Black Kid Malcom in Th Emiddle Not Funny

"It's not like it was even our car!"

• In "the Pilot", Malcolm is pranked by the bully, who pours paint on his chair. That's not the funny bit. When Malcolm is sent to Carolyn Miller to be tested, she has one of those "find everything wrong with this picture" test. Malcolm rattles off everything in an annoyed fashion in less than ten seconds, adding "And I've got red paint ON MY ASS!"
• Lois wistfully looking on as her whole family (whom she ran away from after they admit they blew her birthday present money on candy) brawls with a group of clowns + Kenny Rogers' "You Decorated My Life" = Pure, triple-distilled hilarity.
• In the season 1 episode "Home Alone 4," Francis invites his hoodlum friends over on the condition that they don't invite other people and have a party at his house. One Gilligan Cut later, we find the house trashed and immediately assume that Francis' friends broke the promise. It turns out Francis' friends are so destructive that it only takes three of them to trash an entire house ("Huh, who'd have thought three guys can do so much damage?").
  • In the same episode, when the boys go to the hospital after the shelf falls on Malcolm's head, the head nurse knows who they are and is not pleased to see them again. Malcolm then mentions they have a history there, flashing back to idiotic ways all four brothers ended up there in the past, as seen here.
• In "Sleepover" Francis is taken to be hazed by some cadets at his military school. When their attempts to scare him don't phase him at all, he tells them some stories about things Lois had done to him over the years to embarrass him, whether intentional or accidentally. The cadets decide to haze future victims by using Lois as inspiration, replacing Hannibal Lector's picture with hers. Also, the psychological abuse and guilt-tripping that Lois had put Francis through, they use as the new torture method... and that didn't count the stuff that Francis blocked out.
  • In the same episode, Malcolm ditching Stevie when they finally get back to his home, which is surrounded by cops at this point, after all the chaos of trying to return from the arcade before Stevie's parents found out.
• Malcolm spends the Cold Open of "Krelboyne Girl" scraping the most disgusting things off the floor, the garage, and the back of the fridge onto a sandwich. Then he finally sits down to eat it and Reese immediately swoops in to steal it and take the first bite, just as Malcolm planned.
• Surreal performance piece by Dewey and babysitter (played by Bea Arthur)—to the tune of ''ABBa's "Fernando" (ending with the eccentric grandmotherly woman having a stroke or a heart attack and being carted away by the paramedics). Now a "Funny Aneurysm" Moment thanks to Bea Arthur's death.
• Cats ate her face. Made even funnier by the casual way Hal hands the phone back to Dewey.
• In "Smunday", Lois is sick with the flu and thinks that it's Sunday (it's actually Monday), so Malcolm, Reese, and Dewey decide to skip school. They then get a call from Francis because he's worried that Lois will find out about a letter from the University of Southern Alabama involving a bill that details the extensive damages he's done to its swimming pool by driving a backhoe in it during his prank to Marlin Academy. They agree to hide the letter for him, but after discovering that he ratted on them to Lois about them selling Dewey's bike to Francis' friends (which ultimately got them grounded for 2 months), Reese and Malcolm are furious and decide to pretend to give the letter to Lois to scare Francis. But Francis knew they would do something like this, so he sent his friends to get the letter from them. It's then revealed that Malcolm Out-Gambitted Francis and gave a fake letter to his friends. So when Reese asks where the real letter is...

  Malcolm: I had to think of the one place they'd never think of looking. I had to give it to the one person they'd never think I'd give it to! I did the most brilliant thing of all; I gave it to Dewey.
  Dewey: And I hid it under Mom's pillow!
  Malcolm: You WHAT?!
  (Cut to a horrified Lois reading the letter)

  • This exchange when Francis' friends are on the phone with him while searching for the letter, which Malcolm just hid.

    Richie: Okay kid, you got 3 seconds to tell me, or I'm gonna pound you—
    Francis: Richie! Which part of "No hurting my brothers" didn't you understand?!
    Richie: I gotta tell you, man, you're not allowing me a single creative thought here!

• In the episode "Reese Cooks", Hal tries to explain Reese what empathy is after he poisoned his opponents' meals during a cooking contest.

  Hal: Reese...do you know what empathy is?
  Reese: No.
  Hal: Empathy is putting yourself into other people's shoes so you can feel the way they do. If you hurt someone, empathy makes you hurt as well.
  Reese: Then, why would you want empathy?

• In the episode "Tutoring Reese", Reese is being threatened into remedial class because of his low grades, and figures the teacher is out to get him. Malcolm decides to takes his test for him and he still fails. He later finds out that the teacher really is out to get Reese and when he shows up at the house and talks with Lois and Hal to convince them to sign Reese over to the remedial class, Malcolm confronts him and accidentally admits that he took the test for Reese.

  Lois: (Looking at Malcolm) You cheated-! (turns to Reese) You let him cheat for you!? (Turns to the teacher) You gave something he wrote an F!?

