Malcolm in the Middle

Malcolm is depressed, and the family goes to the zoo. Reese battles a goat, while Malcolm and Dewey end up in a tiger pit. Francis and Piama’s road trip across America results in them meeting a German couple named Otto and Gretchen who offer Francis a job at their dude ranch. Lois’ ex-boyfriend (Tim DeKay) puts a tarantula on Hal and reveals to him how many boyfriends Lois actually had.

Malcolm’s first day of high school gets off to a bad start when Lois embarrasses him in front of the entire school, causing him to have no actual friends except the Krelboynes. He becomes depressed about this. Lois and Hal volunteer in the school, where Hal clashes with Mr. Herkabe, who doesn’t like him. Meanwhile, with Malcolm and Reese away, Dewey stays home alone for the first time in his life (but only for 15 minutes), and has a wonderful time. On the ranch, Francis takes some side-jobs on to earn more money, such as teaching aerobics and being a masseur.

The family goes to Hal’s family reunion for his father’s birthday, and Hal’s family makes Lois miserable because she is from a lower-class family. They pick on her because of her clothes and her parents, dislike her topics and subjects, and finally forget about her during the family photo. They find her crying in the closet, where they insult her for her hot temper. Hal is mad for this. Hal clashes with his father in the end (Christopher Lloyd). The boys, after hearing Hal’s relatives mocking Lois and giving her a hard time, they decide to patch a revenge on them by driving a golf cart over the celebration, destroying the party, and finally landing in the pool, forcing them to flee the party from the angry mob. Even though Lois is angry at the boys, she is still overjoyed inside for having the boys standing up to others for her.

Malcolm pretends to be stupid so he can win over a cute girl (Brittany Finamore) who really is stupid and soon finds that he is actually becoming dumber. Stevie wins Lois’ approval and she takes him to the school dance. Meanwhile, Hal rents a steamroller and becomes addicted to running over various objects until Dewey snaps him out of it by standing in front of it.

Days before Malcolm’s birthday, he and Reese pull increasingly severe pranks against each other. Flashbacks throughout the episode gradually reveal how their feud began when Malcolm ate a blueberry Reese was saving. Meanwhile, Francis encounters a "devil cow" at the ranch and discovers it’s just an ordinary cow long overdue for milking. Dewey worries about his role as Abraham Lincoln in the school play. Hal enlists Craig to help him find Malcolm a birthday present, but is driven nuts by his constant demands.

Malcolm starts to date Nikki (Reagan Dale Neis), a girl from his school that he tutors in his free time. The only problem is her dad, a Vietnam veteran, who dislikes him. Dewey discovers he’s an ’evil twin’ and Reese uses this advantage to blame ’Dewey’s twin’ to turn on his enemies, and at the ranch, Otto is furious with the other ranchers who keep destroying the fence that Francis is building to keep the cattle inside. In the end, Francis settles them down with an idea.

Malcolm decides to keep his opinions to himself; at first it goes well, but he becomes so over repressed with his opinions, that he becomes overstressed, causing him to grow a stomach ulcer that leads to a trip to the hospital. Meanwhile, Reese must enlist Craig to drive him and his girlfriend to a concert. He finds himself in over his head when Reese learns that Craig wants to go on a hayride date and won’t let him renege out of it. Hal starts practicing race-walking, and ends up having talents for it, until he ends up with a fierce rival. Hal also decides to take on a local speed-walker and buys a speed walking outfit, including the infamous speed walking helmet. Hal makes a run at beating this "common jogger", after learning Wheeler’s dirty secret.

Hal and the boys visit Francis at the ranch. The boys are suddenly shocked when they find out that it isn’t the same old Francis, who has become mature, and try to get him to be crazy and wicked like he used to be they reveal him a secret stash full of rockets and fireworks. Meanwhile, Hal and Otto get drunk, which causes them to be stranded in the desert during the night.

Grandma Ida is injured by slipping on leaves Reese neglected to rake up, and she sues Lois and Hal--just when Lois discovers that she is pregnant. To make the things even worse, she hires an expensive lawyer and sues them on a huge amount of money. This turns to horror when they find out that their insurance is canceled, which can lead to Ida evicting them from their own home and take all of their belongings. However, the lawyer has an epiphany and refuses to aid Ida, who, powerless, instantly tries to get on their good terms, but they kick her out of the house.

During a hellish trip to the mall with Hal and the boys, Lois imagines life with daughters instead of sons, with Malcolm as Mallory (Lisa Foiles), Francis as Frances (Christopher Kennedy Masterson in drag), Reese as Renee (Mimi Paley) and Dewey as Daisy (Jennette McCurdy), and also imagines Hal being obese with the fact of being the only male in the house. Though starting off nice and pleasant, she soon discovers that it would have been just as difficult, only in different ways (Mallory being obnoxious brat, Renee being pregnant and a bully, Frances being a show girl and having multiple husbands, and Daisy being utterly evil). Meanwhile, Hal desperately searches for the perfect Valentine’s Day present for Lois.

