Yes responding to the question it makes me think, that it could easily turn into an animated show but would loose quality.
This you can imagine in your mind, MITM animated version.
Oh I saw on Disney channel a animation show called "The Weekenders" and the main character's does the 4th camera (or however it's called), he talks to the audience and the background turns to black/white.
Yes, I can see that, though I always prefer real actors to cartoon characters. Especially compared with production limitations in animation (requiring 24 separate images per second), most obvious in
South Park, live actors have the benefit of having far more facial expressions and nuances.
On the other hand, MITM had quite a number of dream and slapstick sequences which required trick photography, and which are of course easier to do in full animation.
In fact, a lot of reviewers called MITM 'the live Simpsons', and it's easy to see why. And then there's
Family Guy, of course, which did a scene starring the 'Malcolm' cast as cartoon characters.
P.S. Ha, you're mixing up two technical features of MITM: 'a single camera show' (meaning it's not filmed on a stage with multiple cameras shooting the same scene, but scene-by-scene like a movie), and 'breaking the fourth wall', which means Malcolm talks to the audience. Just for the record