  • This is enough for Lois to realize he really does have it out for Reese. The teacher says it doesn't matter—if Lois tells the school, they'll find out Malcolm cheated for his brother, and he'll be expelled. Lois flatly says she doesn't care; Malcolm will be fine no matter what, but Reese needs help. The teacher tries to call her bluff... only for (in a case of excellent timing) Francis (whom Lois had kicked out for refusing to fix the roof and had spent the rest of the episode living in deplorable conditions in his friend Richie's basement) to knock on the door, begging to come home. "And that's the one I like." The episode ends with everyone but Dewey, Hal, and Lois, on the roof repairing it. Including the teacher.
• On the episode where Lois gets fired from her job at Lucky Aide because the store manager (from whom Lois rips the toupee off, claiming it to be velcro) wouldn't take back the bottle of cognac Dewey accidentally shoplifted, Malcolm's family gets some food donations from the neighbors. Malcolm and Reese don't like it, commenting on how food donations are always bad and how embarrassing it is about the family being made into a charity case. Hal doesn't believe them and asks anyone if they want the last of some olives he's been eating from a can. Lois's response upon seeing them: "Those aren't olives; those are peaches!"
  • As a nice little bonus: After Hal is hospitalized, he lets out a huge fart. Malcolm then awkwardly tells his brothers that "The first one to laugh gets their ass kicked".
• Season 3's "Christmas", where Francis has to visit Ida during Christmas. There's a moment where Francis begins to mocks her with a Christmas song from a card he bought her. This causes her to stab him in the leg with a knitting needle.
  • And the follow-up where Francis leaves a whole army of these cards in her house after he left, causing her to go insane trying to tear up each one that begins its chime.

    Grandma Ida: You do this to torture me? To hurt me?
    Francis: You don't like Christmas music?
    Grandma Ida: It sounds like the song they sang when they would ride through the villages and throw the babies into the fire!
    Francis: They sang Jingle Bells?
    Grandma Ida: They sang something.

• The montage when Hal, Dewey, and Reese decided to have fun with the wood chipper. They throw in plushies, watermelons, backpacks, all sorts of stuff, until finally, they walk up with a box of confetti and throw it in the wood chipper. Hal says, "...Obviously, we've run out of ideas."
• When Francis gets dumped by his "sweetheart" who he had ditched military school to be with, he lies down in the woods and cries out in anguish. By itself, it wouldn't be funny, but then Dewey hears his agonized bellowing from the darkness and starts throwing rocks at him, mistaking him for a monster. And then it's freakin' hilarious.
• In the season 2 episode "Malcolm vs. Reese" Francis got two tickets to a wrestling match, so he made Malcolm and Reese do favors and other stuff to see who loves him more. All of it is funny, but the funniest part was when he made both of them do The Happy Dance.

  Francis: Come on guys, it's Rage in the Cage, you should be happy!
  Reese: ...We are happy.
  Francis: ...Well, you're not doing the happy dance...
  (Beat)
  Malcolm and Reese: Happy dance, happy dance, we love to do the happy dance...
  Francis: Happier.
  Malcolm and Reese: Happy dance, happy dance, we love to do the happy dance.
  Francis: Happier!
  Malcolm and Reese: HAPPY DANCE, HAPPY DANCE, WE LOVE TO DO THE HAPPY DANCE!

  • This culminates into more hilarity when Francis reveals he's taking a date instead and never intended to bring one of them. This leads to a terrific revenge scheme: While driving to the event with his date, he finds a threatening note from his brothers but pays no mind. When he's stopped by a cop (Malcolm and Reese having seemingly reported the car as stolen), he looks for his ID in his wallet — it's not there, replaced by a Post-It reading, "It gets worse". The cop then hears banging in the trunk and forces him to open it, revealing a bound-and-gagged Malcolm and Reese, causing the cop to freak out and apprehend Francis.
• In the season 4 episode "Family Reunion" Francis was forced to spend all day with the kids, so he had enough and told them a story called "The Kids WHO COULDN'T PLAY BY THEMSELVES!".

  Francis: And the little boy about your age was found hanging in the moonlight, strangled by his own intestines, and there was just enough life in him to say... YOU'RE NEXT!

• "Company Picnic" had Malcolm being tied to a girl he has a crush on for a scavenger hunt. When he confesses, she tells him that she's in love with a different guy. Malcolm calls her out for liking someone like him ("He high-fives people for deciding what topping to put on their pizza!") and keeps demanding to know why she doesn't like him. Cue her snapping and telling him exactly why she doesn't like him.
  • He breaks down crying and wipes his face with leaves that turn out to be poison oak. When the family's about to drive off, the girl apologizes again for being so harsh, hoping they can still be friends, and then asks if Malcolm is smiling because she can't tell. The camera turns to Malcolm, whose face is swollen beyond recognition.

    Malcolm: I'm smiling.

• "Malcolm Films Reese" leads to Reese being humiliated to the whole school when Malcolm's movie is shown, since it reveals Reese's deepest feelings and hopes. Everyone at school starts mocking him for having a wishing tree. Malcolm locks himself into the principal's office and turns on the PA system, choosing to make this even by admitting his own, most shameful secret. And then goes through every single student's file, revealing their most shameful secret to the whole school, making things really even.
  • In the beginning of the episode, Hal and Lois make love despite the baby being nearby, Hal turns on his stereo and says "At this age, babies can't remember anything." Cue Reese, Malcolm and Dewey going through PTSD as soon as they hear the song.
• "Lois' Makeover": Fed up with Hal's cheating antics in basketball, the kids make a cheat of their own. They climb on top of each other to deny Hal access to their basket. When Hal predictably tries to jump over them, Reese hits him in the balls and the kids win the match. Topped off by Dewey's One-Liner.

  Dewey (in a deadpan manner): The future is now, old man.

