I was raised to watch many different, wonderful series. The more sarcastic and witty, the more we watched. My dad and I laughed endlessly at shows like The Simpsons, Seinfeld, Friends, Mad About You, Frasier, That 70's Show and the extremely well-written, completely under-rated sitcom, Malcolm In The Middle.
Malcolm In The Middle is about a family of 4 boys in middle America, with one wunderkind in their midst, struggling to find their way in the working class. It stars Bryan Cranston, best known for his award winning performances on the now infamous AMC series, Breaking Bad.
Breaking Bad is about a high school Chemistry teacher that gets a cancer diagnosis and, genius that he is, underpaid and struggling as their family is, decides to start cooking meth to make enough money to pay for his treatment and set up his family for when he dies.
Malcolm in the Middle debuted in 2000 and ran through 2006. Breaking Bad started in 2008 running through 2013. Like all great series of the past decade, I am always late to the party. I wait for the hype to die down before I'm completely invested and am usually so involved that by the last season I'm caught up, engulfed and then immediately depressed it all ends so fast.
When Breaking Bad began, I had only known Cranston's work from Malcolm in the Middle and bit parts in movies like "Little Miss Sunshine." I always liked him, but had no idea about his talent and it's range until Breaking Bad took off. When I finally watched Breaking Bad I was just completely amazed by his portrayal of the iconic, Walter White.
With all of this said it is my belief as a writer, reviewer, television and film enthusiast and even a fan, that you cannot possibly nor truly appreciate Cranston's performance in Breaking Bad, without first watching Malcolm in the Middle. Why? Well, here we go:
Malcolm in the Middle was wonderfully written, with amazing cynical and sarcastic humor and witty remarks and retorts. What Malcolm achieves that most sitcoms lack was a complete relate-ability to normal, American working class woes and problems. As a Friends super-fan, the lifestyles of the characters were a dream world, there was nothing relate-able about maxing out credit cards at Bloomingdales for me, ever.
In Malcolm, the mother and father, Lois and Hal, own a boring, normal and crappy two bedroom house with four ill-mannered boys and they never pretend to be anything but a family doing what they have to to make ends meet. Hal is some kind of office executive type and Lois works at a local drug store. The boys attend public schoo,l even though Malcolm tests a genius levels, and they don't break the bank to give him every chance, they make him succeed where he is. The boys have jobs when they come of age and are always a part of home life routines and chores, much to audience enjoyment and laughter.
There are episodes that talk about super normal things like "Pizza night" being a luxury and fighting over the last piece of bacon. There are forgotten mom-birthdays and arguing about pets, fighting over who gets new and who gets hand-me-downs. They have mom and dad struggling to buy new appliances and repair their crappy cars. They have two queen beds in a room with 3 boys and another kid in Military School, for which they scrape by to pay for only to have him emancipate at 17, ditch out, join the working world and hate it. He comes back in later seasons to help the family during their ongoing struggles. Put all of this together with great acting, hilarious jokes and coming of age stories and it's a hit, although seriously not appreciated in it's time.
My six year old and I have been watching a lot of Malcolm, and although it slips in some swear words like "ass" and is rife with "shut up" and "stupid" being thrown around, we laugh at what those silly, bad boys do and how wonderfully the parents discipline and reprimand them when they continue to act badly. It also portrays real marriage problems, like the strain finances cause between husband and wife, and not making real time for each other, health concerns and being overwhelmed. Again, ultimate, relate-ability.
For six years I watched Bryan Cranston as this lovable, goof ball dad, Hal and that was how I knew him best. When I saw Breaking Bad, his ability to portray that dark character and develop him was of course, award-worthy and nothing short of epic.
When an actor displays that kind of range in terms of ability to evolve such a character as the great Heisenberg, it is riveting, in my humble opinion. The evolution of Walter White is binge-worthy, to say the least, but watching him morph from this character you love and feel for, this underdog you root for, to this very subtle but terrorizing force to be reckoned with over 5 seasons of Breaking Bad is just an emotional cinematic journey.
There will be no major spoilers for those of you that have never watched, but for those of us who started off with simple intrigues like the series Weeds and were invested in "good people gone bad" story lines, Breaking Bad took the cake. It blew everything else out of the water.
Not only did Breaking Bad pay homage to Malcolm in the Middle on some late night comedy show flashback thing that was all the rage upon it's finale, but it really shows that Cranston appreciated his journey on his own, even more than we appreciated watching it on TV. He has since gone on to be in many more fantastic films but for me, he will always be Hal before Walter and not the other way around.
If you have watched neither of these, Malcolm is now available on Hulu and Breaking Bad is still available on Netflix. I highly recommend watching Malcolm first but if you first knew Cranston on Breaking Bad, definitely visit him pre-Heisenberg. Anyway, if Bryan Cranston ever comes across this, I'm not so much fan-girling as just appreciating the artistic abilities and craft when it comes to the acting. Perhaps I will start writing more of these perspectives, however under-rated or unappreciated in our time.
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