History Characters / MalcolmInTheMiddle

-->'''Reese:''' ''Then why would you want empathy?''

--> '''Lois''': How would '''you''' feel if you were that woman whose quiche you salted?''\\
'''Reese''': ''...Fat?''\\
'''Hal''': Reese, do you know what empathy is? Empathy is putting yourself in other people's shoes so you can feel what they do. If you hurt someone, empathy makes you hurt as well.

* BewareTheNiceOnes: When Reese abuses him with the Circle Game too many times, Stevie begins to finally get revenge.

* NoLastNameGiven: An early script for the pilot gave their last name as "Wilkerson" though Francis still wears a Wilkerson name tag in the first episode. In the finale, he has a name badge saying "Francis Nolastname". Also in the last episode, the principal announces Malcolm as the speaker, clearly mouthing "Nolastname" as his voice is drowned out by microphone feedback. A publicist for Fox said that "officially the family's last name should be considered a mystery".

* CoolLoser: Invoked. A boy named Kyle convinces Zoe and Hanson to rally for student council president. Much later Hanson decides to sabotage himself to give the win to Zoe, but it turns out that his ClusterBleepBomb during his speech made him even more popular.

* DistractedByTheSexy: He and Lois have a very active sexual life. Deconstructed however as while it's a good thing that Lois and Hal are still so attracted to each other even after five kids, it turns out that they are 'so' attracted to each other that a big part of why they live close to the poverty line is because they prioritize sex over home maintenance, money, raising their children and virtually everything else. When forced to not have sex for a week their lives dramatically improve in every other way.
** Plus, there’s the fact that their constant love-making is how they ''end up'' with the sons who torture them in the first place.

* DistractedByTheSexy: One of the only healthy things Lois has is her sex life. Deconstructed however as while it's a good thing that Lois and Hal are still so attracted to each other even after five kids, it turns out that they are 'so' attracted to each other that a big part of why they live close to the poverty line is because they prioritize sex over home maintenance, money, raising their children and virtually everything else. When forced to not have sex for a week their lives dramatically improve in every other way.
** Plus, there’s the fact that their constant love-making is how they ''end up'' with the sons who torture them in the first place.

* IrrationalHatred: Lampshaded as such InUniverse. Lois is not exactly mother of the year material and the brothers are definitely not angels, and Francis has completely lost view of how much crap happens in his life that is ''not'' Lois' fault (no matter how much he tries to blame her) until a psychiatrist dares him to in one episode and Francis almost has a breakdown with the resulting logic loop.

* BerserkButton: Do not, under any circumstances or for any reason even hint that you think that Lois is anything except the absolute worst mother in the history of the world. He went from refusing to fight Lavernia to [[WouldHitAGirl socking her in the face]] the moment she mockingly tells him to go back to his mom so she can make him hot cocoa.

* AllegedlyDateless: Malcolm has plenty of dates and girlfriends in the show, (though none of these usually last more than one episode), but he's still always referred to as a pathetic loser with no social life.

* NiceMeanAndInBetween: Out of the four (later five) children:
** Nice: Malcolm and Jamie. Malcolm may be an InsufferableGenius but several episodes show that [[JerkWithAHeartOfGold he still cares deep down]] while TroublingUnChildLikeBehavior aside, Jamie seems to be [[TokenGoodTeammate the nicest of the five kids]].
** Mean: Francis and Dewey. The former is a BigBrotherBully to Reese and Malcolm and the latter is an AnnoyingYoungerSibling who [[TookALevelInJerkass takes a level in jerkass]] as the series goes on.
** In-Between: Reese. He's a BigBrotherBully on his best days and a ChildishOlderSibling on his best but his CharacterDevelopment sees him becoming more of an UnscrupulousHero.
* If you want to divide the family into groups:
** Nice: Malcolm, Jamie and Hal. Malcolm is a JerkWithAHeartOfGold, Jamie is [[TokenGoodTeammate the least bad of the family]] and Hal can be a little short-sighed at times but he still cares deep down.
** Mean: Francis, Lois and Dewey. Francis is a BigBrotherBully, Lois is a [[HairTriggerTemper temperamental]] ControlFreak and Dewey is an AnnoyingYoungerSibling who has displayed some CreepyChild tendencies.
** In-Between: Reese. Like Francis, he's a BigBrotherBully towards Malcolm and Dewey but has more PetTheDog moments compared to other examples of this trope.

