{"id":371528,"date":"2026-04-09T17:07:08","date_gmt":"2026-04-09T17:07:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/371528\/"},"modified":"2026-04-09T17:07:08","modified_gmt":"2026-04-09T17:07:08","slug":"malcolm-in-the-middle-lifes-still-unfair-review-hulu-sitcom-sequel","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/371528\/","title":{"rendered":"Malcolm in the Middle: Life’s Still Unfair Review: Hulu Sitcom Sequel"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tIn the 2025 film Anaconda<\/a> \u2026<\/p>\n

\n\tWait. Come back.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tMalcolm in the Middle: Life’s Still Unfair\t\t<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t\t\tThe Bottom Line<\/p>\n

\tMore like ‘Malcolm: Portrait of a Serial Killer’ than you expect.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\tAirdate: Friday, April 10 (Hulu)
Cast: Bryan Cranston, Frankie Muniz, Jane Kaczmarek, Christopher Kennedy Masterson, Justin Berfield, Emy Coligado, Keeley Karsten, Vaughan Murrae, Kiana Madeira and Caleb Ellsworth-Clark
Creator: Linwood Boomer\t\t\t<\/p>\n

\n\tThis is eventually going to be a review of Hulu<\/a>\u2018s four-episode revival Malcolm in the Middle<\/a>: Life\u2019s Still Unfair. Promise.<\/p>\n

\n\tSo anyway, in the 2025 film Anaconda, the characters played by Jack Black and Paul Rudd are brainstorming for their $43,000 reboot of 1997\u2019s Anaconda when they realize it isn\u2019t enough to just make a low-budget movie about a giant, Jon Voight-devouring snake. It needs to have a theme. They ponder \u201crevenge\u201d and \u201cgrief\u201d before Black\u2019s Doug has a brainwave: \u201cintergenerational trauma.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI love intergenerational trauma,\u201d replies Rudd\u2019s Griff.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cWho doesn\u2019t love intergenerational trauma?\u201d Doug affirms.<\/p>\n

\n\tI imagine a very similar conversation taking place as Linwood Boomer pondered whether he actually had anything he wanted to say or do with his new reboot of his beloved Fox comedy, Malcolm in the Middle.<\/p>\n

\n\tGrief and revenge probably wouldn\u2019t have made any sense as part of the Malcolm in the Middle brand, though the death of Cloris Leachman\u2019s Ida is featured in the reboot\u2019s first episode.<\/p>\n

\n\tBut intergenerational trauma? It\u2019s a surprisingly plausible thematic underpinning for a show about the often nightmarish upbringing of the genius middle child growing up in a family that was simultaneously wholly dysfunctional and allegedly loving. The torment that Frankie Muniz<\/a>\u2018s Malcolm experienced growing up was the fodder for over 150 chapters of wacky hijinks, and it\u2019s reasonable to assume that it would have some long-term effects on Malcolm\u2019s life.<\/p>\n

\n\tEnter Malcolm in the Middle: Life\u2019s Still Unfair, which picks up with the family 20 years after Fox and viewers parted ways with them.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tI watched nearly all of Malcolm in the Middle, a tonally and aesthetically adventurous comedy by broadcast standards, but unlike some recent sitcom reboots, which have been able to coast on a wave of nostalgia, Life\u2019s Still Unfair is far from comfort food. It\u2019s bizarrely discomfiting. It\u2019s almost audaciously unpleasant.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tIf fact, I\u2019d argue that Life\u2019s Still Unfair exposes the misery beneath the regular jokes about sibling misbehavior, body hair shaving, rollerskating and other domestic misadventures, as well as the hollow banalities of sitcom sentiment. I found it to be interestingly sad, vaguely haunting and not the least bit funny, almost a punishment for wanting a reunion with these characters in the first place.<\/p>\n

\n\tSo if that was the intent\u2026Kudos! Full marks.<\/p>\n

\n\tMy suspicion, though, is that it was only partially the goal. My extreme visceral reaction stems from how effective these new episodes are at one thing \u2014 underlining intergenerational trauma \u2014 but how ineffective they are at finding the reservoir of affection that made the original show simultaneously so exhausting and so likable.<\/p>\n

\n\tLife\u2019s Still Unfair brings us up to speed on Malcolm, who has created a piece of technology that allows grocery stores to easily transfer unsold inventory to charities. The job itself is nearly irrelevant, fulfilling a basic purpose of being both admirable and somehow disappointing, since it exists primarily as a way for Malcolm to avoid his family. He has decided that he doesn\u2019t like the man he is when he\u2019s around his parents (Jane Kaczmarek<\/a>\u2018s Lois and Bryan Cranston<\/a>\u2018s Hal) or his siblings, so he bails on family events feigning charity-based emergencies.<\/p>\n

\n\tMalcolm insists that he\u2019s now happy and healthy, utilizing therapy-speak to raise his teenage daughter, Leah (Keeley Karsten).\u00a0She is the product of a brief liaison at Malcolm\u2019s first college kegger, and Malcolm says that Leah\u2019s mother ran off three days after Leah\u2019s birth. But based on Malcolm\u2019s terrifying intensity when discussing his current happiness, his approach to parenting and, well, everything else, I think it\u2019s fully a part of the subtext of Life\u2019s Still Unfair that Malcolm killed his baby mama. I\u2019d posit that it\u2019s fully a part of the subtext that Malcolm has killed several people.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tAgain, if the intent of Malcolm in the Middle: Life\u2019s Still Unfair was to show how an upbringing like the one experienced by Malcolm could turn a brilliant but sensitive child into a serial killer \u2026 Kudos! Full marks. (Incidentally, I would have liked the recent Scrubs<\/a> revival 15 percent more if they\u2019d had a similar realization about Zach Braff\u2019s JD.)<\/p>\n

