If there’s one hill I’m willing to die on, it’s that I’m 100 percent not a “90s Kid.”
I was born in 1994. I remember parts of 1998 and most of 1999. But by no means does that make me a “90s Kid.” For the most part, people who call themselves “90s Kids” annoy me. This frustrating phenomenon has definitely faded away since its cultural peak when I was in college. Which is weird. I have no idea why nostalgia for a certain decade peaked 13-15 years after that decade ended. But any time I hear it, I still sort of cringe.
Because the only people I heard it from were people my own age. And we are most definitely not “90s Kids.” We’re children of the aughts. And we should be proud of it.
Like, one time I was working at the school newspaper when I was in college and Aaron Carter came to town to play a concert. That was kind of cool, because it meant one of my co-workers got to interview Aaron Carter. When my sister and I were younger, we were huge Aaron Carter fans. We kept listening to our CD of Aaron’s Party (Come Get It) for at least three or four years after it came out. I’m not ashamed to admit it. That album had some bops.
But here was the thing: When the interview with Aaron Carter came out, someone at our paper headlined it “the ultimate 90s Kid nostalgia.” That irked me beyond belief. “Aaron’s Party” came out in 2000! “Oh, Aaron” was 2001! His generation-defining (maybe this is hyperbolic but this is my website so buzz off) guest spot on Lizzie McGuire aired in 2001. Aaron Carter is the aughtsiest teen heartthrob there was. Don’t give him to the 90s. They have enough teeny-boppers. Give us our one.
Anyway, about sitcoms…
You know who was another aughsty teen heartthrob (using the term loosely) who busted onto the scene in 2000? Frankie Muniz.
Twenty years ago today on Jan. 9, 2000, Malcolm in the Middle premiered on the FOX network, introducing 22 million viewers to a family without a last name. (I refuse to call them The Wilkersons.) The show, one of the most realistic depictions of youth and family and one of the most important early examples of single-camera comedy working on network TV, told stories about Malcolm: a genius savant who lives in near-poverty with his strict mother Lois, his overwhelmed father Hal, his sadistic and stupid older brother Reese and his odd-ball younger brother Dewey while rebellious eldest brother Francis romps across the country from military school to Alaska to a dude ranch in the southwest.
Malcolm in the Middle is the closest thing my generation has to a time capsule. In the ranks of classic sitcoms, Malcolm in the Middle is the only one about kids who grew up in my generation. I guess you could argue the Dunphy children in Modern Family are of my generation, but that show has never been about the kids. That’s like saying Everybody Loves Raymond is about people of my generation because the twins were born within a few months of my younger sister.
I like to think of Malcom in the Middle as the anti-Wonder Years. If The Wonder Years was a show that romanticized youth and innocence in a bleak time, Malcolm in the Middle was a show that emphasized the boredom and mundanity of youth. It was a realistic look at what growing up in that cultural moment was like. And it worked.
So much of the cultural currency about what the kids in that show went through is identical to what I grew up with. Sure, Malcolm and Reese were a few years older than me. But I had friends who were their age. And I was in the same grade as Dewey. So there was always an entrance point for me, even if my mom was nothing like Lois and my dad was nothing like Hal (ok, a little like Hal). I knew parents like Hal and Lois and I knew older brothers like Reese and I related to Malcolm pretty thoroughly as a brainy kid who always felt like an outsider because of it.
Why am I bringing all of this up? Well, first off, this is a website about sitcoms and I’m using this anniversary as an excuse to write about a show I love. But more importantly, I want to talk about the differences between 90s Kids and 00s Kids. And to do this, we’re going to have to use a term everybody hates: Millennials.
The collective groans of the nation are upon us
I’m definitely a Millennial. And I’m proud of it. Insofar as anyone can or should be proud of being born in between two arbitrary years.
But more important than that, I’m obsessed with generational theory. Because everyone knows generations are BS. The idea that being born in 1965 makes you more like people born in 1947 than 1966 is hilarious. It’s something we’ve made up to categorize people and make blanket statements about people uneasy with. More specifically, we make up generations in order to categorize people younger than us and point out how they’re different.
