#i've come away from every defenders show i've watched thinking it was excellent television

[marlenacantswim]

guess who just watched jessica jones in the year of our lord 2024

[storm-dragoness]

id love to hear more about the malcolm in the middle vibes

Okay! So let me preface this with a few things: 1) it's been a minute or two since I've watched Malcolm in the Middle, 2) Even when I did watch it, I never actually put it on to watch myself, it was always the choice of my younger brother or older sister, 3) I don't really watch a lot of television, period 4) I haven't, perhaps obviously, seen the entirety of the show, though I have seen a decent amount, and 5) I don't really like MOST sitcoms.

While I'll argue that some of the writing in the show was quite good actually, and at times it offered a really good look into the kind of every day life that goes on in a home run by a dad with a crummy office job, a mom with a retail position, and 3 teen and preteen sons, and eventually, a baby on the way. However, I think that the show really fell apart as the show went on. One of the core facets of Malcolms character was that he was very smart, and way smarter than most of his peers. His story was supposed to be that of the middle child who didn't really fit in anywhere, by virtue of his stupid older brother, his weird younger brother, and his own predilection for letting his intelligence and morality make him Other™, whether in school or even in his own home. And it started out like that. And it was a lot of fun. But my PRIMARY issue with the show was that as Malcolm hit puberty, the ENTIRE SHOW seemed to start focusing around that. Malcolm's primary character trait became "horny" so did all his guy friends, Malcolm started really spending a lot more time, and understanding Reese, which really never should have happened since Reese was supposed to provide an excellent Foil for Malcolm. So they just kind of KILLED his character in that way. It didn't come up too much more really that he was smart, it was sort of tangential, to how he used his brain, instead of for anything interesting, just to be horny. And the show ABSOLUTELY could have had good enough writing to make it be a little bit more of a coming of age story and how do you reconcile middle-lower class life being so Othered, and finding a relationship, or failing to, and it still coulda been funny, and it still coulda been true to the characters but it wasn't. It was reductive, simplistic, and portrayed a lot of things in a really bad light. Not to mention Dewey, who, when the new baby was coming, they decided to have a whole Arc about how he fucking Goes Kind Of Crazy? I wasn't really watching it at this point, but that made me so mad too, it was like. Dewey was not supposed to be smart in the same way as Malcolm, but he was supposed to be Clever, and Creative, and more confident than Malcolm. I loved the scene where he's carrying a purse around and he very wisely puts a brick in it to defend himself with. Or when he's stealing spoons, but it's so that he can make his own makeshift Piano in the garage. And then they decide to have him HEAR the VOICE of the NEW BABY?? And then Reese tells him "That's normal, ignore the voices" like we're supposed to believe that reese is just kind of crazy too? Hes not supposed to be crazy! He's supposed to be the brute type, not terribly bright, but you know. Driven. And none of this is to say anything about Francis. Francis was supposed to be the older brother who was away from home and showed up sometimes to be cool and supportive, and to help Malcolm and his other younger brothers navigate the pains of puberty and social life. And they decided. To what? Have him go Kind of Crazy TOO! I don't know. It seemed like it started off with a really good premise and characters, but as the show went on, it got really... reductive. It started to feel less like an accurate portrayal of lower middle class life, and more like a caricature of it. It turned them all into like, really shitty people, and it seemed as if to say "Look at how stupid and ridiculous and pathetic these people are" which, I dunno, just feels really bad to me, and I was very very turned off by it.

[mystic-mae]

oh my gods this was ME

and then i decided to make a bot on c.ai about said hallucination bc it stuck with me

(mysticmae on c.ai, come say hi to my cast of bots ig)

guess who just watched jessica jones in the year of our lord 2024