• The fourth season episode "Boys at Ranch", where Malcolm, Reese, and Francis are setting off a mass of fireworks at night. As the display winds down, Reese asks "How do we know which one's the Komodo 3000?" His question is answered a second later with a fireworks explosion so bright, it turns night into day for about five seconds.

  Francis (deafly yelling): DID IT SAY WHEN OUR VISION WOULD COME BACK?
  Reese (also yelling): BOX SAID TWO DAYS!
  (Beat)
  Francis: TOTALLY WORTH IT!

• When Lois is pregnant, she tries to avoid ballooning up per her doctor's orders. But Hal has just realized that he's a fat admirer, so he sabotages her diet attempts and secretly fattens her up instead. He stirs chocolate syrup into her tea and, when she buys celery, fries it in bacon grease. An hour later, she sits at the kitchen table telling him about how she's actually gained despite her diet, then stops and looks at the celery. Beat. Then she keeps chewing, telling him "My hormones are so screwed up! This celery tastes like bacon!"
  • Some of Hal's actions when sabotaging the diet look a lot like someone cooking drugs, which makes it doubly funny considering what Hal's actor would do in the future.
  • Add to that Dewey keeps saying he's making communication with the baby in Lois's belly psychically. As Lois is lecturing him at a later point, thinking he's doing it for attention, Dewey tells her "Baby says to turn around". Cue Lois turning to Hal pouring a gallon of syrup into her coffee, asking sheepishly if she doesn't usually take it with syrup.
• Malcolm comes to the couch with two sodas, and Reese goes through a I Know You Know I Know trying to figure out which one he shook up. Eventually he decides to just get a soda from the fridge...which promptly explodes on him.
• Hal and some other dads are in a class for bonding with their babies. After the instructor leaves they start having competitions involving the babies, which can spit up more, which can sit up on its own the longest, etc. eventually getting to them playing shuffleboard with the babies as the disks. Lois and the rest of the family walk in at the exact time Hal is doing this. He wins, and starts gloating. One of the kids then asks Lois why she isn't yelling at him yet. Her response:

  Lois: See that goofy look on his face? I want to remember that look. We're not gonna be seeing it for a long time.

• Reese cooks for Thanksgiving for the first time. He grabs the turkey barehanded before it got overcooked and tells Piama to get those pot holders off the table.
• When Reese is being pushed to the ground by the cops, in the background, you can see the hamster ball roll past.
• Francis comes home after getting legally emancipated so he could drop out of military school, assuming that his parents will be calmly okay with it since they've had a week to absorb the news. Cue Hal chasing Francis down the street in a murderous rage.
  • Then we get a Gilligan Cut to both of them walking down the street and talking about the issue calmly and rationally... while looking obviously beaten up. Francis apologizes for using a certain Groin Attack on Hal, but he responds that he wouldn't have taught it to him if he didn't want him to use it.
  • When Lois refuses to talk to him, he resorts to slashing one of her tires so she'll talk to him. Lois responds by driving on the flat tire and running a red light.
• In that same episode, Malcolm driving the Krelboyne class to the brink in order to break Mr. Herkabe's system, then finally pushing them over the edge with one question: "Did you know I can count to a million in prime numbers?"
• Stevie has some great ones, but one of the best comes in an opening bit where Malcolm threatens him with a beating if he laughs at Malcolm's Shakespeare recital. Stevie's response?

  Stevie: Bring it, >GASP< Homeo!

  • Another great moment: Malcolm goes after some boys who took Stevie's wheelchair and leaves his friend rolling downhill in a shopping cart. Stevie crashes and falls out; Malcolm runs over and asks if he's alright.

    Stevie: I can't feel my legs.
    Malcolm: *starts panicking, then realizes who he's talking to* That's not funny.

• Stevie snarking at the carnival fair guard whose holding him prisoner.

  Guard: Shut up. You talk when I say.

  Stevie: I'm shaking (breath) in my chair.

• From "Stilts", Reese decides to sign up for multiple drug tests in order to make money, completely oblivious to the fact that mixing numerous, untested drugs is a bad thing. He calls Francis, completely out of his mind and hysterical, crying that he doesn't want to do drugs anymore after he did something bad. We don't know how he did it, but he apparently stole a police horse.

  Reese: Francis, you've gotta help me! I don't wanna take drugs anymore!
  Francis: Oh geez! Okay, Reese, I want you to tell me, very specifically, what kind of drugs did you take?
  Reese: All of Them!!
  Francis: Dude, didn't you learn anything from the time my friends babysat you and Richie tried to dry you off in the oven?

  • Earlier, Reese shows Malcolm some of the drugs he has to test, including some suppositories which "taste the worst".
  • Meanwhile, Hal accidentally ended up spending up nearly a thousand dollars on phone sex, and to placate Lois into a calmer state when he tells her, presents her with a pair of beautiful shoes (designer knock-offs) at work. The people in the store are witnessing Hal surprise Lois with the scenes and they're all "aww, how sweet", until this happens:

    Hal: I accidentally spent $800 on phone sex.
    (The shoppers all suddenly shift gear with an Oh, Crap! look as Lois's smile still lingers)
    Lois: I was doing my makeup in the rearview mirror, and I ran over your golf clubs!
    Hal: I burned a hole in your favorite dress.
    Lois: You didn't get that promotion because I called your boss a fatass at the Christmas party!
    Hal: I lost my wedding ring three years ago! This is part of a lawnmower!
    Lois: Your Aunt Lucy isn't angry with you. She's dead, I just forgot to tell you!