It’s like Dr. David Finkelhor’s concept of “juvenoia.” In essence, I think we come up with generations because we’re simultaneously intimidated by the progress people younger than us are making and we’re afraid that they’re doing things wrong. In pointing out our differences from the people of a certain age below us, we are showing that we care about the future of the human race. And since older generations successfully repopulated the human race, they think any process that deviated from their generation’s choices is wrong.
Again: None of this is my idea. I’m regurgitating what I’ve read and what I’ve watched from all sorts of sources. Because, again, I’m obsessed with generational theory. Especially how it pertains to my generation.
There aren’t ironclad parameters for what birth years make someone a millennial. Most people would agree that millennials are people who born at some point between 1984 and 1999. That said, I’ve seen some people go as far back as 1977 and as far forward as 2004. Honestly, it’s probably better to avoid using years and just use personality types as our guide for a generational definition. Here are my three general definitions for what makes an American millennial:
- 1. The advent, explosion and proliferation of the internet shaped your formative years
- 2. The attacks on 9/11 and the 2008 economic recession shaped your outlook on society
- 3. Your parents (either young Baby Boomers or Gen-Xers) were more protective of you than their parents were of them
Of course, as I said earlier, generations are BS. Oftentimes, the cutoff between millennial and Gen Z is 1995. I was born in 1994. My sister was born in 1996. There’s no way we’re not in the same generation. But there’s a pretty good argument that I don’t belong in the same generation as someone who was born in 1984. Still technically a millennial, but that dude is 10 years older than me. He was a sophomore in college when I was in fifth grade. Huge difference in experience.
Which is why some generational theorists (read: bloggers) have posited that there should be a distinction between “old millennials” and “young millennials.” I buy this completely. Using this framework, we’d group people born between the mid and late 1980s together and we’d group people born in the early to mid 1990s together. Which feels more accurate based off my three criteria. Especially the first two.
People born in 1986 definitely have a different relationship with the internet than I do. We had dial-up in my house until I was eight or nine years old, but most of my internet use was in the post-dial-up era. That’s not the same as someone who used dial-up through high school. And by that same token, I was just shy of my sixth birthday on September 11, and just starting high school when the economy crashed. Those are powder keg memories for me. I’ll never forget 9/11, and I’ll doubly never forget watching late night TV in the summer of 2008 and learning about the economic disaster from Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert. But being a snotty, pseudo-intellectual eighth grader in suburban Georgia trying to contextualize the housing crisis is a lot different than being fresh out of college and not being able to find a job because of it.
So we can agree: While everyone born in this certain “generation” can be called millennials, there has to be a distinction between young and old. And we can divide them based off some generational traits based on their relationships with those major events. If you were 6 years old like I was at the time of the September 11 attacks, you grew up with a bizarre sense of normalcy, a shaky acceptance of how scary the world is. If you were in middle or high school at the time, though, you had no choice to reevaluate your understanding of the world. You didn’t grow up with the fear, you had to adjust to the fear.
As for the housing crisis and economic recession, people who were in college or finishing college when the markets turned have a natural pessimism about the state of the world. They were promised avenues for success and had it pulled out from underneath them. All the jobs and prosperity they thought would be available were disappearing, and they were bred a sense of resentment because of it. Younger millennials like me, on the other hand, came into the work force as the United States was pulling out of the recession. Because of that, there’s more optimism. We saw the world pull through and we weren’t directly affected by the worst times. So we see the good in the world. Call it naivety or call it pragmatism. But people born within three of four years of me on either side are known as the most collaborative and optimistic the workforce has ever seen.
Which, finally, brings me back to Malcolm in the Middle.