\n\tLeah is, herself, a brilliant but sensitive child, which you know because she\u2019s able to address the camera in the same way her dad used to. Malcolm explains that he\u2019s a great single father because he has consistently done the opposite of whatever his parents did. But the way we see it, his parenting style includes passive aggression, gaslighting and lots of guilt, and as a result, Leah seems to have even fewer friends than Malcolm did when we first met him.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tYes, if the intent of Malcolm in the Middle: Life\u2019s Still Unfair was to examine how damaged children become damaging parents themselves \u2026 Kudos! Full marks. Leaving aside the question of whether or not Malcolm killed Leah\u2019s mother and disposed of her body in some ghastly way \u2014 he totally did \u2014 there are legal and logical issues the show can\u2019t be bothered to delve into.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tMalcolm has a fairly new girlfriend, Kiana Madeira\u2019s Tristan. They have no chemistry, but the show likes assuring us that they have sex. Until the third episode reveals literally the only detail about Tristan that we ever learn, nothing about them as a couple makes sense. Then it makes sense, but not in the way the show intends for it to. Unless it does.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tAnd the rest of the family? Christopher Masterson\u2019s Francis and Amy Coligado\u2019s Piama are married and he has a reasonably good job, which makes them very boring. Justin Berfield\u2019s Reese has struggled with failed marriages and failed jobs. But he has a standing date to learn basic skills with Hal, which they both seem to enjoy, and he\u2019s too dumb to be a serial killer. So far.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tCaleb Ellsworth-Clark has replaced Erik Per Sullivan as Dewey, but he appears exclusively via Zoom, a bizarre and annoying choice. Remember Jamie? Me neither. He was a baby on the show and now he\u2019s played by Anthony Timpano and he\u2019s barely around. It\u2019s safer that way.<\/p>\n

\n\tFinally, Lois discovered she was pregnant in the series closer and so there\u2019s now a sixth child, Vaughan Murrae\u2019s Kelly, who is non-binary and smart, but not on a Malcolm level.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tAnyway, Lois wants to make sure that Malcolm comes to the anniversary party she\u2019s throwing, but there are complications \u2014 ones that leave Hal wondering if he and Lois were bad parents, which they definitely were, even if you know this show is going to only temporarily indict them as such before backtracking into unearned sentiment. If you think that said sentiment is supposed to seem unearned, Life\u2019s Still Unfair succeeds fully. But this is where I\u2019m no longer convinced that my reaction aligns with what Boomer and director Ken Kwapis intended.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tKaczmarek and particularly Cranston\u2019s performances remain impeccably balanced between manic and affectionate. Cranston was nominated for three Emmys for Malcolm in the Middle but never won, a grave injustice given Hal\u2019s ego-free, unrestrained physicality. Somehow, Hal remains as prone to pratfalls, nakedness and ostensibly dangerous, agile actorly business as ever, leading to the indisputable conclusion that no matter how great he is as a dramatic actor, Cranston\u2019s status as a peer to the likes of Buster Keaton, Peter Sellers, Jerry Lewis and Jim Carrey may be even more significant. That Kaczmarek is still able to counter and ground Cranston is remarkable in its own right.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tMuniz and Berfield, both former actors who\u2019ve found success in non-acting fields, try to recapture the youthful charm of their juvenile turns. But as delivered by actors currently in their 40s, their performances come across as strained to the point of breaking. This is perfect for my darker interpretation of the series, but less ideal if you think that Life\u2019s Still Unfair is attempting to evoke emotions other than sadness and discomfort.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe two best additions are Karsten, doing a reasonable approximation of the awkward precocity that Muniz delivered expertly when the series started, and Murrae, who has a monologue in the finale that almost singlehandedly salvages the show\u2019s emotionally clumsy climax.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tThe reboot finds little for Masterson to do, but at least he\u2019s generally present and welcomely low-key. Despite the opportunities presented by casting\/recasting the roles of Dewey and Jamie, neither Ellsworth-Clark nor Timpano has been given anything to do. But hey, at least David Anthony Higgins gets to simulate five minutes of explosive diarrhea, reprising his role as Craig in one of several return appearances that left me saying, \u201cReally? You brought them back for THAT?\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tJust I\u2019m not sure if I was supposed to find Life\u2019s Still Unfair as depressing as I did but can\u2019t rule it out, I\u2019m not sure if other viewers will be able to ignore the depressing aspects and find the joy that I was missing in this cast reunion.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tIn the event of success, there are aspects from these four episodes that could be spun off into a regular series, with or without Cranston and Kaczmarek. Personally, at this point I only want to know where Malcolm buried Leah\u2019s mother\u2019s body and how he outsmarted the local police.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In the 2025 film Anaconda \u2026 Wait. Come back. Malcolm in the Middle: Life’s Still Unfair The Bottom…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":371529,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[122122,156,71957,4435,110250,71958,111,139,69,437],"class_list":{"0":"post-371528","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tv","8":"tag-bryan-cranston","9":"tag-entertainment","10":"tag-frankie-muniz","11":"tag-hulu","12":"tag-jane-kaczmarek","13":"tag-malcolm-in-the-middle","14":"tag-new-zealand","15":"tag-newzealand","16":"tag-nz","17":"tag-tv"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/371528","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=371528"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/371528\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/371529"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=371528"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=371528"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=371528"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}