“Malcolm in the Middle” is hands-down one of the best sitcoms of the 2000s. It took the idea of a dysfunctional family, seen plenty of times before, but made it far more realistic. The central family with Malcolm (Frankie Muniz) literally in the middle of everything genuinely struggles to keep a roof over their heads. The kids regularly get into trouble, much to the chagrin of the overbearing family matriarch Lois (Jane Kaczmarek) and her far more easygoing husband Hal (Bryan Cranston). 

Sitcoms using laugh tracks was already on the way out by the time “Malcolm in the Middle” came around, but its exclusion in the show allowed for more experimental storytelling. Characters weren’t as confined to the same spaces. You could have intersecting stories with the main family and then their troublemaking oldest son, Francis (Christopher Masterson), at military school and then various other locales. There was genuinely nothing else like it at the time, which makes it so exciting to see “Malcolm in the Middle” getting revived even without original Dewey actor, Erik Per Sullivan.

The series was on for seven seasons and never saw a dive in quality. This is one show that was consistently solid all the way through, but we’re still dedicated to finding the 15 best “Malcolm in the Middle” episodes that had us bursting with laughter.

Throughout “Malcolm in the Middle,” the kids cause Lois a tremendous amount of grief. She’s constantly angry, but it’s usually not without reason. The boys arguably did one of the meanest things to Lois in “Mrs. Tri-County” where they enter her into a beauty pageant to humiliate her. Once Hal learns of the scheme, he insists that they can never let Lois know their true intentions, and they all work together to give her the best shot at winning. And surprise! She does!

“Mrs. Tri-County” is a great “Malcolm in the Middle” episode because it brings out the best in everyone. If the boys were always this supportive of their mother, it’s completely possible that they would have a pretty harmonious household. It’s especially funny to get this revelation so late in the show’s run during season 6 that so many misadventures could’ve been avoided had the kids just supported their mother sooner. 

If “Malcolm in the Middle” ran for one more season, Bryan Cranston would’ve needed to turn down “Breaking Bad.” It sounds like it would’ve been a tragedy, but Hal is honestly one of the best sitcom dads that we feel like it would’ve been fine to get another season of the bumbling patriarch. And “Hal’s Christmas Gift” is a perfect encapsulation of what makes him so great. 

The Christmas episode sees everyone agree to provide homemade gifts this year, and the boys knock it out of the park. Hal feels like his present wasn’t going to match up, so he desperately packs everyone in the car to bide his time while he thinks of what he could possibly get them. There’s a part where everyone first goes out to the yard to see Hal’s gift, and he picks up a garden hose before immediately tossing it aside. It shows how Hal has absolutely no logic to anything and just kind of hopes everything will work out in the end.

How many sitcoms can do their own version of Akira Kurosawa’s “Rashomon?” The season 7 episode, “Blackout,” sees what happens when a blackout occurs in the family home while Reese (Justin Berfield) helps Hal make a romantic dinner while Malcom tries to sneak three European girls into the abode. We get multiple different versions of the same events, each time resetting to see a different character’s perspective.

With the format presented in “Malcolm in the Middle,” there’s more wiggle room to play with structure and have a more grounded sense of humor that doesn’t have to play to over-the-top one-liners. It also opens the doors for actors to play with more subtle acting, as rewatches allow you to glean what everyone is really up to. And unlike the ending to “Rashomon,” there’s a very unambiguous finale to all of this, but it still makes for fun viewing. 

“Opera” gets some bonus points for sheer production value. Hal and Lois get a new bigger bed, causing friction in their marriage because Hal thinks Lois wants to sleep further away from him. Dewey becomes aware of this conflict, and in secret, he writes a full-blown opera about the turmoil caused by this bed. We see Dewey’s vision of his masterpiece, complete with elaborate sets and costumes and a full-blown cast of background dancers. It’s unclear how much this episode cost compared to others, but they really went the extra mile to bring such a silly performance to life. 

Dewey really becomes an MVP of “Malcolm in the Middle” in its later seasons. He gradually begins discovering he’s just as smart as Malcolm but in a different ways. He’s incredibly creative, and some of the best episodes come from Dewey exploring his musical gifts. “Opera” is the pinnacle of this idea to where we’d gladly pay for a ticket to see “The Marriage Bed.”

“Malcolm in the Middle” doesn’t get enough credit for being a socially conscious show. This most often materializes (often under the surface) in how the family constantly struggles to make ends meet despite having two working parents, showcasing how impossible it is to escape financial insecurity. Season 6’s “Billboard” takes a more overt approach another political topic, social activism, in a hilarious manner. 

