Malcolm in the Middle

While Francis is trapped with Otto in a well he was supposed to fix, a fire erupts in the barn (also Francis’ fault). Meanwhile, the family travels to Las Vegas, where Reese and Dewey show an obese rabbit at a competition, Hal is convinced he has had a prophetic dream about winning at a slot machine, and Lois goes backstage with her favorite singer Boone Vincent (David Cassidy); they chat about their private lives and she gives him parenting advice.

Attractive, popular girls want to be seen with Reese, Malcolm, and Stevie as revenge on their boyfriends, so the boys stick Dewey with babysitting Jamie. Dewey tells Jamie an elaborate story in which their parents are secretly wealthy and have a hidden "secret good house" in their closet. Working for Craig at the Lucky Aide when he can’t pay for Jamie’s diapers, Hal discovers that Craig tortures the graveyard-shift employers while he does nothing, so Hal helps them rebel.

When Stevie finds out his mother has divorced his father, he falls into a depression and Malcolm tries to cheer him up. Lois’ high-school diary falls into Reese’s backpack and he reads it and becomes infatuated with the diarist--and is horrified to find out her identity. Dewey regresses into babyhood. Meanwhile, neither Francis nor Otto can bear to put a horse with a deadly infection to sleep.

Reese displays monomania and incredible culinary genius and talent and aspires to prepare the perfect Thanksgiving dinner with Hal and Dewey’s help. Lois intervenes when Francis and Piama seem headed for divorce. Meanwhile, Malcolm goes to a party instead of staying with the family; he spends half the time wondering if Kirstin (Alessandra Torresani) is flirting with him, then he gets completely drunk and they end up making out, then he freaks out when she finds out she wants to have sex with him. He leaves the party, arrives home drunk,and vomits into the turkey. Later he regrets not having sex with her, and Francis cheers him up by naming all 12 punishments Lois gave him (9 of them while he passed out).

Malcolm films Reese for a school psychology assignment, then discovers that he is an unwitting participant in one of Mr. Herkabe’s experiments, causing him to be portrayed as a sadistic maniac, also losing Reese’s trust. To get back at Herkabe, he gets into his office to reveal the other students’ dirty secrets (also his own as payback to Reese), causing everybody to distance themselves in shame. Meanwhile, Hal fears he’ll lose his job when top officials at his company are arrested for embezzlement. Lois’ washer and dryer keep breaking down. When Dewey skips school he starts earning big money working as a street magician.

Lois makes Malcolm and Reese get jobs. Reese finds a job at the local slaughterhouse, but Malcolm is forced to work with Lois at the Lucky Aide. Malcolm catches Lois smoking on her break and thinks she’s a hypocrite. Hal takes a nursing class run by Polly to spend more time with Jamie, but he and the other dads soon start betting on their babies (biggest burp, fullest diaper etc.). Meanwhile, sick of Reese and Malcolm’s bullying, Dewey runs away to the ranch to visit his "good brother," Francis.

Hal, Reese, Malcolm, and Dewey go into business selling Christmas trees, but two priests send homeless people to their business, trying to sabotage their sale (since Hal is selling the trees cheaper than the church). Craig is bitten by a squirrel, and Lois orders her co-workers and some homeless people to catch the squirrel to prove that Craig won’t need the very-painful shots. When Otto’s family visits the ranch, they seem so much like Francis’ family that he gets homesick.

Returning early from vacation, the family discovers that their neighbors have been celebrating their yearly absence with a block party. Reese and Dewey scheme to make quick cash by letting kids beat up Reese, Hal and Lois join the kielbasa-eating contest, and Malcolm inadvertently aids a burglar. Meanwhile, Francis finds himself assigned to breeding cows, the most disgusting job at the ranch.

Malcolm decides to publish a student’s brilliant story in the school newsletter despite its vulgar language. After the ACLU forces him to not censor the story, Principal Block (Kurtwood Smith) decides to cancel all extracurricular activities rather than "turning their high school into an adult bookstore". They even blackmail him with threatening the student to be expelled if he doesn’t comply. He gets revenge on Block by publishing his own magazine just outside the school grounds (50 m away from the gates), also containing the story.

Hal buys a hot tub without telling Lois, but it turns into a swamp when he neglects to clean it. Malcolm finally gets his learner’s permit, and gets mixed up in a fight between Polly and her ex-boyfriend. Reese steals Dewey’s new friend Noah, who had actually befriended Dewey to get to Reese to ask him to beat up Noah’s bullies. Meanwhile, Manfred Schmidt--former fiance to Gretchen, former best friend to Otto--visits the ranch.

Ida plans to drug, marry, and bilk a wealthy Chinese man (James Hong), then divorce him and get his money. Malcolm gets his tongue pierced but it then swells up and he must hide it and the resulting lisp from Lois until the wedding ends. Meanwhile, Reese has saved up the money to buy a special model ship for Dewey--just to smash it up in front of him! So Dewey goes to great length to pretend Reese doesn’t exist, and Reese is horrified enough to try to apologize.

Malcolm joins the Lucky Aide softball team to get away from Lois’s wrath on the job--but she has recently become the coach! A better discovery he makes is that Craig is an amazing softball player. Francis drives cross-country on his pick-up truck back to the house (missing his anniversary with Piama) and scopes trough his past to prove to Lois that he is not lazy, but Lois refuses to say that she wrong and apologize. Meanwhile Dewey dares Reese to outdo one of Francis’ old stunts (collecting the biggest number of toilet seats in a yard full of wild dogs with a ham in his pocket, which he actually does, breaking his record. Francis lectures him for doing such a dangerous stunt--then tries to get his record back.

