolm’s older brothers, Francis (Christopher Masterson) and Reese (Justin Berfield), are already around for hte party. Reese is still local, doing renovations around his parents’ house to spend time with Hal. Francis and his wife Piama (Emy Coligado) are staying in the garage for the party.
Malcolm, though, isn’t coming. He uses his “important” job to avoid long conversations with his family, making excuses as to why he doesn’t visit. He’s a single dad to his teenage daughter Leah (Keeley Karsten), and he tries to parent her the opposite of the way he was, but that sometimes leads to situations where “I have no armor,” as she tells him. She also talks to the camera like her dad, and seems to be perceptive to a fault. He’s nervous about Leah meeting his girlfriend Tristan (Kiana Madeira) for the first time, but the two of them hit it off by bonding over Malcolm’s eccentricities.
Then Lois and Hal bust into the door at Malcolm’s house, and we find out that he’s been doing more than just avoiding his family; he’s pretty much shut them out of his life.
What Shows Will It Remind You Of? As we said, Malcolm In The Middle: Life’s Still Unfair is a sequel miniseries to the original 200-06 run of Malcolm In The Middle.
Our Take: Muniz and Cranston were intimately involved with convincing Linwood Boomer, the creator of the original series, to create this sequel miniseries, and it shows in the first episode. It’s not exactly a return to the craziness of the best of the original run, but Boomer and his writers have been able to recapture the loud but loving family dynamic that’s been fostered by Hal and Lois, and Muniz is able to bring back Malcolm’s sense that he loses control in their presence almost immediately.
The conceit of the series has always been that Malcolm, who has a 165 IQ, always felt like he was above the fray, and just couldn’t handle the stupid stuff that went on in the family. What he never realized is that his brand of loopy was part of the family’s fabric. The fact that he’s taken himself out of it over the last 20 years is a funny way into this reunion. He has not only avoided his family, but as far as Leah is concerned, her grandparents were dead. That’s some extreme avoidance for a long period of time.
But what we know is that, now that Malcolm is back in the fold, that standoffishness is going to quickly dissolve. Malcolm being enraged has always been a linchpin to the series, just as Reese’s sweet dimness and Francis’ underestimated intelligence has been. And all of that is back, albeit in middle-aged adult form. So it may not be as harsh as it was 20 years ago, but it’s still fun to watch.
The miniseries — four episodes around 30 minutes each — has a second-generation element to it, with Leah getting a lot of screen time to establish how she’s very much Malcolm’s daughter. While we like Keeley Karsten as Leah, we wonder if there’s a bit too much time being spent on her high school life, given the limited run time of the series. We’d rather see Cranston sing and dance more, or do something else physical with Hal that belies the fact that Cranston is now over 70.
Performance Worth Watching: Cranston throws himself into Hal with the same zeal that he did during the original run. It’s hard for us to wrap our head around the fact that within a year of the end of Malcolm, Cranston was filming scenes of Breaking Bad as Walter White.
Sex And Skin: Well, we do see most of Cranston as Lois shaves him, just like we did in the ’00s.
Parting Shot: Malcolm deals with his predicament by running. And when he forgets the keys to his car, he just runs down the street as the credits roll.
Sleeper Star: Anthony Timpano plays Jamie, the kid that Lois and Hal had midway through the original’s run. But we want to see more of Vaughan Murrae as Kelly; Lois found out she was pregnant again during the series finale, and Kelly is the result of that.
Most Pilot-y Line: Leah’s guidance counselor tells her that she “othered” one of her classmates “in front of the peer group.” We wish that was a line played up for a laugh, but that’s how school administrators talk these days.
Our Call: STREAM IT. Malcolm In The Middle: Life’s Still Unfair brings the original series’ chaotic energy to the 2020s, taking into account that the chaos just needs to be a little bit different nowadays.
Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.
