I like to copy the atricle incase they disapear. Real great article i agree with it in some way. It should have had more promotion but i dont think another series would have worked, however ever much i miss it.
'Malcolm' merits more at series' end
The groundbreaking sitcom gets a quiet send-off this weekend - and that's unfair.
Neal Justin, Star TribuneLast update: May 10, 2006 – 6:06 PM
There's a moment in Sunday's season finale of "Malcolm in the Middle" that perfectly encapsulates the cruel, sweet irony that has plagued this sitcom family for seven years.
Malcolm, played by the exponentially aging Frankie Muniz, learns that a $3,000 scholarship he was counting on for his Harvard education has been rescinded so the granter can invest the money in a research project on teenagers who can't afford college.
"They want me to be a part of it," Malcolm says to his exponentially exasperated father. "They'll give me $50."
The closing line of the show's theme song, a twisted confection by They Might Be Giants, says it all: "Life is unfair."
It's also awfully funny.
"Malcolm" will not get the send-off of other long-running sitcoms. In recent years, it's been relegated to the post-football spot on Fox, a move that would make sense if the show were about bachelor guys who hang out in sports bars, not about kids trying to outwit their parents.
It has won six Emmys, but was nominated only once for outstanding comedy series. Jane Kaczmarek has earned nominations for outstanding lead actress every year since the show premiered, but has yet to go home a winner.
"Malcolm" may not have gotten straight A's from critics, but it deserves more than a little extra credit for daring to be a single-camera, laugh-track-free sitcom back in 2000, when that approach was about as popular as, well, kid geniuses. The format allowed for the kind of physical comedy and sight gags rarely attempted outside Toontown, and set the stage for the arrival of such gems as "Scrubs,"The Bernie Mac Show" and "Arrested Development."
No one took better advantage of this artistic freedom than co-star Bryan Cranston, who resembles the typical (read: dull) sitcom father, but is secretly made of Silly Putty. His buffoonish bits -- roller-skating through a deserted schoolyard; tearing through the house, screaming like he just saw 436 spiders; trying to escape a hardware store as pencils are shot at him as if he were Indiana Jones in the Temple of Shtick -- should have earned him an Emmy nod, if not a gig with Cirque du Soleil.
The sitcom's most notable contribution, though, is its gnawing reminder that being a kid may be the toughest job in the world.
Malcolm's world was Murphy's Law personified.
One of my favorite moments of the series came in an episode called "Bowling," in which a frustrated Malcolm storms down the lane to defiantly hurl his ball into the pins from a mere 2 feet away -- and misses them all. Not even Charlie Brown had it this bad.
As Malcolm prepares to give the valedictorian speech in the series finale, he and his family get covered in grotesque sludge, the contents of which are not suitable to repeat in a family newspaper, leading to a confrontation between mother and son that reveals why she has gone out of her way to make Malcolm's life miserable.
It will take you back to one of the very first scenes from the pilot, in which Malcolm looks directly into the camera and says: "Want to know what the best thing about childhood is? At some point, it stops."
Sitcoms also eventually stop. In this case, that's not such a great thing.
<hr> ***½ out of four stars