By FIONA RAE
There was a point during Malcolm in the Middle last week when I was thinking, "Damn, Lois, why don't you just take a parenting course? Or at least read a book."
Or maybe the Herald's new columnist, relationship counsellor Suzanne Innes-Kent, should have written this review, because she would probably not need to look anywhere else for subject matter.
The point I'm thinking of is when Lois (Malcolm's mum, played by Jane Kaczmarek) goes into her third (at least) artery-popping tirade at her errant sons, exactly the sort of haranguing that puts you off communicating at all with your parents.
That, it has to be said, is Malcolm in the Middle at its worst. Merely a quirky sitcom about a (here's that word again) dysfunctional family.
But then, as Tolkien says, "days that are good to spend are soon told about, and not much to listen to; while things that are uncomfortable, palpitating, and even gruesome, may make a good tale."
And so it was at the water park last week as Malcolm's (Frankie Muniz) heart palpitated at the thought of the huge water tube, "The Liquidator," and the fighting between him and Reese (Justin Berfield) reached uncomfortable levels.
Perhaps it wasn't the best episode to begin with - last week's episode was actually the final of season one in the United States and the Fox network launched a "Where's Dewey?" campaign over the hiatus, a clever way of keeping the show in viewers' minds.
Dewey (Erik Per Sullivan), the youngest of the clan, having waved his babysitter goodbye in an ambulance, went balloon-chasing and became lost.
This followed a pleasant episode where his rich inner life was finally given wings through the attentions of Mrs White (Bea Arthur, in an award-nominated guest spot).
The show that Malcolm in the Middle is most compared to is The Simpsons - and it was branded as a kind of live-action version by its US publicity campaign. It screens after The Simpsons in America and on its debut pulled off the biggest ratings since The Simpsons in 1990.
But where Matt Groening and his writers can tackle issues not only within the family but without, and throw in any number of contemporary references, Malcolm sticks to the nuclear family based on creator Linwood Boomer's own childhood.
That would make Boomer Malcolm, the kid in the middle since oldest brother Francis (Christopher Kennedy Masterson) was sent to military school as a disciplinary measure.
Malcolm has been found to have a genius IQ when he'd rather be normal, has a mother who walks around topless and who shaves Malcolm's father (Brian Cranston) all over before they go to the water park and a brother, Reese, whose "fists work exactly twice as fast as his brain."
Boomer must have saved on his own therapy bills and he rewrote the rules when MITM first aired - the ones that said viewers would reject a single-camera comedy, or one without a laugh track, and that family comedies were becoming increasingly irrelevant.
But he's set a pretty high standard and that's where last week's episode comes in - maybe tonight's real season opener will show whether he can keep the fresh ideas coming.
* Malcolm in the Middle, TV3, 8 pm
TV: Plenty of fun for therapists
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