Frankie Muniz Is Hyped for the ‘Malcolm in the Middle’ Revival and You Should Be Too

I noticed something about sitcoms as I got older: Everybody had money. Some shows, like The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, had wealth built into the premise. The Simpsons, which I have watched more than any other sitcom, dealt with money issues initially and slowly moved away from that. But most shows I watched about families took place in big, nice houses and they usually weren’t hurting for cash. None of it felt like the life I lived. Then, there was Malcolm in the Middle.

Watching Malcolm and his family felt like the closest I’d come to seeing my family portrayed onscreen (except the parents liked each other). Their house was fine but falling apart. The parents worked jobs that felt mindless and soul-sucking. There were constant efforts to save money baked into jokes in the show. It was an honest portrayal of the middle class, which has helped it age incredibly well. For a long time, I assumed it would be untouched. How could they recreate the magic? Well, they’re going to try.

A four-episode revival of Malcolm in the Middle is on its way to Disney+ (which is an insane sentence to write). Malcolm felt perfect for the FOX brand when it was released, despite managing to subvert the network’s crassness. Since everything is slowly getting absorbed into other things, Malcolm is now under the Disney banner. There’s no way the honest show would have been able to exist on Disney networks in the past, but here we are, in the future, getting ready for Hal and Lois’s 40th wedding anniversary to air on the company’s streaming service.

That’s the plot of the revival, and Malcolm himself, Frankie Muniz, recently talked about how excited he has been to rejoin the family both in front of and behind the camera. “We started talking about [a reboot] literally 10 years ago — me and [co-star] Bryan Cranston — and slowly been working at it and it’s finally a reality,” Muniz explained to People. “So I’m really excited. I had to do some chemistry reads. I can’t tell you with what characters, but new characters that would be on the show. And it was so weird to go back and be with Linwood Boomer, the creator, and Ken Kwapis, the director, and be back in that mindset. Oddly, it was right at home.”

Muniz’s excitement has me on cloud nine. He also mentions in the interview that Malcolm “sucked” and he’s right! Another strong suit of the show is that they let the kids grow into awkward jerks who don’t have any friends. It helped that the kids were all great actors, but their characteristics evolved naturally into truly loveable yet dislikeable characters. I’m so friggin excited for this show. I don’t even think I’d be able to be objective about it. Given how the show allowed me to see myself and my family onscreen, it will just feel like going home again.