Dethroning Moment / Malcolm in the Middle

Malcolm and his family can cause some trouble every now and them. And unfortunately, so does this show.

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• kay4today: The final episode where Lois first rejects a very good job proposal for Malcolm and then tells him that she pretty much planned his life for him and expects him to be president of The United States. What? That's so incredibly stupid and selfish I really hoped Malcolm would tell her to shove it up her ass, but instead he accepts it and rolls with everything. Now, I'm well aware it's about how much your family means to you and that you would do anything to please them, but it's so ridiculous I don't get how this is heartwarming...
  • Peteman Ugh. I know what you mean. Malcom's family claim that society takes advantage of them because they're poor. Maybe if they weren't so irresponsible, they wouldn't be so damn poor. It's like the episode tried to make Stockholm Syndrome heartwarming. Why they didn't consider encouraging Malcolm to become a billionaire philanthropist is beyond me. They clearly operate on the "work harder not smarter" premise.
  • Adam C: Agreed. What really bugged me about this was that it COULD have been pretty heartwarming. If they'd instead have had Lois asking Malcolm not to take the job and telling him how much he had open to him and that she thought he could do so much, that would've really been something. Having Lois decide it for him just comes off as creepy and raises a lot of unfortunate implications. The way she's the one who decides he should be president, the way the family expects him to solve all their (often self-inflicted) problems, the way they refuse to give him any help, it just comes off as needlessly controlling and cruel, even by her standards.
  • Mc Knight: Fourthed. There was even an episode where Malcolm worked up the balls to say "No" to Lois, asking her if she intended to watch over him when he's married or 30 years old. From what I read, only one season after he shows regret for costing Reese a girlfriend, he lists all the horrible things Reese has done to him while Reese himself is in the army. Francis realizes what a horrible person Lois is, and told her in no uncertain terms how much he openly hates her before choosing his own path in life. Horrible as life was for him up in Alaska, at least he had the balls to sever ties with Lois. This goes to show how little respect Malcolm has for himself, even though he realizes and resents just as much what a control freak she is and how much a mess their lives are as a result. I would sympathize with other Butt-Monkey characters like Keitaro Urashima, Monroe, Shinji Ikari, Meg Griffin, Chris Rock, Kyon, or Mikuru Asahina. Malcolm? All I can say is, What an Idiot! I like to imagine that one day, he wises up and betrays his whole family. It's the only thing keeping me from hating this episode more.
  • Yuma The worst thing about that episode is that it shows how much of a manipulative bitch she is. Seriously, she told Malcolm that he's one of the few people that listens to their conscience, so now she made sure he'd tune it out? WTF. This troper can't help but feel that all of Lois and Hal's kids should have been adopted by different families.
• RA2: "Surgery", the only episode of any show that made me physically mad. Now I know that the show isn't exactly sunshine and roses, but the amount of torture that Malcolm goes through - with no comeuppance or resolution - was still excessive by their standards. Basically, he gets taken to a textbook scary hospital, with next to no health standards (a body being dragged down the hall in a garbage bag for instance), and visibly incompetent doctors that misdiagnose him with appendicitis. After nearly avoiding laser surgery (the doctors mixed up the charts) Malcolm tries to warn his family, but they ignore him, being too wrapped up in a board game they're playing at home. Malcolm narrowly escapes the potentially-disastrous appendectomy, and is taken home to safety... where the entire family admonishes and blames him after Dewey points out "If you're so smart, why didn't you figure it out earlier?" (ie, because of the large hospital bill)... and the episode just ends. So yeah, no mention of the medical malpractice lawsuit that they probably could have won, nor the flipside of Dewey's argument "If he's so smart, why didn't those dolts listen to him earlier???" Look, I know the show is somewhat dark, and it's too much to expect Lois & Hal to be concerned about Malcolm's well-being, but this was season 2, when they were still mindful about doling out the appropriate karma by the episode's end. "Surgery" was just a half hour of the universe pounding Malcolm into the ground. It was a break from form, and very unpleasant to watch.
  • Animeking 1108: What I hated was that after Dewey asked Malcolm that question, the family just glared at him like if they were expecting a legitimate answer out of him.
    • Chimanruler 15: Actually, it was Reese who asked that inane question. Dewey just baselessly accused Malcolm of faking his ailment before Malcolm corrected him by pointing out that he figured out that the inept doctors were wrong. Also, it is worth noting that Hal callously asked Malcolm for an answer to Reese's question while everyone else just glared at Malcolm. Anyway, I agree. This entire episode was torture for Malcolm, and despite his claims that he was actually fine, no one in the family listened to him, only to get mad at him for something that they could have prevented. Besides, even smart people can be wrong, so that completely annihilates Reese's argument.