Reese ends up in prison for a day, where he clashes with a huge wrestler, who ended up in prison for beating a man to death. Lois drives Malcolm with her to move furniture to her sister’s house, and during the trip, she tells him everything about sex, much to Malcolm’s horror, but they end up having a pleasant conversation. Dewey is bored and causes a feud in Hal’s six-man band for his amusement. At the ranch, Francis blows up Otto’s favorite cow in a branding accident, and cannot bring himself to tell him.

A combination of Malcolm’s disgust at the house falling apart around them, and Hal’s fear-induced "zero tolerance" attempts at maintaining peace and order in the family, results in Malcolm being kicked out of the house; the longer he has no home, the more his sanity begins to slip away. At the ranch, Otto’s family arrives and Francis has deal with Otto’s piano-playing nephew who annoys him, which leads to him smashing his piano in front of Otto’s family. Meanwhile, Reese comes up with an idiotic idea by attaching a fire hose to his back for more speed on his bike, which ends up in a disaster.

Hal gets a second job at "U-Buy It." Meanwhile Jessica (Hayden Panettiere), a girl from Malcolm’s school, babysits Malcolm, Reese, and Dewey while Hal works the night shift, and she ends up embarrassing them in front of her friends, and in the end, they have Dewey to be the bait and having him eavesdrop on the conversation between Jessica and her friends, then using the gossip information to blackmail her into cooperation.

Hal meets with an old high-school friend, Larry (Joel Murray), who hasn’t changed in all the time since they’ve seen each other. Malcolm tries to make Dabney stand up for himself when his overprotective and control-freak mom won’t let him use his new paintball gun because it’s "violent", as they celebrate Dabney’s birthday with the rest of the crowd.

Home from a visit with her sister Susan who had called her "hopeless," Lois puts Reese in charge of the family garage sale. Meanwhile, Hal finds his old pirate radio transmitter and restarts the station he ran in college under the pseudonym Kid Charlemagne. Malcolm finds an old computer worth over thousands of dollars and tells Lois about it. After Reese intentionally destroys it, she reprimands him and reminds him that they desperately need the money. At the ranch, Francis uses a sock puppet to help Otto deal with his estrangement from his son Rutger, an experience that helps him say just what Lois needs to hear when he calls home.

Mr. Herkabe forces Malcolm to join the academic octathlon team in an expensive hotel, where he encourages them to cheat, so Malcolm chooses to make everyone pay by giving all of the teams the results of the contest which he stole, and as he expected, ends up in a disaster. Dewey alienates Hal after telling him he’s too big for their bedtime ritual. Reese tries to avoid going to a dance with Alison, but Lois forces him to keep his promise.

In this second clip show, Hal and Lois are penning their will, and think back to all the trouble their sons put them through.

Reese decides to throw a party while Lois and Hal take a weekend break for their anniversary. All is fine until Donnie’s (Francis’ friend) gang of hoodlums turns the party into a crystal meth operation that even Francis himself can’t handle after Donnie blackmails him into telling the police his mishaps, and Dewey ends up solving the situation(i.e. Donnie and his gang’s mothers showing up to yell at them). Meanwhile, Hal and Lois are having a miserable time at the honeymoon hotel.

At the park, Malcolm meets a depressed middle-aged man (Jason Alexander) who may be his future self, as they have so much in common. Fearing that this might be him, Malcolm tries to help him to improve his way of life and broaden his horizons in more than playing chess in the park. Meanwhile, Francis and Piama find employment as nude models, in which Francis starts to enjoy.

Lois goes into labor while Hal and the boys are at a bridal exposition (which Hal had mistaken for car exposition). Ida moves in after her apartment burns down and she refuses to stay with Susan. After learning that Ida is a bigot, Francis and Piama enlist Abe and his poker buddies to scare her off. Meanwhile, Malcolm has been accepted to a boarding school in England, and he is overjoyed to go to have a new life, away from his parents and his miserable life. Even though the rest of the family is happy, Hal forbids him to go and forces him to stay here, since the family cannot function without him. Stunned at the date his parents chose for the baby’s planned delivery, Dewey reveals the date is his birthday in an announcement at the exposition to humiliate Hal.

A frantic Hal crashes the car while trying to get home to Lois, who has gone into labor. Meanwhile Reese, Malcolm, and Dewey take a parenting class to be better brothers to their new sibling, but realize everything they were taught in the class is the opposite of what their parents did for them (or didn’t do). Piama and Lois trick Susan and Ida into clearing up the misunderstanding between them to get Ida to leave. Francis is forced to help Lois give birth when the paramedics don’t arrive in time. They manage to deliver the baby, whom is named Jamie (although the gender is deliberately not revealed).

A church-run daycare center accepts Lois’ wailing newborn...but Reese, Malcolm, and Dewey must attend Bible-study classes and Hal and Lois are expected to take part in the church community, or no day care for the baby. Meanwhile, a rival ranch reports an alien sighting, so Francis organizes a sighting on Otto’s ranch...which gets him arrested by the government.