The evolution of TV's family comedy shows

To be sure, the show is a far cry from the utopian families who populated television in the early 1960s in programs such as "The Donna Reed Show" and "Father Knows Best."

Robert Thompson, professor of media and popular culture at Syracuse University, says those shows had a certain "user-friendly" quality to them, but "didn't allow for the full palette of family life, or anything even close to it.

"Even though the family is the basic grammatical unit of American television," he says, "it's amazing how poorly explored the American family has been through most of the history of television."

The 1980s brought television's first true departure from standardized family comedies, says Mr. Thompson. Even as shows such as "Family Ties," "The Cosby Show," and "Growing Pains" continued the family norm, shows such as "Roseanne," "Married With Children," and the animated series "The Simpsons" launched what he calls "a sort of family-TV culture war."

Suddenly, families were decidedly middle-class with imperfect parents and impertinent kids.

Also around that time, "The Wonder Years" debuted, taking comedy to a more sophisticated level, particularly in the show's refusal to use a laugh track and its exploration of unorthodox story lines.

"Malcolm," says Thompson, owes its heritage to this breakaway portrayal of American families (though he says he also thinks of "Leave It to Beaver," with its odd cast of characters including Lumpy and Eddie Haskell, as being a kind of "grandfather" to the show).

But at a time when television programming is more abundant and more fractured than it has ever been, the show has done something else: It is pulling in whole families of viewers.

Experts observe that the show appeals to all age groups in a family, from grandparents to grade-schoolers.

"What they've managed to do with this show," says Thompson, "is to reposition the nuclear family comedy, from this old-fashioned notion of something for everybody in an era where there was nothing else to watch, to something for everybody that can actually survive in a 90-channel cable environment.

"They've pulled off an extraordinary demographic sleight of hand."

Fans of the show also note that it has managed to do something else. As edgy as the writing is, "Malcolm in the Middle" sits squarely on a base of fairly traditional values.

Sure, the kids get in trouble. But it's a mild sort of trouble: rigging giant catapults on the roof and hurling used baby diapers at the neighbors, or sneaking out to the circus, where they get locked in at closing time.

They don't "do drugs," there's not a drop of alcohol on the show, and as wild as things get, both Lois and Hal lay down a firm line between right and wrong.

"It deals with wholesome family issues, without coming off as wholesome," says David Walsh, of the National Institute on Media and the Family. "It's got a nice blend of intelligent wackiness."

Adds Mr. Louv: "There's a solid spine there, but it's expressed in ways that are all over the map. That's what's so wonderful, because life is all over the map."

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