  • Even funnier when you realize that Hal's confession about burning a hole in Lois's dress is a Brick Joke: it refers back to the events of episode 2, where Lois unleashed her first on-screen hell-raising bout with the boys when she thought they ruined it and found it stuffed in the toilet. The poor attempt to hide the damage reeked of something the boys would do, and they became the unfair targets of her wrath because of their poor track record (and at the end of the episode, it's implied that Hal did it, after he had a cigar and accidentally burned a couch cushion with it. This episode outright states that Hal burned the dress).
  • It cuts back to this:

    Hal: And I purposefully dropped that bowling ball on your foot so you couldn't go to your high school reunion!
    Lois: I'm two years older than you think I am!

  • In the same episode, Malcolm gets a Humiliation Conga. Lois gives him a job offer at the supermarket as an Uncle Sam mascot on giant stilts (which she guilt-trips him into taking), about as demeaning and ego-wounding as he could dread. This is also to replace their current mascot (played by Tim Stack), who keeps showing up to work skunk-drunk. Malcolm begrudgingly takes the job, which nets him a humiliating laugh-down by several teenage girls who mock his totally undignified, "would not bang" appearance. Malcolm asks Craig to help him get the old guy to shape up his act so he can take his old job back. However, the guy is a bum without a cent to his name and taking the loss of his job very personally. He was so passionate about it he's scraped together his own Uncle Sam getup from garbage.
  • Later on, the deposed Sam fashions stilts out of junk, shows up to confront Malcolm at the store drunk outta his gourd and kick his ass in a stilt war! Malcolm tries to run away clumsily, while sheepish Craig does his best to be the Big Damn Hero in his own gawky way, gets a dinky toy airplane from the store, planning to fly into the drunk Uncle Sam's head and knock him senseless... except when he unwraps it from the box, it requires assembly.

    Craig (notices he has to screw the airplane parts together): Dammit!! What aisle are the screwdrivers in!?!

  • Meanwhile, Malcolm cannot afford to wait for Craig to finish the plane assembly with the drunk man catching up to him. Malcolm decides to improvise a last resort escape by jamming the stilts into two shopping carts. He thinks they could work as roller skates, but forgets one fatal flaw: they roll in opposite directions, resulting in the ultimate groin pulling split. Then, just to make things worse, Craig shows his RC inexperience and flies the plane into Malcolm's top hat. It jams into the side and continues to spin pitifully.
  • Malcolm finally gives up and prays to God for salvation from drunk Sam's tirade, asking for even the most pathetic miracle. In comes Reese on the runaway police horse, still whacked out from the drugs, slouched over the saddle and sobbing like a baby. The horse smashes through Sam's stilts and sends him falling over... then storms into the supermarket and wrecks the place, cutting off Hal and Lois's argument before it reaches the point of no return. Long story short, Hal buys Lois the real pumps to shut her up, Reese is detoxed, and Malcolm troops through ice pack therapy on his hideously maimed crotch.
  • And the original Uncle Sam? Malcolm finds him a job with the circus — working in a depressing cubicle farm run by a midget ringmaster.
• In the episode "Pearl Harbour", it takes Jessica a long to time to convince Malcolm that Reese might be gay because he never suspected his actively perverted brother of hanging the other way (It Makes Sense in Context, and to be fair, he once caught Reese trying to take advantage of one of his female friends who had hit puberty and become buxom). However, when Jessica needs to do the same to Reese...

  Jessica: I didn't do it for myself, I did it for your brother.
  Reese: Malcolm's gay? I knew it!

  • Malcolm and Reese dancing to "Take a Chance on Me". The look on Dewey's face in the reaction cut is what really clinches it.
• In the cold opening to "Garage Sale", Dewey hears about Orson Welles' broadcast that convinced everyone that aliens were invading, so he comes up with a convoluted plan to trick Reese into believing that aliens landed involving tape recorders and television, then Malcolm cuts him off telling him he's overthinking this, and proceeds to trick Reese on his own.

  Malcolm: (nonchalantly) Reese! Aliens landed across the street!
  (In less than a second, Reese comes running out the room wearing a football helmet and holding a baseball bat)
  Reese: EVERY MAN FOR HIMSELF! (Runs out the door)

• In "New Neighbors", Reese is being stalked by their neighbors' young daughter, who enjoys biting him. It gets to the point that Reese is conspiring ways to get the family in trouble. After he finally does come up with a scheme, he mentions that the boy will be labeled a thief, the parents will be tied up in his legal troubles, and then starts an elaborate fantasy about the daughter taken away from her parents, landing in foster care, where she'll bite her foster parents so much they'll abandon her at a gas station bathroom, at which point she'll be found by hillbillies and spend the rest of her life biting them.
  • There's also Dewey's fear of the lawn gnome coming to life and eating him, after the neighbors' son lied to him about it. Through a number of contrived coincidences, the gnome keeps popping up around him and Dewey becomes paranoid.

    Dewey: The gnome is evil! It wants to eat me!
    Lois: They're all evil people, honey.