Over the course of the show’s seven-season run, we learn a lot about Malcolm and his four brothers. (Jamie is born in the middle of the show’s run. We know significantly less about him. But there are some pretty good hints.) And of the four oldest brothers – Francis, Reese, Malcolm and Dewey – we can say with certainty that all can be labeled millennials. Based on what we know about the brothers and their respective ages, here are their likely birth years:
- Francis: 1984
- Reese: 1987
- Malcolm: 1989
- Dewey: 1993
Using the criteria we’ve set up, Francis is definitely an “old millennial” and Dewey is definitely a “young millennial” with Reese and Malcolm fitting somewhere down the middle. Which, if we break down their respective personalities, actually makes a certain intuitive sense based on our descriptions of the micro-generational differences. Let’s start with Francis.
Francis
The oldest of the show’s brothers, Francis is undoubtedly the most negative and the most resentful. Francis blames all of his life’s problems on his upbringing, particularly his relationship with Lois. Lois was strict with Francis and Francis had the type of personality where he constantly had to rebel, even against ideas which were better for him.
One of my favorite examples of the Francis-Lois relationship comes in the Season 1 episode “The Bots and the Bees.” In this one, Lois goes to visit Francis at military school after Francis has a medical emergency. And his first reaction to needing surgery is this:
“This is the single greatest thing that’s ever happened to me. For as long as I can remember, my mom’s been torturing me with guilt. I’ve never been able to fight back, but this is perfect. Her first-born child almost dies and she’s the one who sent me here. She can’t dismiss it. She can’t argue about it. She can’t twist it around and make it my fault. It’s beautiful!”
Much to Francis’ chagrin, when Lois shows up at Marlin Academy, everyone loves her. So naturally, Francis pushes her away. He can’t conceive of a world where his mom acting pleasant isn’t “a trap” she’s ploying to embarrass him. When she’s mean to him, he hates it. When she’s nice to him, he hates it. Francis can’t help but resent any choice made by an authority figure.
Francis’ rebellion against authority stemmed beyond his relationship with his mother. In the first two seasons when he was at Marlin Academy, nearly every Francis storyline dealt with his ongoing struggle against Commandant Spangler. In Alaska, Francis fought his superiors despite the urging of his co-workers, just as happened at Marlin Academy with Spangler.
I think a lot of Francis’ issues with authority can be distilled into an interaction he has with Lois in the Season 2 episode “Hal Quits.”
Francis: I’m working for a moron.
Lois: Of course you are, honey. Your boss is an idiot, your co-workers are incompetent and you’re under-appreciated. Welcome to the working world.
Francis is naturally negative, and when he has his first chance to have a paying job, his negative thoughts are immediately validated. By his mother no less!
As Francis got older, he matured a little bit. His relationship with Otto on the dude ranch was far less contentious than his previous squabbles with authority. But by that time, Francis had taken over as the competent adult. He didn’t have an authority to rebel against because Otto didn’t serve as an authority figure.
The most noteworthy conversation to have about Francis’ status as an elder millennial comes in the series’ fantastic finale Graduation. We’ll talk more about Graduation later, because it really does a great job of wrapping up the characters. But Francis’ wrap-up might be the most fitting.
Home for Malcolm and Reese’s graduation day, Francis is making a big show of complaining to Lois about how he’s still a free-spirit who refuses to bow to authority. He’s his usual, crotchety, big-stinking self and everything he does is an attempt to get Lois’ goat. But Hal sees that Francis has a swipe card for an office building. And Francis confides in his father that he’s been working a 9-to-5 job. And what’s more, he loves it. But he refuses to let Lois know. He has to preserve the illusion that he’s the negative, rebellious type he’s always been.
If there was ever a perfect example of the disdainful attitudes we described in old millennials, it’s Francis. His default attitude is to expect the worst of authority. Authority has let him down and it’s his job to show that that isn’t right. And when confronted with happiness, Francis still doesn’t want to let his guard down. He has to preserve the illusion for the sake of his attitude and, by extension, his generational identity.
Reese and Malcolm
For the purposes of our discussion, let’s label Malcolm as the default millennial. He is neither old nor young. He is the generally-accepted definition of millennial as prescribed by the juvenoic tendencies of Baby Boomers and Gen Xers. Positive stereotypes, negative stereotypes, whatever. Malcolm is the character in the middle, as the title says. And as the everyman character in this show, it makes sense that he should embody the entire generation.
