Nick at Night Adds Malcolm in the Middle to Its Lineup

It appears as though the programming department at Nick At Night is finally starting to listen to the viewers. The most common complaint about the network is the lack of variety in the schedule. Longtime viewers will know that we spent summer before last watching The Fresh Prince of Bel Air all night, every night. I still cringe when it comes on. But last month, Nick added The Nanny to its schedule, and on July 5, 2009, it will be adding the half hour comedy, Malcolm In The Middle.

Malcolm In The Middle originally aired on the Fox network, beginning on January 9, 2000 and ending on May 14, 2006. A total of 151 episodes were produced for the seven season run of the show. The story line concerns the lives of the Wilkerson family, and the Malcolm in the title is the third of four boys when the series begins. After the oldest brother is sent away to military school, he becomes the middle child that the title refers to. His mother gives birth to another son late in the series, and in the last episode, it is revealed that she is pregnant with a sixth child.

The show stars Frankie Muniz who plays Malcolm. His character often talks directly to the camera. Already picked on at school, the situatiion becomes much worse after he is recognized as a gifted child with an IQ of 165 and placed in an accelerated class. His friends are primarily the other gifted children, and he has an unusually long succession of girlfriends throughout the series. Muniz, now 23 years old, is best known for this role and for starring as the kid spy Agent Cody Banks in two films. Allthough he announced a break from acting in 2006 to concentrate on racing, he has done some work in the past few years, including a guest role on Criminal Minds on CBS and and appearance in Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story as Buddy Holly. He also completed two movies that were released on dvd last year. In 2005, he competed as a celebrity contestant in a race and began looking for an opportunity to buy into a racing team. Instead, he signed a contract to become a driver for Jensen Motorsports. In 2008, he signed with Pacific Motorsports and competes in the Atlantic Championship.

Malcolm's mother Lois is portrayed by actress Jane Kaczmarek. Lois is depicted as being on the crazy side, and often embarasses her husband and children. She went into labor with her first child during her wedding ceremony. He husband's affluent family calls her the "Lois Common Denominator" as they feel she is beneath their class and that Hal could have done much better. Lois was the first comedic role tackled by Kaczmarek. She won an Emmy nomination as Outstanding Lead Actress In A Comedy Series for each season (7) that the show was on the air, in addition to three Golden Globe nominations, and two Screen Actors Guild Nominations for the same role. She now portrays a judge on the TNT series Raising The Bar.

Malcolm's father Hal is portrayed by Bryan Cranston. Hal has several quirks of his own, including an unnatural fear or snakes and clowns. Whenever his wife is away, he quickly resorts to all sorts of vices, including drinking, smoking, and gambling. He works in a cubicle as a pencil pusher for a large corporation, and is sometimes easy going but at other times flies off the handle with exaggerrated temper tantrums at things the boys have done. Bryan Cranston is by far the most prolific actor on the series. From his days in the theatre straight out of college to his television career which began with a guest starring role on CHIPS in 1982, Cranston has had many television roles. He currently stars in AMC's original series Breaking Bad as a high school teacher that is dying from cancer and who teams with a former student to produce and sell meth in order to provide for his family after he is gone. After being nominated for three Emmys and one Golden Globe for his role in Malcolm In The Middle, he won the Emmy this past September for Outstanding Lead Actor In A Drama Series for Breaking Bad.

Reese, the second oldest of the Wilkerson children, is played by Justin Berfield. Reese is a bully and has an obsession with violence. He is often seen working out to improve his strength. He also is a talented gourmet cook. He is shown to be actually intelligent but he is too busy getting into trouble to apply himself academically. Justin Berfield became an actor at the age of five when he began appearing in commercials. Before Malcolm In The Middle, he also appeared in over 100 episodes of the show Unhappily Ever After, airing on the WB. Therefore, he is the youngest performer to ever appear in more than 100 episodes of two different television series. Berfield is the co-creator of a production company called J2Pictures/J2TV and is currently producing a new series for Fox.

The fourth son is Dewey, played by Erik Per Sullivan. Dewey has an intelligence much on the same level as Malcolm but usually downplays it so that his parents do not make the plans for his future life that they do Malcolm's. He spends much of his time getting picked on by his older brothers, but can also be manipulating and devious in his own right. Erik Per Sullivan, now 17, has been acting since 1998. His latest role was of the title character Mo, in the film of the same name. It is the story of a teenager coping with Marfan Syndrome, a genetic condition that primarily affects the heart and circulatory system.

Francis, the oldest brother, is played by Christopher Masterson. He is a series regular for the first five years and then only seen occassionally for the last two. He does not live at home, having been sent off to military school because of his terrible behaviour. He is in constant conflict with his mother throughout the series. Christopher Masterson, now age 29, is the brother of That 70's Show actor Danny Masterson. Both brothers are practicing Scientologists. Masterson has worked steadily in both television and films since 1988 and currently co-stars with his brother in the 2009 film, Made For Each Other.

The youngest brother Jamie was born in 2003 during season four. Like his older brothers before him, he is more than a handful, refusing to mind his mother, getting in trouble in nursery school, etc. He is played by twin brothers James and Lukas Rodriguez. The child never speaks during the times that he appears on the show. The brothers appeared on the CBS series Without A Trace this past season.

The regular cast was supported by numerous guest stars, possibly one of the best known is Hayden Panettiere, who can currently be found as the cheerleader Claire on Heroes on NBC. Christopher Lloyd portrayed Hal's father, and Robert Loggia and Cloris Leachman had recurring guest roles as Lois' parents. Leachman was nominated for an Emmy for every year that she made an appearance on the show and she won in 2002 and again in 2006. Actress Betty White also appeared as a woman that Lois' father was leading a double life with. The show won a total of seven Emmys during its run and also won a Grammy for the title song, Boss of Me, recorded by They Might Be Giants.

The series is shot on film, unlike many sitcoms which use videotape. There is no studio audience or laugh track. There is a whooshing sound whenever a scene changes, and the sound of a slamming door at the end of each segment. The show also employs sound effects. The early seasons focused primarily on the title character but in later seasons the storylines expanded to better incorporate the entire family. One running gag on the show is that the last name of the family is never spoken, and we only know it is Wilkerson as it was on a name tag worn by Malcolm.

The show began its run with a viewership of over twenty million. It gradually eroded until the final season where it had dropped off to 3.5 million, although the series finale drew more than twice those numbers. Much of the drop in ratings is due to the fact that Fox constantly moved the show to give the time slots to new series, a mistake networks seem to make over and over with successful shows.

Nick At Night is expanding its currently programming block time slot by an hour, and will begin at 8:00pm est instead of the current 9:00pm start time. It would be nice if they took the time to actually plan out the viewing schedule, and to show this series in the correct episodic order, instead of the haphazard way they show their current family comedies. At least it is another viewing option for a network that really is in need of a programming department overhaul.

On the net: wikipedia.org
imdb.com