“Malcolm in the Middle,” a popular series about a tightly knit calamitous family of weirdos and the relatively less weird child at its center, is back after 20 years. Depending on how you frame it, this is either the eighth season of the original show or the debut of “Malcolm in the Middle: Life’s Still Unfair,” premiering Friday on Hulu.
Originally pitched as a movie, the comeback is subdivided instead into 30-minute-long quarters, giving them a certain heft, whereas a “TV movie” might have felt like a throwaway, an afterthought. These four new episodes feel structurally tethered to the mothership. As before, it’s a television show. Take it, and celebrate it, as such.
“Previously on ‘Malcolm in the Middle,’ ” it begins, unleashing a montage of violent slapstick from years past. “And someone actually asked for more of this?” a voice asks. Subtitles identify the speaker as Hal (Bryan Cranston), the father of the piece, though I had thought it might belong to creator and re-creator Linwood Boomer, back in charge.
Well, why not? Getting the gang back together, pulling the tarp off the station wagon and taking it out for a spin is the dream of many old gangs, at least the happy ones (and of their fans, whether they were happy or not). Just ask those “Scrubs” kids. Twenty years is a long break, but life only gets shorter — you can’t wait for the iron to be hot before you strike, or there might not be an iron at all. With a single exception, the surviving cast, major and minor, is present and accounted for, still looking very much like themselves, their characters older, but not wiser. Indeed, the whole business has been arranged to bring everyone together in the final scene — the party that Lois (Jane Kaczmarek) has been arranging to mark the 40th anniversary of her marriage to Hal, while he assails her with elaborate tokens of his esteem. “I will show her so much love that she will run screaming at the sight of me.”
Malcolm (Frankie Muniz), speaking to the camera as of old, offers a tour of his new life, “a two-layover flight from anyone” he’s related to. “I’m happy, I’m successful … All I had to do is stay completely away from my family,” whose “nonstop antisocial behavior and mindless belligerence and mindless priorities are toxic to me.” (He loses his cool around them, such as it is.) He’s the single father of a smart, beloved, socially isolated teenage daughter, Leah (Keeley Karsten), “kind of a trophy I won in college for attending my first kegger,” who also narrates to the camera: “Just so you know, I don’t cry like this all the time. I also do depressed apathy, paralyzed embarrassment and impotent fury — it’s a rich inner life.” There’s a girlfriend, too, Tristan (Kiana Madeira), who even Malcolm can see is almost too good to be true.
Parents Hal (Bryan Cranston) and Lois (Jane Kaczmarek) are preparing for their 40th wedding anniversary.
(David Bukach / Disney)
Brother Reese (Justin Berfield), traditionally the mean one, is back living at home after failed marriages and jobs. His work with his father on unnecessary home improvements masks a darker project, which is uncovered by his nemesis, nonbinary youngest child Kelly (nonbinary actor Vaughan Murrae), who appeared as a positive home pregnancy test at the end of the original series. Dewey, once the littlest brother (played then by Erik Per Sullivan, who declined to participate in the revival, now by Caleb Ellsworth-Clark), is an internationally successful musician who chimes in by video. Jamie, a toddler when we left him and now played by Anthony Timpano, is in the Coast Guard; while Francis (Christopher Masterson), the eldest, who moved around a lot in the past, is staying in the garage with wife Piama (Emy Coligado) as the anniversary draws near. The game, as it were, is to get Malcolm to the party.
The old cast remember who they were and throw themselves headlong into their parts; the newcomers, who are given a lot to do, keep up, and it’s a shame we won’t see more of them. If the show is not as physical as it once was, everyone being older, it’s still pretty intense. As Malcolm, Muniz, who mostly gave up acting for professional race car driving, seems, for all his new-found calm, on the edge of exploding. Much more than “Breaking Bad,” this is the Cranston show that matters to me — it’s better for the world, I think — and he is all over it, with some good slapstick, a musical number with his poker pals, and a long, fantastic psychedelic interlude.
The new season, which is full of callbacks, is probably best enjoyed having watched the original, which is available on Hulu along with “Life’s Still Unfair.” It will still be funny to see Lois shaving a naked Hal’s back and legs, in the kitchen, but you will earn extra credit points knowing that this is exactly how the series began, way back when.
Apart from its serial nature and arc, the new season/series doesn’t do anything new, doesn’t attempt to update its year 2000 operating system to 2026 standards. It’s true to itself. It gets a little sentimental and a little serious in the clutch; there will be closure, self-realization and ego death. And, as if embarrassed by the whole business, the show will do something crazy to blast the tear from your eye.
