It Doesn’t Sound Like Malcolm Will Be President in the ‘Malcolm and the Middle’ Reboot

Further proving that no Fox TV show is immune from a belated revival, it was recently announced that Malcolm in the Middle will be coming back for a brand new Hulu series. But it will only be four episodes long, because life is unfair.

Despite the fact that he quit acting for a life of race car driving and olive oil sales, Frankie Muniz will reprise the role of Malcolm. And his TV parents, Bryan Cranson and Jane Kaczmarek, have both signed on for the sequel series as well. The three actors made the announcement via a social media post that featured a lot of yelling, and a little bit of accidental urination.

What about the rest of the cast, you ask? Will the guy who played Dewey take a break from studying Victorian literature to accommodate the production? Only time will tell. 

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While we don’t know too much about the storyline just yet, as Variety reported, the show’s official log line reads: “Malcolm (Muniz) and his daughter are drawn into the family’s chaos when Hal (Cranston) and Lois (Kaczmarek) demand his presence for their 40th wedding anniversary party.”

As you may have noticed, the word “President” was conspicuously absent from that synopsis. That’s significant because in the final episode of Malcolm in the Middle, “Graduation,” Malcolm comes close to taking a high-paying corporate job instead of attending Harvard, that is, until Lois launches into a lengthy speech about why he can’t do that.

“It’s not the life you’re supposed to have,” Lois argues. “The life you’re supposed to have is you go to Harvard, and you earn every fellowship and internship they have. You graduate first in your class, and you start working in public service, either district attorney or running some foundation, and then you become governor of a mid-sized state, and then you become president!”

And not just any president, but the greatest president in the history of the country. Why? Because, as Lois informs him, he will have grown up in a middle-class family, know the value of hard work and actually do something to help average Americans. Lois’ bombshell prognostications are backed up by Hal who tells his son that “it’s true.”

That episode aired 18 years ago. So if Malcolm was 17 at the time, that means he’s legally eligible to be president today. But the plot synopsis of the reboot certainly offered no hint that Malcolm will be the commander-in-chief in the new series. 

It’s possible that he’s at the district attorney phase of his career, or maybe he’s the governor of that “mid-sized state.” But it’s also possible that his character hasn’t actually achieved any of those things in the past 18 years, and this new show will, in part, be about reckoning with Malcolm’s unfulfilled potential.

At the very least, hopefully Hal tells Malcolm about that crazy dream he had about cooking meth in New Mexico.