* MamaBear: She's overbearing, bossy and manipulative, but if you know what's good for you then you won't harm a hair on her sons' heads. She once ripped off her boss' wig for insulting Dewey.

** [[TheChainOfHarm Lois herself was abused by her own mother]]. Who is implied to be far, ''far'' worse than anything she puts her own kids through, and unlike Lois (who mainly acts this way in order to keep her admittedly rambunctious boys safe), Ida didn't do it to protect Lois, she was just a horrible, spiteful old woman.

** Later in the series, when she starts examining her parenting and relationships with her children. This is primarily focused on Francis. The first time she acknowledges her negative influence is taken after her mother is injured and she's leaving Francis to care for her mother, and she [[spoiler: apologizes to Francis about not being a good mother to him, and that he deserved a more patient parent. She said she hopes she's been a better parent to the other boys,]] but it's unclear whether she was really worse toward Francis or if she just tends to feel guilty once the child in question starts to fly right out. At a later point Piama calls her out, saying "no one is as useless as you think I am!", to which Lois stares for a moment and then agrees. This shows some self-reflection totally lacking in earlier seasons.

* HollywoodAtheist: Refreshingly Averted. She has no qualms with religion (even being willing to join a church community) or with her husband believing in Heaven, but when asked for her honest opinion reveals she believes what's on Earth is all we have.

** In "Grandma Sues", she blows a fuse when her kids are upset about the new baby when she and Hal were just as upset.

* NotSoAboveItAll: Sometimes she ignores or condones the rest of her family's behavior because it benefits her. Like the time the boys framed Craig for a motorbike injury and Lois let them do it to get him out of their house.

* ObnoxiousInLaws: Lois initially don't get along with Piama because of her sudden marriage with Francis, but Lois herself is also horribly bullied by Hal's side of the family. When Hal's siblings trick Lois to exclude her from the family photo, Lois breaks down crying, and right after their family leave the party, she starts to treat Piama with respect and accepts her into the family.
* OOCIsSeriousBusiness: Francis is thrown for a loop when he's hospitalized for appendicitis, expecting that Lois is going to resent that this time he's not responsible for ending up injured...and she's ''nice'' to him. Lois stands up to Commander Spangler trying to assign Francis work while he's ill and gives Francis a sponge bath, mentioning that he must be in a lot of pain. Francis is shocked and calls her out for why she can't be like this all the time. It's revealed Lois draws the line at disciplining her children when they're deathly ill.
* ParentalFavoritism: Somewhat, towards Reese. She explains that this is because she knows Malcolm is smart enough to get out of difficult situations himself and Reese is the one who needs help. It is also implied that her ongoing grudge with Francis will never end, and she knows that no matter what, things will always work out for Dewey.
* ParentsAsPeople: She has a parenting style that, if not abusive, is certainly very ''intense'' and can cause grief to her own kids. However, her own kids are legitimately a handful to deal with, she has her own issues with an outright cruel mom, and she goes out of her way to defend her children from danger.

* GoodParents: Hal is this in the early seasons. He's shown to almost always be there for his sons, making sure to spend time with them both together and individually, and loves teaching them new skills or getting them involved in his hobbies. Starting around season 5, his BumblingDad tendencies get dialled up, and he becomes much more self-obsessed.

* HenpeckedHusband: Lois is pretty clearly the one in charge in their marriage. However, Lois doesn't boss him around for fun, just to make sure that nobody ends up in prison, the hospital, or the morgue. In episodes that have Lois going out of town without the family, he does things like tear down the outer wall of their bedroom, or build a killer robot with a laser-guided bee cannon. For his part, he seems to prefer having her in charge.

* LaserGuidedKarma: He has been victim to this at least twice. Once where his earlier claim that the nads were easy pickings when playing basketball with his sons resulted in him being hit in the crotch, another time was in the episode, Red Dress. He ended up burning Lois's red dress that she intended to wear for their anniversary. As a consequence, he ended up having his anniversary dinner all by himself while waiting for Lois, and presumably burn the house while completely drunk in Lois and the boys' absence. It meant that presumably he'd be busted for both the fires and not telling Lois.

