Spoiler alert: This article contains spoilers for Malcolm in the Middle: Life’s Still Unfair.
You’re not my boss now, but Linwood Boomer is still the boss of “Malcolm in the Middle.” And with the series returning after a 20-year hiatus in a four-episode revival, Malcolm in the Middle: Life’s Still Unfair, it was inevitable that some things would be different, including how it looked.
“This house is a different house, and it should be, because it’s the house that Hal and Lois would have had if their kids hadn’t ruined everything every day,” Boomer said in an interview with Variety. But it’s not just the set, the colors of the entire series look different. The original show had a warmer, grainier texture, but the new episodes are crisper and cleaner. Part of that is due to the fact that the new episodes were shot digitally, whereas the originals were shot on 16mm film.
Executive producer Tracy Katsky Boomer also said that filming the show in Canada and California gave it a different feel. “Part of it was shot in Vancouver,” she says. “That light is a different color. Vancouver is more blue, and the original photo was taken in Southern California, but it’s more amber. We actually readjusted it a lot and adjusted the color because it felt too cold for us.”
But the evils of dysfunctional families have remained largely unchanged. In the show, Malcolm (Frankie Muniz) is estranged from his family, unaware that he has a teenage daughter played by Keeley Kirsten.
“When Tracy gave me the idea that Malcolm had a daughter who looked just like him, so much became clear,” says Lynwood Boomer. “My kids aren’t exactly like me, but in some ways they’re inconveniently smart. In some ways, they completely negate my entire parental toolkit.”
The revival culminates in an episode built around Hal and Lois’ 40th anniversary party, featuring a wide range of actors from the original show. One particularly memorable group is the Krelboins, played by Kyle Sullivan, Victor Z. Isaac, and Evan Matthew Cohen. The three perform a dance routine so chaotic and funny that Boomers ended up performing a similar routine featuring the entire cast and crew until the end of the episode.
“They did that dance, and the whole crew fell on the floor, and that’s how we ended up doing it,” says Linwood Boomer. “At the end credits, we just said, ‘Let’s all do that Clerboine dance,’ and we just got the whole crew, cast, actors together. It was just really fun.”
The end of episode 4 leaves room for more stories about Malcolm’s adult life, but the Boomers have said they have no plans to produce any more episodes at this time.
“If it had been open-ended, none of this would have happened,” Linwood Boomer says. “Brian has had a very distinguished career. Frankie has had seven distinguished careers. The only way we could have done this was to make it a closed-ended thing. We might do another closed-ended thing in the future, but that hasn’t been discussed.”
“Malcolm in the Middle: Life Is Still Unfair” is available on Hulu.