Malcolm, Reese, and Dewey seek to graffiti a billboard and have the female model say something filthy. When they get caught, Malcolm changes the plan to make the woman say, “I want respect” so that they can pass themselves off as socially-conscious do-gooders. Of course, Lois sees through the ruse and know they’re just trying to get out of trouble. The boys’ co-opt the idea of female liberation and dissecting the male gaze, but none of it actually means anything to them. It becomes a thrilling tug-of-war as Lois has to find a way to work within the confines of the police and feminist protestors to get her boys down so that she can deliver the mother of all punishments. 

“Malcolm in the Middle” has a perfectly suitable pilot, even if it spends a lot of time simply establishing the world. But the second episode, “Red Dress,” truly gets into what the heart of the sitcom will be about. Lois is set to meet up with Hal for a romantic dinner when she discovers her beloved red dress is destroyed. She instantly blames it on one of the boys and misses the dinner so that she can torment them into telling her who’s responsible, with all of them insisting they had nothing to do with it. 

It’s an ideal showcase for Lois, showing just how depraved she can be right from the start. There’s really no Flanderization with her character, as she was always completely dedicated to the idea of punishing her kids if they messed up in the slightest. Not only that, but it has a genuinely great plot twist of who was really behind the burned dress. 

Lois gets on the boys’ cases all the time, so it’s easy to forget the lengths she would go to in order to keep them safe. That’s what makes season 7’s “Lois Strikes Back” a blast. Four girls play a prank on Reese, forcing him to fall into a depression, so Lois makes it her mission to ruin the girls’ lives in turn. Malcolm ends up becoming the voice of reason once he figures out what his mother’s doing. 

“Malcolm in the Middle” frequently makes Lois the bad guy, but here, she’s the one who gets to break bad. If nothing else, this episode is worth checking out against as it features one of Oscar-winner Emma Stone’s earlier performances around the same time she had a goofy cameo on “The Suite Life of Zack and Cody.” With the show nearing the end of its run, it feels right to see where the boys get their destructive, rebellious nature from. 

The final episode of “Malcolm in the Middle” might not have made SlashFilm’s list of the best TV finales ever, but it definitely deserves an honorable mention. It’s a funny parting gift from a series that knew how to be hilarious, thought-provoking, and downright heartwarming. Malcolm struggles with giving his valedictorian speech while deciding whether to attend Harvard or immediately pursue a high-paying job. Lois forces him toward Harvard, and when Malcolm lashes out, she reveals her grand plan all along was to get him to go to Harvard and eventually become President of the United States because since he grew up poor, he’d finally do what’s right by poor, working-class Americans. 

It’s a big swing but one that ultimately pays off, leading to a fantastic final scene of Malcolm and Reese chatting on the phone, both working as janitors (Malcolm at Harvard, Reese at his old high school). Everything shows that behind all of the yelling and punishments, all Lois and Hal really wanted was what’s best for their kids, and admittedly, everyone’s on a decent path, even Reese who can hold down any job at all. Could you have imagined such a thing when “Malcolm in the Middle” first started?

Sometimes you just want pure silly nonsense out of “Malcolm in the Middle,” which is why “Rollerskates” is a highlight. Malcolm asks Hal to teach him to become a better skater, only to learn just how seriously Hal takes such a task. This leads to one of the best moments of the series by far when Hal skates to “Funky Town,” but even that doesn’t please Malcolm, who calls Hal a bad word. Hal’s punishment for Malcolm involves calling him every swear word in the book, which takes a toll on both of them over time. 

The episode’s filled with great gags, but it also expertly shows what a different kind of parent Hal is. Lois would’ve screamed at Malcolm for calling her something bad, but Hal makes his son double down. And by the end, Malcolm does learn to skate, even if it doesn’t necessarily look “cool.”

If you ever wanted “Malcolm in the Middle” by way of “Memento,” season 4’s “Forwards Backwards” is for you. Malcolm’s birthday is coming up, and to get the money he so desperately wants, he needs to let go of an ever-escalating prank war with Reese he’s been in for a while. Throughout the story, the plot will flashback to various points of their prank war until we see what caused it to begin with — Malcolm eating one of Reese’s blueberries.

It’s an incredible presentation of the sort of plots “Malcolm in the Middle” could do that other sitcoms simply wouldn’t dare. The story’s presented in a non-chronological order, effectively giving us two stories running concurrently of Malcolm and Reese in the present messing with each other and then seeing how they’ve treated one another in the past. And at the end of the day, the episode shows that most of Malcolm’s problems stem from his own actions. 

