It is difficult to convey exactly how exciting the arrival of “Malcolm in the Middle” to the television schedule is, and not just because it is — praise the TV deity — a comedy without a laugh track.
About and mostly from the perspective of a supersmart pre-adolescent boy in a family of lesser talents, this series has the potential for enduring greatness. Already, in its first three episodes (it debuts in its regular time period, at 7:30 p.m. Sunday, WFLD-Ch. 32), it plays as fresh and funny as anything on TV.
Sharp-edged but never mean-spirited, this affectionate family portrait is “The Wonder Years” with eyes more narrow than dewy, “The Simpsons” with real, and, by virtue of their flesh and blood, more realistic, characters, “A Christmas Story” set in the present and not limited to the holiday season.
Perhaps it is closest in spirit to the Harry Potter books, for Malcolm, like Harry, is an extreme and exceptionally well-drawn representation of the feeling that every kid — every human — has at one time or another, of being different. He’s even tossed, reluctantly, into a subsection of his school, Krelboyne, that is the American equivalent of Harry Potter’s Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.
Do not imagine, however, that this is for children only. The combination of title and subject matter, one fears, will scare off adults in the same way that ABC’s “Sports Night” scares off women, although “Malcolm in the Middle” is certainly preferable to creator-executive producer Linwood Boomer’s admitted second choice, “Fighting in Underpants.”
Malcolm is a universally sympathetic character, thanks in part to child actor Frankie Muniz’s own gifts. The yearning for normalcy and the prison of being pegged as “special” are painted on his open face, the standard pre-teen skepticism failing to mask his fear.
And the show around him is packed with immediately vivid characterizations, even in supporting roles (Catherine Lloyd Burns as his teacher, for instance), and subtle, sophisticated humor, especially in the piercing observations of contemporary family life.
The mom’s (Jane Kaczmarek) lecture to Malcolm and his brothers Sunday about how lucky they are to have legs, instead of “scoot(ing) yourselves around town on a skateboard with your hands,” is a dead-on example of parental overkill, befitting a woman whose constant low-grade frenzy is as valid a response to having four boys as is the jovial, hollow detachment of her husband (hilariously played by Bryan Cranston).
The fake-sleep duel Malcolm’s parents conduct at the beginning of Jan. 16’s second episode, each attempting to get the other to take responsibility for the obvious and escalating kid crisis occurring outside their room — “leave the squirrel alone and get the fire extinguisher” is one line they pretend not to hear — is perfectly choreographed and perfectly true.
And in Jan. 23’s great episode — which simply, almost elegantly dances back and forth between dad waiting at a restaurant to celebrate his wedding anniversary and mom caught back home trying to determine which of her three youngest boys burned the dress she was going to wear — she offers each kid in turn a soda in an attempt to get him to squeal.
“Go ahead,” she says, pushing the beverage tantalizingly closer. “It’s a name brand.”
The absence of a laugh track and Todd Holland’s relentlessly imaginative direction serve only to make the humor more resonant, emphasizing Malcolm’s vague but growing understanding of the world. Holland shoots the soda can so it almost fills the lens, emphasizing its allure, and he gives us a shot from above showing Malcolm, newly pegged as “gifted,” eating lunch at school with all the kids now afraid to go near him.
“Around here,” Malcolm says in voiceover, “being smart is exactly like being radioactive.”
Muniz manages, with help from the show’s creators, to make even the overused technique of talking directly to the camera pay off. About to be beaten by the bully he stands up to, he turns, midcrisis, to the lens and, referring back to the skateboard lecture, says, “I keep trying to run, but my legs won’t work. Mom was right; they are important.”
He’s the reluctant nouveau nerd, the kid who was happy enough being beaten on by older brother Reese (Justin Berfield), passing on the torment to younger brother Dewey (Erik Per Sullivan) and idolizing troubled oldest brother Francis (Christopher Kennedy Masterson), a teenager away at military school whom the producers still manage to make an essential part of the show.
That this is in part the work of director Holland (“The Larry Sanders Show”) is not a surprise. But the resume of writer-creator Boomer, while respectable, suggests nothing like this. If you followed “Little House on the Prairie” credits, his name may sound familiar; he played Adam Kendall, teacher then husband to the blind Ingalls sister, Mary. Since then, he has written and produced for series including “Night Court,” “3rd Rock from the Sun,” and the underrated “Townies,” and he says “Malcolm” was drawn largely from his own childhood.
The fact that each of the three episodes Fox offered for preview is better than the last — with Sunday’s debut being only very good thanks to a false note involving the mom being topless around the kids — bodes well for its future. The fact that it is on Fox, which handles live-action comedies as well as Robert Downey Jr. handles rehab opportunities, is less encouraging.
“Malcolm in the Middle” deserves every chance to survive and thrive. It has, in the early going, the feeling of what TV comedy has been building up to. Here’s hoping this bravura performance can be sustained.
