Line #13 Fridge/MalcolmInTheMiddle


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3	[[folder:Fridge Brilliance]]
4	* How come they don't ''actually'' torture Jamie? Because for most of the series, Jamie's an infant or a toddler. The boys have a standard that they don't torture babies and infants. This also can be taken as maturity; since Francis tortured Malcolm and Reese the way they tortured Dewey; but as the boys matured, they decided to stop torturing their brothers.
5	** Not to mention, in "Baby" they say they want to be better siblings.
6	* I forgot the name of the episode but remember when Malcolm accidentally injured the racist and abusive old woman over a baseball? She at one point asked him: "What are you? Swedish? Apache?" and Malcolm responds "I really don't know". This is a reference to how the director at one point tried to come up with a surname for the family but decided to try to make them as culturally ambiguous as possible.
7	* The DysfunctionJunction may have made Malcolm miserable, but on the other hand if his life was easy, he'd probably be a jerk. So basically the show is a rather sentimental commentary on the modern family and is still funny.
8	** But he is a jerk (especially in later seasons).
9	** I think the above troper was pointing out he'd be a bigger jerk as an adult instead of (eventually) mellowing out and deciding to use his talents for good.
10	*** Hell, the episode "Future Malcolm" gave a glimpse at how big a jerk he may have become.
11	*** The finale told us what he was destined to become: he would grow up to be the best president of the United States after living a tough life that made him genuine and honest in the long run.
12	*** Or that was just the delusional whim of his mother.
13	*** But his family lives a hard life and they're manipulative, irresponsible jerks!
14	*** Yes, but they're rather unintelligent, have no high-range marketable skills, and come from unsupportive families, so their jerkiness festered for decades in their stagnant situation with no opportunities to get ahead. Malcolm, on the other hand, is a genius -- and a socially adept and streetsmart genius with common sense at that -- who got into Harvard and whose family, while dysfunctional, will support him come hell or high water, and can therefore probably accomplish anything he sets his mind to. It's actually common (I think it's actually a named psychological phenomenon) for very driven and passionate of adults to have started as angry whiny teenagers before they got their hands on an opportunity to pursue their goals, since being angry and whiny (more than usual for a teenager, that is) is often a sign of being unable to act on one's desires due to being repressed or boxed in by one's environment or relationships.
15	*** Except Lois is too much of a ControlFreak who will insist on micro-managing him every step of the way (she even explicitly said she was going to pick his wife for him), which will inevitably blow up in his face (she has [[BullyingADragon picked fights she couldn't win]] at least twice and learned ''nothing'' from it) and either ruin his life beyond repair, or cause him to snap and disown her.
16	* In the episode "Polly in the Middle", when Polly was being forced to choose between Abe and Craig as a boyfriend, she said "If society wasn't so strung up, I wouldn't need to make this decision." This implies that for her, it'd be ideal to have an intimate relationship that consists of three people, a practice also known as a "Polyamory". Could her name, "Polly" be a stealth pun on her romantic tendencies?
17	* During Hal's last song in "Dewey's Opera", he sings the line, "You know how I panic when I see a monkey." It's most likely that he's had this fear since the Season 3 episode "Monkey", where he had to confront Craig's crazed helper monkey.
18	* When Malcolm and Reese threaten to make Dewey's life as miserable as possible in order to keep him out of their visit to an amusement park, it doesn't work, and they end up bringing him along anyway. The final episode reveals that Dewey had the nuclear option for if they were to actually follow through.
19	* In the Finale, Craig learns of the boy's Nuclear Option when he attended Dewey's ceremony, but it's suggested that the boys trust Craig not to say anything. He probably knows better than to reveal it because the boys will make his life a living hell, especially his new roommate Reese, and/or Lois will get so nuclear angry, a level not seen in the series before, all of which Craig knows are possibilities, given his history with the family.
20	** It's also entirely possible that Craig doesn't really know exactly what the nuke option is. All he knows that whatever it is, it kept the boys in line for years, and given the trouble they caused, Craig must know that it's best to keep his mouth shut.
21	* Malcolm isn't the only genius in the family. It shows that his brothers are also geniuses. Dewey is a musical genius and Reese is a culinary genius.
22	* Many questioned how Hal managed to keep his job for 15 long years without going to work on every Friday, no employer in the world would ever allow such an employee, at least at Hal's level, to keep working for them. However, as a few pointed out, given how corrupted the company really was, it's entirely possible that they knew all along that Hal wasn't showing up, making him the perfect fall guy in case it all went to hell. If there were no records of him showing up for work once a week, then you can make up any story about where he was and what he was doing. No employees would question it since he was never around, only those in charge, Hal never questioned it since he's still getting paid and still had his free days. It just never occurred to anyone, not even Hal, that all the days he's been missing were Fridays, meaning that because he had a box full of evidence to back him up, the entire plan went belly up the moment Malcolm figured that out.
23	** Hal is salaried, not hourly. Salaried employees do not "clock in" or otherwise make accountings of their time. Depending on his responsibilities and how well he covers his ass, Hal could very easily get away with skipping work every Friday for 15 years and his employer never notice. Sure, they would figure out he does 20% less work than anyone in his department and deny him raises and promotions accordingly, but given how poorly-run the company was its easy to believe he simply flew under the radar.
24	* Lois knew Malcolm well even at a young age. When she said she was willing to sell Malcolm down a river to save Reese because she knows Malcolm would be completely fine, she meant it. When Herkabe's first decision was to add a ranking system to the gifted class, and Malcolm was thrown under the bus by everyone to prove a point, Malcolm effortlessly broke the system, and everyone else, simply by putting his mind to it. Once Malcolm puts his mind into something, he is a force to be reckoned with... Just like his mother.