• anonexistentuser: For all of this show's unflinching looks into exaggerated family dysfunction, the only plot that genuinely disturbs me is the one where Malcolm is implied to have had sex with a woman his mother's age in "Burning Man." There's no indication that he turned 18 before this episode, so that's called statutory rape, unless whatever state they live in has a lower age of consent.
• TheUnknownUploader: Baby: Part 1, where Hal and the boys are at a wedding fair, and all episode long Dewey is going around talking to random people for some reason. At the end of the episode, you find he's commandeered pretty much everyone working there into helping his massive guilt-trip to Hal that he and Lois are going to induce labor on Jamie on Dewey's birthday, which Hal completely forgot about. This would be a Crowning Moment of Awesome in my book, except the crowd chasing after them results in Hal crashing the car into a column at the parking lot, getting him injured, which keeps them all away from Lois who was in labor. So basically Dewey could've gotten what he wanted and not almost gotten his father killed by just talking to Hal about it, like normal human beings do.
• Leah423 The whole plotline of Dewey getting into the emotionally disturbed class bothered me. I think that it was actually out of character for his brothers to screw him over to that degree just to get away with what they did, and they actually legitimately messed up his education.
  • XenXero: To be fair, they weren't trying to screw him over. Malcolm was sincerely trying to help him, because he didn't want Dewey to go through the same levels of Hell that he went through in that very same class. Ending up in the emotionally disturbed class was an unintentional side effect.
• TheUnknownUploader: Cliques: Dewey has chicken pox and is whiny about how itchy and bored he is. Lois tells him stay home and play with dominoes or he can go to the hospital. When Dewey points out you don't go to the hospital because of chicken pox, Lois gives him a look that implies she will injure him to the point he will need to go to the hospital. Just because he was annoying her.
• Catmuto: Hal and Lois, who is pregnant with Jamie, go on a trip to stay in a hotel as a little romantic vacation, before the baby arrives and takes up a lot of their time again. Naturally, they end up in an argument and scream how they won't have anymore children after this, with Hal admitting that he did not go through the vasectomy he was supposed to. The problem comes with Lois saying that he needs to do this, because all their children came from having sex with protection that failed and their 'two abstinence children'. (I know this is supposed to be a joke, but how exactly that is supposed to work...)
  They argue, things are said and they eventually make up, with Hal asking Lois to please not make him do anything to 'his boys'. This is incredibly stupid and infuriating because they honestly need to find a way to stop having children because they seem incapable of keeping their hands off each other. The revelation in the final episode even has Lois showing a positive pregnancy test, meaning she is pregnant again after having Jamie. I admit, I am a bit fuzzy on the details, but what about a hysterectomy, ie Lois getting rid of her uterus? I recall, it was likely mentioned, but why don't they opt for that? While it is a rather rare thing to happen, vasectomies can revert themselves and the man can produce off-spring again. But with a hysterectomy, a woman cannot re-grow a uterus inside of her. Why not go for a hysterectomy than a vasectomy?
  This just came across as a stupid reason for them to argue, only for the joke in the final episode, that Lois is pregnant again, when they really do not have the money to even take care of the six children they ended up with at that point. It was an honest, rather sensible (if expensive) idea to prevent future pregnancies.
• Random Troper: When Lois reveals why her relationship with Francis was so antagonistic. It was because she spent several weeks in the hospital when he was a baby and kept thinking about how much he needed her. But then she gets out and discovers he's perfectly happy being cared for by his dad and she decided to force her baby to need her. That makes no sense. He was a baby and a baby is usually perfectly happy being cared for by anyone. It's not like he understood there was a certain way to feel about others. It seems like she didn't care about her infant son's well-being and was fine with him not being properly cared for so long as his mother came to the rescue. That's just selfish in my opinion.
• Branch_823: The episode where Malcolm gets grounded by Lois for failing to live up to his promise by helping Hal and Dewey with disposing of their couch. It happened because Malcolm decided to stay behind to help Stevie with a school project. To quote Malcolm: "That is so unfair!" (And she tells him "You looked me in the eye and you promised" like this was a backstabbing betrayal. I mean, overreact much?) But what really pushes this to DMoS territory is this: the city's residents evacuate to a school gymnasium because the disposal of the family's couch inadvertently triggers an accident that causes a toxic spill. Lois decides to continue to punish Malcolm even in a crisis. And proceeds to humiliate him in front of everyone as a result: from telling the entire gymnasium that he's grounded, to not letting his friends talk to him, to even forbidding him from getting up from his cot to get back his shoe that a little boy has so he could torment him about his predicament (and to make this even more insulting, a trio of girls witness this and decide to laugh about it because to them, being humiliated is hilarious). No wonder Malcolm decides to finally call Lois out. Overall, this was just an overly-infuriating Trauma Conga Line for Malcolm over something like sacrificing helping his family for a school project that would get them ahead in their grades.