  • Meanwhile, the son, a master of Blatant Lies, has been getting Malcolm in trouble for no apparent reason, up to framing him as a peeping tom. When the police come by the house after Malcolm's falsely reported, Malcolm questions as to why he would bother peeping in this neighborhood since everyone's so unattractive. Hal counters with a disturbingly knowledgeable speech about how people peep solely for the power of invading the lives of others. The police officers look at Hal with a noticeably disturbed look when he finishes.
  • And of course, there's the moment, where Malcolm and Reese sneak over to enact the latter's aforementioned plan to frame the son for theft and larceny, and end up catching the family's matriarch and gardener having a naked affair in the Jacuzzi. Upon the latter two noticing the former two, both sides scream loudly, and in the scramble to get out of the Jacuzzi and cover herself up, the mother knocks the gardener out cold. As she struggles to keep him above water and berates the boys, Hal, Lois, and the rest of the neighbors all hearing the commotion come peaking over the fence and find them. Cue the mother feeble attempt to lie her way out of the situation:

    Tina: He's teaching me to swim!
    (cut to Hal and Lois watching with the latter sporting a smug smile on how screwed her rival is)

  • And even more, the entire incident ends up fulfilling Malcolm and Reese's goal even better than they thought: the wicked family is embarrassed out of the neighborhood, and the father (the only nice member of the family) leaves his wife upon learning of her infidelity.
• The bowling episode, especially when the Malcolms of both realities face the camera and say "I love/hate bowling!"
  • When Lois is getting shoes for Malcolm and Reese, she discovers she only has $6 in her wallet, causing her to decide to only get a Size 8 pair and force Malcolm and Reese to share. Meanwhile, when Hal is getting them shoes:
  • In one scenario, Malcolm keeps bowling gutter balls. Lois tells him that he is not leaving until he bowls a strike. This causes Malcolm to reach his breaking point and he angrily takes his ball and walks down the lane. He's right in front of the pins, and yells "Here's your damn strike"...and then completely misses the pins when he throws the ball.
  • "So, how'd it go?" "Next time, you take 'em."
• Dewey's opera, which he composed based on Lois and Hal's feud over a larger bed which turns out being Lois wanting to hide her problems with flatulence. Lois and Hal sit down along with almost everyone else they know to watch the play, and say "I just hope Dewey doesn't embarrass himself." Cue the episode-ending door slam.
• "Halloween Approximately", where the boys decide to launch a diaper off a giant slingshot. They start chanting "Diaper!" and then fire. All we get is a reaction shot as they stop chanting, and Francis says, "Uuugh! No more of those." The boys just silently nod in agreement.
• There are so many of Hal's plots — feeding his manic steamroller obsession after winning $500 on a scratch ticket, being revered as a god to a group of dim-witted bodybuilders, getting drafted into numerous corporate and extra-governmental conspiracies (often due to mistaken identity, like when he, Lois, and Dewey were stuck at the airport and he used a businessman's airport lounge card to treat himself to the good life, only to get roped into an international video conference).
• In one episode, Malcolm and Stevie are performing an experiment to make two solutions in a test tube separate, and after Reese bounces a ball on the ceiling, they come back to find it has magically separated, when they were unable to make it happen themselves. Bewildered, they ask Reese to repeat what he did earlier to figure out how he influenced this freak occurrence. Too bad Reese has no clue, so they have to play out his entire day from the beginning. It eventually gets to a part where Reese invades their bedroom closet behind Malcolm's back, now public knowledge to both him and Stevie...

  Reese: (walks out of the closet with a plaid shirt; Malcolm and Stevie are puzzled) Then I took one of Malcolm's shirts... And then I... (stuffs Malcolm's shirt in his pants, feeds it under his crotch, pulls it out from under his butt and begins flossing with it ; Malcolm's jaw drops and his face freezes with absolute horror, and Stevie's eyes bug out in repulsion; Reese yanks the defiled shirt out and hangs it back up)
  Malcolm: (mortified) ...OH MY GOD!
  Reese: (returns holding a hammer with a contemplative look, beating it against his palm) And then I played with Dewey's Game Boy...

  • This golden nugget of stupidity from Reese:

    "I made a discovery! By mixing blue and yellow you can make an entirely new color! I'm gonna call it... Blellow!"

  • The episode does come with a Pet the Dog moment for Reese when he replays himself doing math homework, gets frustrated, and goes into the bathroom to call himself stupid and say "I hate you" to his own face in the mirror. Malcolm and Stevie take it to heart and give him a hopeful pep talk.
  • Later that episode, Malcolm and Stevie find out when Reese bounced his ball off the ceiling, it dislodged some tile grout. The grout fell into the open test tube and separated the chemicals. But what was that mystery substance? They deduce it as asbestos. As in a substance that is highly toxic for human exposure.

    Malcolm & Reese: (blindly celebrating their scientific breakthrough and hopping around like idiots) We have asbestos in our ceiling! We have asbestos in our ceiling! (Beat) (it finally dawns on the brothers this is NOT a good thing; cue cut to the entire house being treated for asbestos removal)

  • Malcolm, evidently at the end of his tether, pressing a test tube up against his forehead, scrunching his face up in concentration and yelling "SEPARATE!" in the hopes of a miracle. It doesn't work.
• Hal demolishes a beehive for the honey inside, wasting almost the entire colony of bees... but one of them was a tough S.O.B. and survived with intent for revenge. It torments Hal for days, primed to ram its stinger into his flesh, until finally, on a drive back home, the bee chases him down the road. Sure, Hal could just ignore the bug, but he instead saddles the family with more debt by totaling his car to squash the bee against a wall.