Reese, meanwhile, is Malcolm’s foil. In a different story about a different family with a different perspective, Reese is the everyman. Reese is the underdog. Reese is the overlooked. Reese is common and flawed and simple and complex in every way, and probably grows as much as Malcolm, if not more, throughout the course of the series.
(When I say “grows,” I mean emotionally. Malcolm and Dewey grow a lot more physically than Reese throughout the show. I mean, a lot more.)
The defining characteristics that made up Malcolm’s character generally revolved around his intelligence and his neuroses. Malcolm was unquestionably the smartest person he knew. In the phenomenal Season 1 episode Krelboyne Picnic, we get our first glimpse of how smart Malcolm really is when he Human Calculators his way through multiplying and dividing credit card numbers against themselves. His intelligence defines how other people see him, regardless of if that’s what he wants. We see Malcolm’s relationship with his intelligence and the superiority he feels because of it best in episodes like Stupid Girl where Malcolm abandons what has made him successful and he proves unable to function.
The defining characteristics that made up Reese’s character generally revolved around his lack of intelligence and neuroses. Reese was pure id. Think of the Season 3 episode “Reese Drives” when Reese steals a car and ends up in a chase with the cops in the middle of his driver’s test. Reese just kind of acts. Whether he made the right decision of the wrong decision is inconsequential to him. Foresight isn’t his strength.
One word you’ll hear a lot in studies about millennials is “expectations.” Millennials have high expectations for themselves and they grew up with high expectations put on them by their parents.
To me, expectations are the difference between Reese and Malcolm. No one expects anything from Reese and Reese expects nothing from himself. Everyone expects everything from Malcolm and Malcolm expects everything from himself.
Which is funny, because Reese often out-performs his expectations. He’s proven to be a great chef and a generationally-good janitor. He’s also very crafty with schemes (like the time he saved up to buy Dewey a new toy just so he could smash the toy in Dewey’s face), which shows a little bit of an ability to plan.
Malcolm, meanwhile, is often unaware of or overwhelmed by his expectations. Take the last season as a long example. He’s expected to earn scholarship money and grants for college. He’s expected to break the school GPA record (despite the fact that he nearly failed music appreciation). And the battle with expectations hits its peak in Graduation.
Malcolm is offered a job at a tech company that’ll make him financially stable for life and would mean he wouldn’t have to go to college. He wants to take the job. But Lois and the rest of the family tell him he can’t take it. He has to go to college and work his way through it and pay his dues until he eventually climbs high enough on the ladder to where he’s President of the United States. Because only someone like Malcolm who can think like an elite but has lived the life of an everyman is qualified to lead the country.
Malcolm is stunned to hear this, but everyone in the family shrugs off Lois’ speech, saying they thought he knew. This is his destiny. The expectation is that he’ll be President someday. Anything else is a disappointment.
If you view this through the lens of Malcom’s status as a poster child millennial, there’s definitely a metaphor to explore. More than any generation before us, millennials have grown up with higher and higher expectations put upon us. The world’s problems mount and we’re the ones who will be tasked with fixing them. Between the access to the internet and the prep classes and our country’s disappearing manufacturing sector, millennials have been told from a young age that college is the only route we have to a successful life. And from college, millennials are expected to find jobs in new fields, STEM fields, the fields that will change the world.
Of course, Malcolm is an exaggeration of that ideal. Millennials are taught it’ll be our responsibility to save the world. As a collective, hopefully. But in Malcolm’s case, the idea is almost single-handed.
Dewey
When people are listing the best traits that define millennials, the idea of collaboration usually comes up. More than any generation before them, studies have shown millennials thrive in collaborative environments. There’s a level of generosity and willingness to work toward a common good inherent to this generation that previous groups haven’t displayed. And Dewey, who is not-so-secretly the most likable child character on Malcolm in the Middle, is a perfect example of this.
