quote [ Almost every episode of Malcolm in the Middle ends with the sound of a door being slammed shut. It returns Malcolm's family – a combustive medley of troublemakers and misfits – back to the status quo. This is standard in sitcoms; everything returns to how it was. The difference is, in Malcolm in the Middle, the status quo is bleak. Unlike the characters in, say, Friends, who live comfortably in midtown apartments with lives seemingly unbothered by work, Malcolm's family is poor. Every joke, plot and resolution revolves around this material fact. ]