I really enjoyed the episode and I think it will make me homesick if I watch it in the future because--I'm being honest here--I certainly don't have that close of a relationship with my mom.
So I guess my comments go down like this:
The Dewey/Reese storyline was absolutely fantastic. It was put together extremely well. Like last week's battle of the dumb vs. the cripple, we were able to see that Reese is resorting back to violence this year, but because that's the only way he knows how to handle situations. In this case, he thinks his pen pal is personally responsible for Pearl Harbor, and believes he's doing the right thing.
Jessical always hanging around the house always tends to creep me out a bit. I mean, I understand when Lois allowed Stevie to stay over for a little while, but Jessica seems a bit odd, doesn't it? Remember how their relationship ended last year in Pearl Harbor? She was banned from the house. I question why Lois is so accomodating to other people in the neighborhood. But I thoroughly enjoyed the plot between Malcolm and Lois. It seemed like the ending where Malcolm raced home would reveal some sort of genius-trick. I wasn't expecting his relationship wiht Lois to end that quickly, just like that. I thought maybe he'd say that Lois went shopping or Lois met up wtih someone else and Malcolm let them be for awhile. That was rather odd, but I guess they couldn't be like that forever.
I also enjoyed the Hal storyline. It's funny when Hal is contradictorily saying he won't let a bee ruin his life as he devises this complex plan of getting in the car to Lois. I also enjoyed the scene where Hal appeared to be bumping his car into the bee as if it were another car. Very well done. And for those of us who are still trying to figure out the series' mysteries, the scene revealed that Hal works in an industrial park, probably somewhere to the South, judging from the tropical-like trees. Which means our current most accurate predictions of somewhere like Arizona, or New Mexico, or extreme southern California may be most accurate.
Finally, as if one time wasn't bad enough, you would think they would learn from their mistakes! You will recall that in season 1, Reese was playing a Game Boy with no cartridge. Well, Dewey did exactly the same thing in Jessica Stays Over. More or less, I found it funny that they would mess up on something so goofy not once, but twice!