As far as intelligence goes, Dewey probably isn’t far behind Malcolm. Dewey is a borderline musical prodigy. He understands sound just as well as Malcolm understands numbers. So it’s not a surprise that Dewey was on the path toward becoming a “Krelboyne” just like Malcolm. But Malcolm didn’t want Dewey to be a social outcast the same way he was.
So in the Season 4 episode “Dewey’s Special Class,” Malcolm forces Reese to take Dewey’s placement test for him. And Reese proves to be so bizarre and incorrect in his test-taking ability that he gets Dewey placed in the “Buseys” class for emotionally disturbed children and those with mental disorders. The class is taught by an overwhelmed and incompetent teacher, so Dewey takes over as the leader of the class and serves as a stabilizing presence in the classroom. When given a chance to escape the Buseys and be a Krelboyne as he had initially wanted, Dewey decides against it and pretends to be emotionally disturbed so he can stay in the class and protect his new friends.
The Busey episodes through the last three seasons are some of my favorites. “Buseys Run Away” and “Buseys Take a Hostage” might be the two best and most memorable episodes in Season 6. And a big reason for that is the dynamic that Dewey has with his classmates. They look to him for guidance and instruction in a naive and respectful way that might be the closest thing this show gets to being sweet.
I don’t want to belabor the metaphor any further, but I think you can guess where I’m going with this. Dewey is a musical prodigy. A savant, perhaps. But his personality leads him to choosing collaboration instead of personal gain. Whereas past generations were conditioned to put themselves first at all costs, Dewey exhibits the millennial trait of choosing the collective over the individual. And in some ways that makes him strong. But most importantly to him, it makes the whole stronger. Dewey proves through leadership that cooperation makes everyone better.
And in the grand scheme of millennial ideology, this fits pretty well with the concept of “young millennials.” Far too young to be jaded by the financial crash and not old enough to have had his worldview altered by 9/11, Dewey accepts the world he lives in and works to make it better. He’s also the one character who we haven’t talked about with respect to Graduation. So let’s do that. But let’s actually frame it around the fifth brother.
Jamie
As I said before, we don’t know much about Jamie. He’s barely 3 years old by the time the show ends. But one of the running threads throughout Graduation gives a pretty good indication of the character he would’ve become. It pertains to the “nuclear option.”
In short, Malcolm, Reese and Dewey did one thing in their youth that was so bad and so unthinkable that they used it as leverage against each other to never turn on their brothers. (They falsified X-rays to make Lois think she had cancer so she wouldn’t ground them for bad report cards. Yep.) With Malcolm and Reese graduating and moving out, the brothers decide they can destroy the evidence and rid themselves of the nuclear option. Malcolm and Reese are thrilled about this, but Dewey finds the occasion to be bittersweet, since this piece of evidence was what connected him to his brothers.
That said, when the episode ends, we see Dewey devise a new nuclear option, this time with Jamie. As a character, Dewey is at his best when he’s interacting with others. Whether it’s the Buseys or his brothers or his phenomenal episodes with Hal, we know Dewey as a person who thrives in the company of others. And in this brief interaction with Jamie, the final appearance on screen for either character, we see Dewey setting up the relationship that will define the next phase of his life.
He’ll be to Jamie what Francis was to him, except he’ll likely learn from the bitterness and resentment that Francis carried and be a more collaborative and positive influence on his Gen Z brother. (Brothers? Lois is pregnant again in the final scene of the show. And we know she’s not going to be lucky enough to have a girl. Despite her imagined sequences in the show’s best episode.)
Let’s end this thing
Ok. So maybe all of this is a bit indulgent. Maybe I’m just a child of the aughts who loves this show because it’s a show about my generation and I’m projecting thoughts and beliefs onto it that maybe aren’t there. But it lines up pretty well.
Before the term millennial broke into the mainstream and before we knew how people of this age would act as adults and, heck, before the recession even began, the characters on Malcolm in the Middle were displaying the traits we’d come to accept and expect as “millennial traits.”
And let’s also make it clear before we’re done talking about Malcolm in the Middle: best sitcom theme song ever. Fight me.
The Sitcomologist 