Lois’ sister Susan (Laurie Metcalf) visits, bringing Reese and Malcolm a red 1967 Ford Mustang Fastback Convertible, Dewey a big cotton-candy machine, and Jamie a $5,000 savings bond. Suspicious about this generosity, Lois and Hal take the engine out of the car and lock the cotton-candy machine in the garage. Dewey breaks into the garage to use his new machine, and Reese has the Mustang towed onto a cliff, then leads it down for a big speed and they drive to a keg party, but as the police arrive, they block other people’s cars and all are arrested. Lois eventually learns that Susan needs a new kidney and that she’s still bitter that Lois stole Hal from her. Meanwhile, Francis "leads" a group of Girl Scouts on a wilderness campout journey through the desert.

Lois boycotts the family’s favorite restaurant, Luigi’s, but Hal and the boys sneak Luigi’s pizzas in the garage. Malcolm gets more involved with his new girlfriend’s (Sara Paxton) intellectual family than with her, and she eventually ditches him for ignoring her, forcing the family to kick him out and replace him with Stevie. Meanwhile, the family is watching a TV report about Lois’ scheme to close Luigi’s when they catch Malcolm there with his friends and Reese confesses that they’ve been sneaking pizza too, but he tries to save himself by offering a video of Hal’s 5-minute imitation of her.

Lois and Hal find out about the most disgusting and terrible thing Reese has done yet (which is never revealed); even Hal snaps, and they kick him out of the house after he stand up to them. Francis tries to defend him and bring him home (without knowing what he did), Dewey enjoys trashing Reese’s things and sleeping on his bed, fully intending to keep Reese out of the house. Meanwhile, Lois finds out that Reese’s grades are improving and he takes care of himself--maybe he’s better off there? They soon get their answer when they find out he is $20,000 in credit-card debt. They drag him home and Malcolm narrates that she has spent over a month to find the suitable punishment for him.

Malcolm looks forward to visiting college—until Lois comes along and they meet the power-hungry dorm head, Leland. Lois turns the kids against him, determined to get Malcolm safety, but he himself doesn’t know for who will he vote. After Hal refused to buy Dewey a piano, Dewey steals items around the house to drive Hal crazy until he builds one from the items he stole. Reese pretends to be a drug dealer to go out with the school’s narc, who turns out to be an undercover cop. Francis and Otto try to help out at a daycare, but Otto gets the kids drunk.

Polly the babysitter (Julie Hagerty) is caught in a love triangle between Abe and Craig after Lois sets her up with Craig and Hal sets her up with Abe--unbeknownst to each other--and she enjoys spending time with both of them. Craig and Abe finally find out about each other and fight for her.

Malcolm coaches Dewey on how to "throw" an IQ test so he will not end up in the Krelboyne class. When he lands in the emotionally-disturbed "Busey" class instead, he takes it over from the incompetent teacher and tells Lois about Malcolm’s plan, getting him grounded. When Dewey gets the chance to leave the Buseys, he decides he can’t abandon his new friends, so he acts disturbed to keep his place there. Meanwhile, Reese tries to figure out what type of genius he is; and Hal and Craig enter a Dance Dance Revolution-style contest.

Stevie and Malcolm try to figure out how Reese managed to separate two bases for an enzyme for a medical experiment when he refuses to tell them. After he agrees, they manage to get him to rewind his day to find out how he managed to do it. Dewey sells chocolate bars by fibbing (with Francis’ help). Meanwhile, Francis teaches assertiveness to a runt pig, resulting in a huge chaos.

Lois, Reese, Jamie, and Malcolm go to Canada to meet Victor’s secret family. The boys get along and even have fun with their newfound cousins, and everything is fine until Ida arrives, demanding Victor’s pension. Lois reluctantly helps her get it (it’s only $17 Canadian) until she discovers that Victor is not her biological father. Meanwhile, Dewey dreads Hal running with him since bad things always happen before such events between them. Betty White guest stars as Victor’s other wife, Sylvia.

Reese’s new girlfriend Beth is about as dumb as he is. Malcolm initially dislikes her but they soon get to like each other too much and Beth breaks up with Reese. Devastated, Reese runs away and joins the army under the false surname "Jetson." Hal’s company goes under à la Enron, and two corrupted FBI officers want him to falsely testify against an employer. He refuses, but they have him arrested. Lois stresses-out when she must work overtime at Lucky Aide to make ends meet; eventually her snappy demeanor and mounting mental instability get her fired. Meanwhile, Dewey enters a piano contest and is angry when no-one notices...even when he leaves town for it and wins!

The company uses Hal as a scapegoat and Lois has become more mentally unstable. When Francis learns that she may no longer be able to care for his siblings, he enlists Malcolm to help forge their father’s signature in a legal document, declaring her mentally incompetent (which fails because Reese knows Hal’s signature, while Malcolm knows Lois’s). Meanwhile, Reese becomes a top-class soldier in training and makes his way with his squad into a Ranger mission in Afghanistan. At the house, Malcolm encourages Hal to testify in his own defense when he reveals he has skipped work on Fridays in 15 years, providing evidence of his absence for Fridays. However, Lois snaps on Hal when she finds out about it.