Television is truly all in on revivals at this point. Futurama, Scrubs, King of the Hill – if I quoted it incessantly in high school, it’s coming back. That wave comes now for one of the 2000’s more radical sitcoms in Malcolm in the Middle: Life’s Still Unfair. The miniseries promises a modern look at the most 2000’s family ever – but is that something that anyone needs right now? These four episodes put in a lot of work, but answering that question isn’t so easy. Yes? No? Maybe?
Malcolm in the Middle: Life’s Still Unfair shows Malcolm estranged from his family.
Malcolm in the Middle: Life’s Still Unfair returns to the last nameless Malcolm (Frankie Muniz) and his dysfunctional family 20 years after his high school graduation. He’s leading a charity organization, is a single father, and has a healthy relationship with his girlfriend. Everything’s finally coming up Malcolm, and as Muniz looks right into the camera like no time has passed at all, he shares his secret: doing everything he can to avoid his family. To him, it’s necessary for his own well-being, even if it’s harsh.
Meanwhile, that family is preparing to celebrate Hal (Bryan Cranston) and Lois’s (Jane Kaczmarek) 40th wedding anniversary with a massive party. This reunites their other children: Francis (Chris Kennedy Masterson), his wife Piama (Emy Coligado), Reese (Justin Berfield), with Dewey (Caleb Ellsworth-Clark steps into the role) over webcam, a now grown Jaime (Anthony Timpano), and youngest sibling Kelly (Vaughan Murrae) who previously was only teased with Lois’s pregnancy at the end of the series. The pretty reasonable expectation that Malcolm would be attending complicates things right as he introduces his daughter Leah (Keeley Karsten) to his loving girlfriend Tristan (Kiana Madeira), sending everyone on a collision course.
The cast doesn’t miss a single beat.
Every returning cast member slides back into their characters as if they were a cycling team. Unsurprisingly, Cranston absolutely knocks it out of the park, including some classic physical comedy bits. Hal gets a whole mini-arc that lets Cranston feed some of his post-Malcolm roles back into the character, fitting given Hal is his best work. In tandem, Kaczmarek remains the foundation holding everything together while clearly showing thought about what a nearly empty nester Lois might be like. Masterson and Berfield barely look like they’ve aged, much less forgotten their parts. In the center is Muniz, truly doing all the heavy lifting and once again finding the most cringe parts of himself to feed to Malcolm.
The new cast is up to the task as well. Karsten’s Leah gets to share Malcolm’s fourth wall breaking powers, giving a dual perspective while imitating her on-screen father’s youthful anxiety with precision. Ellsworth-Clark manages to put his own stamp on Dewey, though he’s limited by the conceit of being abroad. But it’s Vaughan Murrae’s Kelly that stands out from the rest. From the first moment they’re on screen, it’s as if Kelly was always in this family. Throughout Malcolm in the Middle: Life’s Still Unfair, Murrae shows they are already on the same wavelength as the actors who spent years in these roles, especially in a subplot with the most evil brother, Reese.
There’s an equally strong, if modern, production team.
It does not come as any surprise that so much of what makes Malcolm in the Middle great makes its way back to Life’s Still Unfair. Series creator Linwood Boomer returns as producer and in the writers room alongside other returning writers from the series. Notably, that writing team also includes Matthew Carlson, the showrunner for the original final season. In addition, veteran sitcom director Ken Kwapis – whose credits include 19 episodes of the original series – directs all four episodes. This creates a stronger narrative and visual throughline than other full season revivals, though that may also be because Life’s Still Unfair was at one point a single full length film pitch. It’s very likely that these familiar parts help to get these classic characters in comfortable spots.
Even so, modern streaming TV baggage still abounds. A take on the iconic opening is nowhere to be found and what is here is a disappointing cover of the They Might Be Giants anthem. Much of the original series dynamic angles and theatrical sensibility is replaced with the same flat dull lighting and shot compositions one will find on any other streaming series today. Being a miniseries eliminates space for cold opens to the episodes, something that we take for granted now but was pioneering for the original series’ time. The runtime of each episode is a bit uneven as well, likely to preserve pacing but it doesn’t save everything.
Why are we here?
And there’s the most modern problem of them all: what exactly is the point of all of Malcolm in the Middle: Life’s Still Unfair? There’s strong humor and even catharsis in the back half. But there’s still something missing, and it’s a very large hole. One of the most compelling aspects of Malcolm in the Middle is the way it presents a working-class family circa 2000. The series wasn’t the first; Roseanne aired for most of the 90’s after all. However, by axing the studio audience and putting quite a bit of work into the presentation, Malcolm creates a very recognizable simulacrum of the working-class and how their economic struggles inform everything.
Lois’s hard-ass nature and short fuse could easily be tied to everything around her character: her low-wage job at the Lucky-Aide, the state of the home, and the costs associated with having children at all. Over the course of the entire series, the three main boys have to share a single bedroom, with Malcolm and Dewey sharing a bed. Money is a regular motivator behind many episode plots; such as Bryan Cranston’s incredulous delivery of “You’re stealing money from the church?!” The series finale makes all of this blazing red text with the reveal that Hal and Lois expect Malcolm to become the President of the United States, because he will suffer enough to “care about people like [them].”
Can you repeat the question?
To the credit of Life’s Still Unfair, some of this is actually addressed in an emotionally satisfying way. At the same time, to do so requires stripping the original context of that class struggle away. No, Malcolm in the Middle isn’t some deep socialist text, but by sanding off these edges in favor of a miniseries that exists primarily to say “that show you liked back in the day was actually pretty good” isn’t the win we think it is. It’s starting to become clear that Glup Shitto isn’t exclusively a Star Wars thing.
There are ways to revive old shows and reinforce them with new interpretations. The King of the Hill revival remains that gold standard by asking itself some hard questions and finding new stories as a result. By comparison, Life’s Still Unfair leaves most of its characters in the same moment in time they were 20 years ago, moves really only one forward, and exists entirely via setting its protagonist backwards. That’s ultimately fine, characters are reflecting people and can backslide or be complacent. That only has to happen when revisiting those characters and as fun as this revival miniseries is, I remain unconvinced it was necessary.
Growing up is realizing you’re Hal now.
Yet, there was – maybe even still is – a way forward. Malcolm’s daughter Leah presents a new perspective, something the miniseries flirts with in the margins. Kelly also represents another aspect of struggle that the original series couldn’t even fathom at the time. These are characters that could lead a sequel of sorts – or god forbid a new idea altogether. Could a new sitcom in this style even happen without the branding attachment to a millennial era IP? Perhaps not anymore.
After finishing Malcolm in the Middle: Life’s Still Unfair, I did not think about any particular scene from what I had just seen. Instead, I pull up a clip from the original series. After an entire episode of Hal stunting on his kids at the school basketball court, the three brothers get on each other’s shoulders, with Reese punching Hal in the groin. He and Malcolm pass the ball up to Erik Per Sullivan’s Dewey, who dunks the ball; then looks at Hal and says: “The future is now, old man.”
I get how Hal must have felt.
Malcolm in the Middle: Life’s Still Unfair premiers April 10th on Hulu and Hulu on Disney+.
Images courtesy of Hulu.
Travis Hymas is a freelance writer and self appointed Pokémon historian out of Salt Lake City, Utah. Known to be regularly obessive over pop culture topics, gaming discourse, and trading card games, he is a published critic featured on sites such as Uppercut and The Young Folks.
