During ‘Breaking Bad,’ Bryan Cranston pushed for ‘Malcolm in the Middle’ reunion

Chaos reigns once again.

No, this is not a comment about the state of the world. This is about family life for Malcolm, who spent his childhood caught in the middle of his family’s side-splitting, screwball dysfunction. 

Twenty years after “Malcolm in the Middle” ended its run, the sitcom is back for a four-episode arc subtitled “Life’s Still Unfair.” Created by Linwood Boomer, this reunion is co-produced by Tracy Katsky Boomer, Boomer’s wife, who came up with the idea that got things rolling.

Malcolm is now a successful adult with a job, a girlfriend and a smart but unpopular teen daughter: Leah (Keeley Karsten), who, like her father, talks directly to the camera, often to complain about how her life is turning out, for which she thinks her dad deserves some of the blame. 

Meanwhile, Malcolm tries desperately to keep his own family at a distance, a great, chasm-size distance. That, of course, can’t last forever, and soon enough, the entire family is descending on Malcolm’s life, turning it upside down. 

Almost all of the show’s original stars have returned, including Frankie Muniz as Malcolm, Jane Kaczmarek as his mom Lois, and Bryan Cranston as Malcolm’s hapless dad Hal.

In fact, as the Boomers gleefully reveal, it was that patriarch who was most eager to return to this role that made him famous.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity. 

Q. When did you decide to revisit “Malcolm”?

Linwood: Bryan Cranston had been pushing me about it for years: in the middle of making “Breaking Bad,” he was saying, “We could do a reunion of ‘Malcolm.’”

I’d say, “What is wrong with you – you’ve got 25 Emmys and three years left on ‘Breaking Bad,’ and you’re trying to line up ‘Malcolm’ for the day after you wrap.” 

It felt like insanity, but he was very persistent about it.

Tracy: We would be out at dinner, and Bryan would say, “So I was in Arizona, and I had dinner with Frankie, who would LOVE to do some kind of reunion.” It was just constant. For years and years. You’d say it was bullying, but he’s such a sweet man.

Linwood: I was very happily retired. When I work, I get neurotically obsessive, and I’m up till three in the morning. It’s pretty draining, so I was reluctant to do it again.

But then Tracy gave me the idea that Malcolm has a daughter who’s just like him.

Leah says to Malcolm, “I’ll never have any friends because of my personality, which is your personality.” That was a foundation of this: writing somebody else who has to use Malcolm’s toolkit, with the belligerence and impulsiveness and tunnel vision. And that affects Malcolm, having a daughter who’s struggling, and he knows it’s his fault. He knows he has to help, but he can’t help. 

Then Tracy said she would produce it with me, so I thought, “OK, I think I can do this without killing myself.”  

Q. “Shrinking” has had Harrison Ford slide in a couple of fun Indiana Jones references, but not until the second and third seasons. Were you at all tempted to reference “Breaking Bad”?

Linwood: All our Easter eggs had to do with our original show, not “Breaking Bad.” A lot of people came up with funny stuff about that, but it just didn’t sit right; it felt wrong to pull people out and say, “This is a TV show talking about another TV show.” So we avoided that. 

Q. This revival and the characters themselves are more psychologically astute and self-aware. What changed? Was it you or the idea of Malcolm as a grown-up or giving voice to a teenage girl who’s an only child or the expectations of TV audiences? 

Linwood: Writing Leah, it was about how young teenage girls need friends and community and that sense of social connectedness; so her isolation is one level kind of tragic, but it’s also sort of funny. And Malcolm has read every parenting book that ever existed, but they’re not helping, which feels very right for the character. 

Tracy: And the world is very different now, and viewers are a lot more sophisticated, 

Linwood: Twenty-five years ago, people very rarely talked about themselves in a psychological way. It was private, like going to the bathroom or sex – you’ll talk about it generally, but not about your specific bathroom or sexual experience.

Now it’s much more part of the common culture; people talk about their therapy, or just talk about themselves in a psychological way.

Tracy: Trauma happens to everybody, and rarely do the people that cause the trauma intend to. [Turning to her husband] I don’t think anyone means to harm the children except your specific grandparents. 

Often, everyone’s just doing their best in the moment. That was what the original show was about. Lois wasn’t trying to screw up her children; she was doing what she thought was the right thing at every moment. But how you parent is directly related to how you were parented. When you see Malcolm saying, “I won’t make it worse, I won’t make it worse,” even though he can’t help it, he’s just trying not to pass on the generational trauma.

Q. So in another 20 years, will even Reese be more self-aware? 

Linwood: There’s no stopping it now. 

Q. Was it challenging to balance these more thoughtful ideas with the clever writing and the vintage silly physical humor?

Linwood: It’s very hard for me to write anything without a joke coming out.

It annoys people in real life that I’m so desperate for a laugh.

Q. I see Tracy’s not disagreeing with that. [She was covering her mouth to stifle her laughter.]

Tracy: He’ll come home from giving an important speech or even a eulogy, and the first thing he’ll tell me is, “I got two good laughs.”

And I say, “That’s what you got out of that experience?” 

Linwood: I know this about myself, and I end up apologizing a lot. There are issues and ideas that I think are important when I write, but they just don’t ever seem to come out without jokes.