  Hal: Who's the idiot now?

• In "Hal Sleepwalks", Malcolm writes a song to play on his guitar and all he ends up doing is unintentionally adding new emo lyrics to the Meow Mix jingle, which his family picks up on right away.
• In "Ida's Dance", Reese bonds with Hal over horror movies while Lois is visiting her mother. Only Reese's preferred horror movies are completely over the top torture porn slasher movies with such charming titles as "They Peeled My Face." Hal is not soothed by the fact that the director went to jail for using actual corpses. Reese loves every minute of those movies but Hal is reduced to a traumatized five-year-old in the first thirty seconds of each film. We get such tidbits as this:

  Man on TV: Not my eyes! Not my baby's eyes, too!

  • This scene.
  • Later, Hal attempts to hide the TV from Reese, but ends up accidentally breaking the glass and landing on his back. He's desperately trying to keep the TV off of him as broken glass rains down on him. He's screaming at Malcolm and Dewey to help him, but they can't hear him after both have accidentally deafened the other (Malcolm tried to get Dewey to teach him to appreciate music properly for a failed class, but he drives Dewey mad to the point where he puts on headphones and ignores him, so Malcolm, in a rage, turned the volume all the way up. Then later, Dewey tries to get revenge by setting up two huge speakers around the door where Malcolm walked in and holds an airhorn to the microphone behind his back. So when he tried to give Malcolm a "Reason You Suck" Speech while he waits in the doorway, Jamie crawls out of nowhere and accidentally(?) pressed the airhorn button into the microphone.) They're calmly eating dinner while Hal is trying to save himself from being blinded by jagged glass.

    Hal: Save your father's eyes! Aaaaaahh!! AAAAAAAAAAHHHHHH!!!!

    • Later on, when we cut to Hal screaming about how badly Malcolm and Dewey are going to get grounded for almost letting him die (which, keep in mind, they cannot hear), Malcolm reveals to the audience it took them an hour to notice:

  Hal: You think your dad being killed by a TV set is funny?! I'll tell you what's funny! Being grounded for the rest of your lives!

  Hal: Your children and your children's children will grow up grounded in this house!

  Malcolm: I can't understand a word he's saying, but judging by his expression, I probably shouldn't ask to borrow the car this weekend.

  • This isn't even taking into account the main story of Lois discovering Ida has met a group of women from the same country she is, and all of them are near exact duplicates of Ida herself.

    Woman: Is this the fat daughter or the one who drinks?
    Ida: This is the one with the half-wit factory between her legs.

• When Commandant Spangler tracks Francis down in Alaska in "Dewey's Dog," Eric instinctively salutes the officer, dropping his bin full of dishes in doing so.
  • Spangler then attempts to throttle Francis to death... except he doesn't get much mileage due to having two hook hands. All it really accomplishes it making Francis giggle from how cold they are.
  • Meanwhile, in the main plot, Dewey winds up sneaking a stray dog into the house, which he proceeds to use against Malcolm and Reese when they're left home alone. When the dog ultimately escapes (chasing Craig, who wound up getting roped in due to seeing too much), Malcolm and Reese get back at Dewey... by making him eat dog food.
• The Call-Back to the singing trash cans from Hal's dream in "Vegas":

  Hal: *wins Mega Jackpot* Ha! What do you say to that, huh!?
  Malcolm: I'd say you're having another dream, Dad.
  *Hal, shocked, turns to see three garbage cans*
  Can 1: Don't believe him!
  Can 2: This is real!
  All Three, In Harmony: We would not lie to yooooooouuuuu!

• The episode where Craig is wheelchair-bound and has a helper monkey has the part where the monkey keeps feeding him hot lasagna. Craig asks the monkey to wait for it to cool, but the monkey keeps feeding it to him. He asks for some water, and the monkey puts the straw almost where Craig can reach it before feeding him more lasagna.
  • Hal desperately trying to find a way to make himself look heroic. It was funny enough for him to thrash wildly with a pipe when he heard Dewey scream but it's oddly hilarious when his first target is a Pokémon plushie.
• Malcolm is about to suffocate in his car and says that Stevie and Reese were right.

  Malcolm: I guess that makes it easier. I don't want to live in a world where Reese is right.

• Hal has a horrific nightmare about being a meth dealer. Lois reacts the way you'd expect:

  Lois: Go to sleep, Scarface.

• Malcolm and Dewey are sitting on a curb, talking about how utterly bored they are. Suddenly, a mattress falls from the sky, prompting Dewey to comment that even their miracles are boring.
• Reese puts himself in a crate to mail himself to China. Dewey keeps the crate in the garage instead of mailing it. Lois finds out.

  Lois: He thinks he's on his way to China, and you've just been torturing him in that box?
  Dewey: Yeah.
  Lois: Can he breathe in there?
  Dewey: He's still making noises.
  Lois: And he's got food and water?
  Dewey: Yeah.
  Beat
  Lois: Alright.