Remember what we just said about Malcolm being the source of his own misery? That theory gets put to the test in “Malcolm Holds His Tongue” where he decides to finally shut up for once when people get on his nerves. Instead of being argumentative toward Lois or his basketball coach, he takes their lashings with good humor, and amazingly, his life gets way easier … provided you forget about him getting an ulcer from all the stress he’s swallowing. 

It’s fun to see a tamer side of Malcolm, but this episode truly shines thanks to its B-plot involving Hal taking up speed-walking. Hal regularly finds little hobbies to occupy his time, and this one involves him donning a ridiculous speed-walking outfit and getting into a rivalry with the local speed-walking star, who’s more of a common jogger than anything else. “Malcolm Holds His Tongue” comes along far enough in the show’s run to where we understand how everyone operates, and now, the creatives can have fun upending expectations. 

“Company Picnic” is a two-parter that has a blast putting the central family in a new setting and seeing just how badly everything can go wrong. The picnic in question is for Hal’s company, who’s worried about making a good first impression with his boss (who assumes Hal is actually his boss). Malcolm gets caught up with a girl not reciprocating his crush while Reese becomes friends with another bully, and Dewey goes nuts for candy. It’s an ideal distillation of everyone’s characters, making it something of a platonic ideal of what a great “Malcolm in the Middle” episode should be. 

The real thing that differentiates this installment from others is the copious number of celebrity cameos. “Malcolm in the Middle” never relied on such cameos so heavily before (or really after), but here, you have Susan Sarandon, Christina Ricci, Stephen Root, Magic Johnson, and Tom Green. Even with all this early 2000s starpower, the focus of the episode remains on the family all trying not to make a mess of things and failing spectacularly. 

“Water Park” is the season 1 finale, and a perfect sign of how “Malcolm in the Middle” would have a lengthy life ahead of it. For starters, this episode probably has the best cold open of the entire series where the boys are hanging out in their room when Hal bursts in, offering to pay one of them if they’re willing to take the fall for something he did that upset Lois. We never learn what exactly Hal did, but that’s what makes it so great.

Later, the parents take Malcolm and Reese, engaged in a prank war, to a water park while Dewey stays home with a babysitter due to an ear infection. Malcolm and Reese, as expected, ruin everything. To their credit, Hal and Lois are trying to be good parents, giving their boys a nice vacation (and one they can afford), but their own hubris gets in the way. Dewey’s dance with his babysitter, Mrs. White, played by the superb Bea Arthur, set to ABBA’s “Fernando” is just fantastic. The show’s firing on all cylinders with this one, and it only gets better from here.

“Traffic Jam” is the sequel to “Water Park” despite taking place in different locales. Now, the family’s driving home from the park, but they get stuck on the road when traffic comes to a standstill. What’s amazing about this episode is that it doesn’t stick with repeating the same beats from before. Malcolm hangs out with a girl while everyone’s stuck. Reese leads an army of kids against an ice cream man reluctant to hand out any ice cream, and Hal ponders whether his life has meaning. 

“Traffic Jam” is the philosophical cousin to “Water Park.” If “Water Park” is all about exploring these characters’ ids, “Traffic Jam” examines their superegos. That includes Lois trying to get the cars moving again, but for once, everything here is outside of her control to fix. She can’t yell her way out of a car accident someone else caused. Hal’s introspective nature this episode is caused by him realizing that if he didn’t stop to tie his shoe, he could’ve been the one in the accident causing the back-up. Together, the episodes make for a perfect distillation of how “Malcolm in the Middle” can do a variety of plots superbly. 

With all that said, this show doesn’t get any better than “Bowling.” At first, you might think an episode about the characters going out to bowl couldn’t be the best of anything, but “Malcolm in the Middle” proves why it’s the 2000s sitcom GOAT. The episode presents two different versions of Malcolm and Reese bowling with their friends — one where Hal chaperones and the other where Lois is there. 

“Bowling” isn’t just the best “Malcolm in the Middle” episode ever; it’s one of the most creative sitcom episodes of its decade. The episode weaves seamlessly between the two realities, juxtaposing the pros and cons of the boys going with each adult. For instance, Malcolm’s a pretty good bowler when Hal’s around, but with Lois criticizing his every move, he can’t hit a pin to save his life. It’s wonderfully shot and gets deeper into these characters that most other storylines just don’t allow. You can stream all these “Malcolm in the Middle” episodes on Hulu to remember why this show deserves so much more love.