* NiceGuy: While he can be short-sighted, impulsive and childishly selfish, Hal is a well-meaning and loving family man and generally harbors no ill will towards anyone.

* OneHourWorkWeek: Mostly averted, though he is later revealed to have not worked on a Friday in fifteen years. Possibly justified by how horrible the company is and unimportant Hal's contribution is. Justified even further when it turns out that the company Hal worked for purposefully scheduled all their illegal activities for the Fridays he was blowing off for the purpose of using him as a patsy.

* AllegedlyDateless: Like Malcolm, he is a "loser" who is not well liked by anyone, but manages to have several short term girlfriends during later seasons.

* BrilliantButLazy: He's good at cooking and as noted above on BookDumb, he can have a sharp mind for planning out schemes and general creativity, but doesn't want to do anything with school. He seems to be very content with being a janitor.

* TheDitz: After Malcolm give him a book report guaranteed to be an A, his (then) girlfriend, Alison, realizes that ''she'' forgot to do hers, lamenting on how she can't afford another F. Reese's solution? ''Tearing the report in half'', ensuring that "now [they'll] both get Cs".

* DumbassTeenageSon: To quote his own mother: "some people have book smarts, some people have street smarts, you have neither."
* DumbMuscle: Despite his skinny appearance, he's violent and aggressive enough to be the most feared bully in his school, at least in early seasons. Played even more straight as his actor grew; the guy clearly liked to work out.

** He's a bully, but, being the "alpha-bully", he declared the disabled Stevie off-limits for bullies (including himself unless Stevie partakes on the abuse of his own volition). In fact, making sure the other bullies respected his standards eventually became his reason to retain his alpha-bully status.

* KarmicButtMonkey: He's even more of a ButtMonkey than Malcolm. Although, considering that he's a brainless, obnoxious bully and very mean to everyone, he deserves it most of the time.
* KiddieKid: In the later seasons, especially with regards to school and authority figures in general. Despite being over a year older than Malcolm, in many contexts, he seems like Malcolm's several-years-younger brother.

* NiceMeanAndInBetween: The In-Between to Malcolm's and Jamie's Nice and and Francis' and Dewey's Mean. Despite being the TokenEvilTeammate of the family, he got better in later seasons, making him go from a JerkAss BigBrotherBully into a JerkWithAHeartOfGold.

* PlatonicLifePartners: With his army buddy, Abby. He did breifly try to hook up with her but this was more because he thought she was into him than feeling romantic to her.

* TokenEvilTeammate: While the whole family does some bad things and acted amoral at times, Reese is the delinquent of the family and that trait makes him easily the worst (it's very possible he could have gotten this from his older brother, who is also a bit of a delinquent and who Reese looks up to).

* {{Troll}}: Tends to ruin peoples' lives just for kicks.

** Averted. Despite Reese being a delinquent, stupid, slacking D-student who causes more trouble than all his siblings combined (which is saying something), Lois doesn't treat him any worse than she treats Malcolm, the family prodigy. In fact, when a SadistTeacher tries to blackmail her by claiming she'd never risk Malcolm's reputation to save Reeses', rather than dismiss Reese for being a failure, Lois claims she would throw Malcolm under the bus for Reese in a heartbeat — because Malcolm can always take care of himself, while Reese needs to be protected. The sadist teacher's skepticism is destroyed when Lois' firstborn Francis suddenly appears and begs her to be let back in.
** Totally averted with his grandparents, Victor and Ida. They treat him far better than the rest of the family, due to him fitting their idea of manliness by being a strong and cruel bully, and not being intellectual at all.
* VirginityMakesYouStupid: Unlike Malcolm, Reese ends the series as a virgin because of his non-existent social skills with girls or his inability to realize when girls are actually into him. The most glaring example is him believing there's a "waiting period", since he didn't get to consummate his marriage with Raduca because of this made-up rule. He is still a virgin because of his stupidity, or because he is too naïve about these topics since he didn't experience sex yet.

Dewey is the youngest of Hal and Lois' sons - at least until Jamie comes along. Dewey is a quiet, devious and a rather spooky character who is frequently underestimated (or flat-out ignored) by the rest of his family. He became slightly less weird and more assertive as the series went on.