• In "Forwards Backwards", Malcolm and Reese have been engaged in an escalating prank war, then Reese steals the money Malcolm was saving to buy a laptop to go go-karting. Malcolm, blind furious, shows up in a kart and challenges his brother to play chicken. What is Reese doing during the charge? Singing the Speed Racer theme song.
  • During the whole episode, we keep getting flashbacks that show further and further back the steps the prank war has been going through. At the end, we see the beginning. What caused this prank war ending in both boys crashing in go-karts and ending up in huge casts? Malcolm ate a blueberry that Reese told him not to eat.
• After learning that Reese joined the army, and he's been shipped off to combat, Malcolm tries to assure himself that his brother will be fine. Provided that he "lay low and not do anything stupid". He promptly realizes how screwed Reese is.
  • Among the things that Reese has to live through after he runs away from being deployed is getting married while disguised under a burka. Later he says, "And when the guy found out I was a dude...it wasn't like a total dealbreaker."
  • Later on, a guerrilla group bring him inside a hut so he can meet Lois, who has followed him to Afghanistan. As he's being dragged, he yells "If my husband finds out, he'll make you pay! Then you'll really be sorry."
• Lois, Francis, and Piama, in an attempt to get rid of Ida, call over Hal's best friend Abe. They tell him that Lois' mother is in town, and he happily replies that whenever his mother visits him she always brings him pie.
  • Gets better when, after Ida says that one of their black friends could pass for white, if he white-washed himself, the friend starts to tell her off for being a horrible person and how his life is better than hers. Ida insults him again and he scares her away with "Ooga, booga, booga!" and she runs screaming from the house.
• Hal attempts to keep himself entertained during a motivational seminar by playing tic-tac-toe with himself. The scoreboard he drew says the match is between "Me" and "Evil Me", and "Evil Me" has won almost every match.
• Francis, wanting to pay off his debts to his Bad Boss Lavernia (who'd been treating him like a slave), bets against her hockey team and sabotages them by cutting up their skates, putting Vaseline on their hockey sticks, etc. When he gets onto the ice as a goalie for Lavernia's team, Eric, who was their star player, takes a nut shot for him, inspiring him to win the game for them. Lavernia decides to treat Francis for his victory using the bet money, and then Francis tells her about what he did. Cue the rest of the team enjoying beers while a naked Francis is dragged across the ice rink by a Zamboni.
• The entire episode when Hal's poker friend, who is a dentist, fixes Hal's tooth and then they get into a fight because Hal thought he had offered to do it for free. Hal ends up painfully pulling out the crown and refusing to get it fixed out of pride. Cue Moment of Funny after Hal has been suffering for days, all his poker buddies gag and bind him in order to force him back to the dentist and then get stopped by a police officer.
  • And the cop, who sees Hal gag and bind against his will, sees them all in the car with a rare but honest excuse, just casually let them go, with Hal being extremely angry. What makes it funnier is that it's possible the cop knows who Hal is, given how much his kids get in trouble with the law constantly. So either he believes them about fixing his tooth, or simply doesn't care enough to help Hal specifically.
• Cynthia's reappearance, after having a growth spurt, contains multiple ones.
  • How Malcolm finds out. They're in the kitchen and Cynthia's very loose pullover's sleeve catches fire at the stove. Panicking, they pull it off of her and Cynthia is left in a white tanktop and her rather big breasts are very noticeable. She gasps, covers her chest and turns away, only for Malcolm to turn towards the camera and utter his reaction in a scared voice.

    Malcolm: ...Mommy!

  • Apparently, that wasn't Malcolm's only reaction, which Cynthia states when she rummages through Malcolm's closet for a new sweater.

    Cynthia: How could you do that to me?!
    Malcolm: You were on fire! I was just trying to help!
    Cynthia: How does yelling "Oh, my God! Where did those come from?!" help?!

  • When Reese learns of her large breasts, he intends to become closer to Cynthia, so he can grope her. Malcolm tries to burst his charade in front of Cynthia. Reese gropes her and Cynthia proceeds to beat the crap out of Reese, all while telling him off.

    Malcolm: What's her name?
    Reese: ...I know her name. And... I am not gonna dignify that with a response. I know what her name is, and her name is...
    Cynthia: (giving Reese a look)
    Reese: (grabs her breasts)
    Cynthia: (gasps and punches Reese down) How could you be so creepy!? Don't you have any sense of decency towards a fellow human being? [more punching follows] I have feelings! I will be treated with respect! I will not be objectified! I will not be humiliated or demeaned! Now kiss my shoe! Kiss! My! Shoe!

  • The next scene shows them all eating dinner, Reese holding an icepack to his cheek and sipping soup through a straw.
• Concurrently in the same episode, Francis becomes obsessed with a totem pole his roommates stole following a drunken night out. Francis starts having what he thinks are prophetic dreams regarding the pole that will give his life meaning and slowly goes more and more insane trying to decipher their meaning.

  Francis: I've fasted, I've meditated, I got frostbite spending a night in the wilderness! I just wanna know what to do! What am I missing?! The wolf...that's loyalty. And the eagle...keen sight...insight! And the frog is...bug eating! [Beat] WHAT DOES THAT HAVE TO DO WITH ANYTHING?!

