Malcolm in the Middle

Malcolm in the Middle is a comedy about intelligence that functions as both celebration and critique of the specific experience of being the smart kid in an environment that is not built for you. Bryan Cranston's Hal and Jane Kaczmarek's Lois are among the finest comic double act in American television history. The show understood that a gifted child in a dysfunctional family acquires the dysfunction along with the gift, and that this is both funny and genuinely sad.