Distracting Fluff

Having finished a multi-month Netflix trek through all seven seasons of Malcolm in the Middle I can say that Dewey is my favorite of the sibling characters.

The initial draw of the show early on, especially for intellectual viewers like myself, was Malcolm's travails through the gifted program and the normal difficulties of being smart in a society that doesn't value that specific quality. Like Lisa Simpson or Squidward, the resident intellectual is a specific character with whom other intellectuals can identify. That's how fan bases develop for shows: have a character people can identify with, and in the beginning, Malcolm--and the smart writing and domineering mother--was our "in" for the show.

Having watched all seven seasons in order (over months), we were able to see how the writers of the show developed each character and gave them depth. The oldest of the boys, Francis, began the show having been sent away to a military school in Alabama. There he was the spiritual leader and antagonist of the status quo. He then left the school for Alaska, where he found himself in nearly the same position: the only one able to recognize the absurdity of the situation and challenge the reality. Later he successfully ran a dude ranch, until both that subplot and the character's appearance on the show stopped being regular.

The second boy, Reese, is a mindless and brutal bully who terrorizes both his younger siblings and kids at school. The show's writers let him have the gift of being a natural chef, but in the latter years they did less and less with this aspect of Reese's personality. One of the best Reese subplots in any single episode in the show's run has him joining a pack of dogs, eventually rising to alpha-male, only to get caught by police leading an attack on a chicken coop.

Malcolm is the boy-genius over-thinker malcontent. He sees the world's absurdity (like Francis in the beginning) and regularly complains about it. He is destined to be President, as the show concludes, as well as being destined to have a hard life. Nothing will ever be good enough or easy enough for him, and he be forced to work hard for everything in his life. This is revealed to him by his mom, Lois, and it is an important truth about the world that the show describes in good detail.

Some people will have to work harder and nothing will ever be easy for them. Others will seemingly glide through life, making an easy go of it. A tough and bitter truth, one of the most bitter and toughs truths ever addressed by any sitcom.

Dewey, the next son, is the example used for whom things will be easy and natural during life. He turns out, in the later seasons, to be both a musical prodigy who writes operas and a genius-leader of his own group of troubled youths. He teaches his peers lessons unaddressed by his teachers while simultaneously composing both the librettos and music for a school production.

It is in this enlightened role that we see how good of a person Dewey is, about how he has internalized and listened to the shouting his mother's been doing for all those years and has adjusted his actions thusly. He is both contemplative and generous. He is talented and generally correct in belief and action. He tricked his parents into paying for a party for his younger brother, Jamie.

The youngest boy, Jamie, is walking by the end of the show, but hasn't developed a characteristic beyond being ahead of his older brothers in his development into a parent-baiting maniac.

Once Malcolm in the Middle got into the other characters with some depth, the true natures of the stereotypes that were the "brothers" became more nuanced and interesting. It made for a fulfilling viewing experience.