* AppleOfDiscord: Spends an entire episode asking seemingly-innocuous questions to Hal and the other buddies in his acapella group (e.g. "How come you're always in the back?") that immediately breed anger and resentment to the point that they temporarily disband. He also does the same thing to a pair of dancers, who are later seen arguing in the background.
* BigBrotherInstinct: Dewey will do everything in his power to protect and nurture the kids in the special classroom because no one else is willing to. Also to his younger brother, even tricking his own parents to ensure that the younger brother gets the attention from his parents that he himself never got because they were always to busy dealing with their more troublesome kids.
* BigBrotherWorship: For Francis (well, sort of. They barely interacted before he was deported to Military School, so he doesn't have as much personal worship as Malcolm and Reese) and he generally likes him more because he never bullied him as much as Malcolm and Reese did.

* CrouchingMoronHiddenBadass: Not a moron, per say, but certainly weird. And he can definitely bring his A-Game when needed.

Lois and Hal's youngest son, born halfway trough the series. Although obviously extremely young, he seems destined to follow in his brothers' chaotic footsteps.

Lois's mother who has a horrible attitude towards other people.

* BabyTrap: Done hilariously when Mr. Li leave's her at the altar in "Grandma's Boyfriend" after the opioids she was drugging him with wear off, and Ida tries to claim to be pregnant to keep him from leaving, despite her extreme age.

* ForTheEvulz: Most of her cruel and petty actions are done just for the sake of being cruel and spiteful, whenever it's bellitleing, suing or getting her family or others hurt.

* HeroicSacrifice: She does do one thing that's selfless and awesome, when she pushes Dewey out of the way of an incoming truck and loses her leg in the process.

* ParentalFavoritism: Towards Susan. Until Susan called her ungrateful, where she decides that Lois is her favorite child (or at least, the one she hates less).

** She had some sociopathic examples of esteem and self-sacrifice which help explain why Lois still cares more than she should about her. Her biggest moment however came when she saves Dewey from being run over.

* ScrewPolitenessImASenior: Ida is rude and spiteful at every opportunity and often uses behind her age as a justification for it.

Lois's father who is just as bad as his wife.

* ObnoxiousInLaws: Toward Hal whom he frequently trash-talk and humiliate, though this treatment isn't different of how he treats others.

* HatedByAll: Literally nobody in her family likes her even a little bit.

* PlatonicLifePartners: With his army buddy, Abby.

* ActuallyPrettyFunny: When Lois is in her crusade against the mascot of a beer label, who is a black janitor named "Slappy", for being too racist, all of them actually find it very funny, especially when Abe himself inadvertently stands next to the cardboard standee while holding a mop and a six-pack.

* NiceGuy: All of them are very good friends of Hal despite all their differences.

* OneSteveLimit: One of them is named "Steve", like Abe's son "Stevie".

%%* CallingTheOldManOut: Frequently Hal against his dad.

* RichesToRags: Hal grew up in a filthy-rich WASP family, but now works what would be a middle-class job and lives even poorer because of his many kids and all their hospital bills. It's implied that, while he hates always being stressed about money, [[SadisticChoice he'd hate spending time with his emotionally-neglectful father and snobby cousins and siblings ''more'']]. (Mostly because of how horrible the latter are to his wife)

* HenpeckedHusband: Lois is pretty clearly the one in charge in their marriage. However, Lois doesn't boss him around for fun, just to make sure that nobody ends up in prison, the hospital, or the morgue. In episodes that have Lois going out of town without the family, he does things like tear down the outer wall of their bedroom, or build a killer robot with a laser-guided bee cannon.

* ButNotTooBlack: Invoked. When the family try to discourage Ida from living with them, they resort to asking Abe and his friends to scare her off playing the race card against her.
-->'''Piama''': I'd do it, but I'm not dark enough. I just annoy her.

* HollywoodDateless: Malcolm has plenty of dates and girlfriends in the show, (though none of these usually last more than one episode), but he's still always referred to as a pathetic loser with no social life.

* HollywoodDateless: Like Malcolm, he is a "loser" who is not well liked by anyone, but manages to have several short term girlfriends during later seasons.