  • Finally, when the Native American who owns the pole appears to take it back and explains its significance (he uses it as a wheel stop), he is less than amused when Francis makes certain assumptions:
• "If Boys Were Girls" is a pretty funny episode overall between Hal's B-plot to get pregnant Lois a present for Valentine's Day and Lois' imagination. The bonus points have to be when Hal is imagined as comically overweight and submissive due to being outnumbered by several girls, Hal flailing around in reality by stealing other shoppers' bags, and the appearance of Francis in Lois' imagination.
  • For reference, Reese, Malcolm, and Dewey were all replaced by girls and given properly feminine names (Renee, Mallory, and Daisy). Francis, however, is played by Christopher Kennedy Masterson (his usual actor) dressed in drag...and is still named Francis.
• In "Health Scare," Malcolm and Reese sneak out to Tracy's party, with Malcolm putting a rubber zombie Halloween mask over a teddy bear to pass it off as himself sleeping in bed, while Reese draws a face on a big white balloon to pass off as himself. Hal, concerned that he has cancer, goes into the boys' room to apologize for Lois's resulting behavior and has a heartwarming speech, not knowing that the balloon and teddy bear zombie are not really Reese and Malcolm. But then when he wraps up with "Sleep well, my little angels" and leans over to kiss "Reese," the balloon loudly pops and Hal repeatedly Screams Like a Little Girl, which wakes up Dewey, and he sees the zombie mask lying next to him and starts screaming as well.
• The ending to "Malcolm's Girlfriend," where Malcolm is still grieving over breaking up with his girlfriend while at a cowboy-themed birthday party for Dewey's new friend. After Hal tells Malcolm that stuff like this is part of growing up, Malcolm looks at the moon bouncer and decides he "can go back." He walks over to it as the familiar opening bars of the Sesame Street theme song plays, and Dewey, enjoying the moon bouncer, tells Malcolm he can't come in as he's too big, but Malcolm says he's not too big, and he's going to play. Then it goes into Slow Motion as Malcolm does a big jump into the moon bouncer, and the Sesame Street theme begins playing full-on, Malcolm grinning widely while floating through the air. Right after he's shown coming down on Dewey, the Sesame Street theme suddenly stops as a huge bang is heard as the moon bouncer deflates, and it's chaos and havoc across the party, all the while How the West Was Won is playing in the background. Especially funny is Hal grabbing a knife that was meant for cutting the cake to puncture through the destroyed bouncer to save the kids. He pulls up a girl, holding the knife up to her face and shrieking "You're okay! Don't be scared!" Then he finds Dewey and reassures him he's all right, but all Dewey can hear is loud squealing due to the explosion deafening him.
• Going in the meta, one of the ways they managed to avert Product Placement was rather cheaply done. They just taped up the "Florida's" part on a Florida's Natural orange juice carton, as seen here.
• Before Lois leaves for Francis' one year "A.A." meeting in... "A.A.", she picks up a vase in the kitchen. After explaining to the boys that it's the last thing she cares about in the house and she doesn't want to worry about it all weekend, she drops it to the floor, smashing it.

  Lois: There. Now I can relax.

• The cold open to "Grandma Sues": Reese stating that he never reads unless it's for school leads Malcolm to the revelation that Reese never read Peanuts. Cut to the driveway, with Reese running up to kick a football Malcolm promises to hold in place.
• Everything about Bryan Cranston's performance, especially if you've watched Breaking Bad.

  "Get me my scream box!"

• Reese gets shown a bunch of war souvenirs by his grandfather. His first reaction to seeing a grenade is to pull the pin, only for the grandfather to scream, "THIS IS LIVE GRENADE!"
• Pilot: Dave accidentally punching Stevie (barely), and Stevie takes advantage of the sympathy card by throwing himself onto the ground, complaining about the "pain"
• Reese learns what breastfeeding is. "My god! Woman are the cows of people!"
  • "We'll come back when your udders are ready."
• When Hal gives his testimony during the episode "Reese Joins the Army (Part 2)". During Hal's trial after getting framed as the mastermind behind his company's massive money laundering operation, Hal uses mementos from his "memory box" to completely destroy the FBI's case against him, including a newspaper clipping that reads "Panic Attack shuts down Haunted House".

  Hal: There was a ghost in my car. Right in my car!

  • And during those episodes, everyone in the family casually giving grief to Malcolm for stealing Reese's girlfriend and driving him to run away.

    Hal: Francis, make sure that Malcolm does not betray me as he is prone to do.

  • When Malcolm and Dewey try to find ways to honor Reese, Dewey realizes the best way to do that was to do what Reese would do, cause mayhem. They decide ruining a lame art fair is the best way. We see them on the roof of a building near the art fair, using a device that drops Jaime's used diapers on people at the fair. Cue the participants screaming in disgust.
• The entire scene with Craig having to deal with an Unsatisfiable Customer who is upset a hot dog chew toy has mustard on it.
• Hal's line following the Great Sussudio Uprising:
• When Hal attends a wild party in "Stereo Store," only for the guy hosting the party to run into the yard, yelling for everyone to hide. "My parents are back from Maui!"
  • Hal ends up cramming inside a tiny playhouse with at least thirty other people. Including Reese, who asks if he can have a ride home.
• The ending of "Malcolm's Job". The entire episode, Hal and the other daycare dads had been betting on their babies doing normal baby stuff, except for the last activity — curling with babies! The reckless child endangerment is made hilarious with how happy Hal is to win. Even funnier, the episode ends on the entire family having witnessed the whole thing while Hal cheers obliviously. His reaction upon been caught is left entirely to the audience's imagination.

  Hal: Pay up, suckers! You treated your babies like they were made of glass. And now...you suffer!
  Francis (to Lois): What are you waiting for?
  Lois: I wanna remember that goofy smile. Nobody's gonna be seeing that for a long time.

---

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Source: https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Funny/MalcolmInTheMiddle

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