The Hollywood nostalgia machine has been spinning its wheels. But if there’s anyone who knows a thing or two about spinning wheels, it’s NASCAR driver Frankie Muniz, who’s just signed on to star in a limited run of four new episodes of Malcolm in the Middle, Disney+ announced today. Bryan Cranston and Jane Kaczmarek are also set to reprise their roles, with the original series’ creator Linwood Boomer returning as a writer and executive producer. The new batch of episodes will follow a middle-age Malcolm and his daughter getting dragged back into the family’s dysfunction at Hal and Lois’s 40th wedding-anniversary party. No premiere date has been set yet.
There’s been some speculation as to whether the Wilkerson family would grace our screens again, with Muniz revealing in 2022 that Cranston had been working on a script. But the better question is, should they? Malcolm led the single-cam sitcom charge when it debuted nearly 25 years ago, and much of its humor and core pathos relied on a scrappy optimism that feels outdated in today’s political climate (not to mention, its series finale saw Malcolm set off on a trajectory toward becoming the people’s president — as opposed to, you know, another multimillionaire demagogue taking office …). There’s also no word on if any of the other brothers will be appearing. Who will Malcolm be in the middle of?
But maybe we needn’t be worried at all, and the years have given the show’s creators plenty of great ideas for material. For instance, a plotline about a cat flooding the family’s home could be comedy gold.