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Malcolm in the Middle focusses on the titular Malcolm who takes a test and discovers that he has an IQ of 165, making him a genius. The show is very funny with a large focus on growing up in a lower-middle-class family. When released, it was relatable to everyone around the age of Malcolm, but now it serves as a time capsule to a time with different ideal when it comes to raising children.

The music scores of the show are amazing with all the scores in season one and two being created by the Indie Rock band, They Might Be Giants, who also wrote ‘Boss of Me’ which had its first 30 seconds used for the show’s theme tune throughout its entire lifespan. From season 3 onwards, the main composer for the show was Charles Sindor. All the backing songs within the show help to bring so much life to it and help to enhance the emotions that the scene is conveying.

The stories they tell within the show has a very clear message throughout, nobody’s perfect. Every character in the show has a flaw, whether big or small, which gets focus throughout the episodes while other episodes help show the good parts of their character, Lois can be a bad parent, but she still truly loves her children; Francis cares about his brothers, but he blames his mother for everything, even when she has nothing to do with it; and Malcolm is a genius who helps his family make smart choices, but he is incredibly narcissistic and believes he is smarter than everyone else. The point is that everyone can be bad sometimes and it tells it in such a good way, with all the characters being jerks until they show a bit of humility.

The humour in the show is also amazing. It has a good way of giving karma to the villain of the episode in such a comedic way that satisfies the audience until it does it again in the next episode. The characters will have witty comebacks for every situation and Malcolm’s inner monologue acting as an amazing way to communicate his thoughts to the audience in a way that makes them feel involved.

The show has various iconic parts to it, one of these are the cold opens which you see every episode. It starts the episode off with a funny and often relatable joke to engage with the audience and develop the character’s personalities further.

Although the show is very good, it has its flaws. Particularly, there are some episodes which end up being quite disappointing. The clip show episodes were quite annoying to me as, although they are inevitable when making a show, it comes off as quite boring when trying to binge the show and having to rewatch many clips you’ve just seen. At least they were very upfront about it, even titling the two episodes ‘Clip Show’ and ‘Clip Show 2’

Some of the storylines of the show weren’t handled well, either. Francis’ storyline was one of my favourites, and it was fun seeing him jump between jobs along the seasons, and they seemed to find a good job got him at the ranch, but in the next season, he was fired from the ranch with a disappointing reason as to why, and we got much less stories from him in the final two seasons.

I also wish that Reese would have stayed in the army. It seemed super interesting and added a parallel to Francis’ first story with him being forced into the army while Reese chose to join. I was very disappointed when Reese rejoined the cast, especially when they don’t seem to reference his time there apart from a character from the army showing up in season 7.

Overall, Malcolm in the Middle is an amazing show but it does have some flaws, even if small. I’d rate it 9.5/10 if I didn’t hate decimal points in ratings, so I’ll go 9/10.

Let me know if you’d like me to rate the reboot series or any other series or movie you think I should review.

So while my friend was tied to the chair, I heard someone outside, and when I opened the door, it was my lecturer... and four other people.