25	* While it was funny to see the Officer being completely fine seeing Hal gagged and tied up in Abe's car alongside his friends to get his teeth fix, there is logical reasoning behind it. Since it's either a small community, or the kids' actions (mainly Reese and/Francis) are notorious with law enforcement, the Officer more or less recognizes Hal in one form or another and figured whatever is going on, it's just a natural occurrence with the family, so he paid no mind to it.
26	* In the cold open for "Billboard", it's completely believable to Lois and Hal that Jamie could've written that; they've already got one genius son, it's not farfetched that Jamie might be one, too.
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30	* In the finale, Malcolm goes along with his family's plan to try and install him as president, in the hopes of getting someone there who knows a life of hardship and can do something about it. It is pretty sweet... until you realize that Malcolm's family's hardships are largely due to their own self-destructive tendencies and irresponsible behavior. They believe screwing over their son's best chance for a happy life and then guilt-tripping him into saving their asses from themselves instead of being more responsible is a good thing.
31	** It gets worse when you figure out that Lois will not relent in controlling Malcolm and pushing him towards this goal. Given how incredibly difficult it will be to achieve and not factoring the endless number of potential obstructions, Malcolm will likely be left with feelings of extreme inadequacy and deep resentment towards his family, Lois in particular, who will likely see him as a disappointment. Who's to say that a clock tower and high powered sniper rifle are not in Malcolm's future? Or worse, what if he wins and has that same insanity? [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b1VHSQV0yn8 Hallelujah, Hallelujah]].
32	*** Adding to the nightmare? Malcolm lacks a long-form birth certificate, meaning that even if he TRIES to run for high office, this will create massive hurdles that prevent him from achieving this goal his mother is determined to force him to achieve.
33	*** This troper had to order a new birth certificate because of reasons and all it cost me was 25 bucks and two forms of non-photo ID or one form of photo ID. Is there a reason he couldn't get a birth certificate?
34	** I'd say the more likely outcome would be Malcolm pulling a Francis and cutting his family off as soon as he can. Still quite sad (especially since it'll probably drive a wedge between him and his brothers), but I imagine Lois's big dream for him would be pretty much screwed once Malcolm meets a fellow gifted kid. If anything I'm more worried about ''Reese'', given his status as TheUnfavorite and the implications throughout the series that he has some sort of untreated mental illness.
35	* At one point, Lois and Hal find out that since Malcolm tests so high on college aptitude tests, some credit card companies offer him free cards and accounts. Malcolm has enough sense to not use them. Hal then steals the cards to pay for a family skiing trip, without Malcolm's knowledge or permission. And he'll never be able to pay it off.
36	** Not really. With ''very'' limited exceptions, a minor cannot legally enter into contracts, and that would include the terms of a credit card. Not to mention that if once the judge found out that the credit-card company had just opened the accounts and given him the cards without even determining his eligibility or getting a signature, they'd be laughed out of the courtroom. (There is precedent for this; Amex ended up losing a court case where it turned out that they'd kept giving additional cards to a woman who lived in a trailer with no visible means of support. Every time she maxed out her card, they gave her another one, and the judge ruled that they should've known better and that they'd have to just eat the loss. And this was someone who ''could'' legally enter into contracts.)
37	* Malcolm wants to keep Dewey out of the Krelboyne class so he has Reese do Dewey's tests. And this gets Dewey in the 'emotionally disturbed' Busey class. So if Reese's answers landed him there, does that mean Reese needs serious psychological help (moreso than the rest of the family)? Presumably, that class was for kids with some serious special needs (even though they weren't getting anything good out of the special class until Dewey joined it).
38	** It has been hinted Reese does have serious problems, for instance his love of causing mindless destruction and inability to see any consequences of it on even himself.
39	** It's more that a child of Dewey's age was having Reese like thoughts. If you saw a 17 year old drawing a picture of someone being stabbed with lots of blood coming out, you'd think it was odd, but nothing more. But if you saw a 10 year old drawing the same picture, you would assume there was something wrong with the child.
40	** Actually, school systems these days will send you into all sorts of counseling and may even suspend or expel a kid who's past the age of 17 for drawing those kind of pictures. Though, that's besides the point. The previous troper is right... only when it comes to anyone looking at the picture who isn't a teacher.
41	* The Red Dress shows Hal smoking. Except later episodes establish that they quit. EarlyInstallmentWeirdness? Actually - Hal was doing it when he ''knew'' that nobody else was around. He could have easily been sneaking one or two in or just near the end of quitting at the time, since he's never shown smoking again. He just replaces it with coffee.
42	* Episode 2 has Lois catch the boys doing something embarrassing. As she video records it as part of a punishment, she claims that "[their] grandma and all [their] friends" would love to see the tape at their next birthday party. The brilliance kicks in when we remember how vindictive, cruel, and hateful towards her family Ida is. Of course she'd love to see the boys embarrassed in front of all their friends.
43	** Cycle of abuse horror right here.
44	* In one episode, Malcolm takes up a babysitting job that seems like a piece of cake, only to get creeped out and leave when he finds out that the parents have been recording him going about the house. While having security cameras in your house for a babysitter isn't ''too'' creepy by today's standards (after all, you'd want to make sure the person you hired isn't trying any funny business), the names of the tapes Malcolm finds ("Malcolm Goes to the Bathroom" and "Malcolm Touches Himself in Weird Places") certainly are. And considering that the kids Malcolm was meant to be babysitting were conveniently already asleep by the time he got to the house, that begs the question...was that actually a babysitting job, [[PaedoHunt or a ruse in order to get footage of a teenage boy in sensitive situations]]?
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Context Fridge / MalcolmInTheMiddle