Changed thread title as this really doesn't have much anything to do
with UK DVDs any more...
>
>Or is _all_ meanness to Dewey (from Reese, anyway) personal and
vindictive?
>
Reese seems to me to have a very distant attitude towards Dewey. He
does seem to take his frustrations out on Dewey a lot more than anyone
else, but I figured that was just because Dewey was the one who would
hurt him least when he hits back. The one where he forces Dewey to
sing 'I'm a teapot' while taking potshots at him with a cataput struck
me as particularly vindictive, he did it for no reason other than that
he could.
And even when being 'nice' to Dewey, he does it in a fairly detatched
manner. Like trying to give advice on not going to school with a
handbag, and telling him not to admit to hearing voices telling him to
do things.
They don't often pair them in the scripts, and when they do Reese
almost doesn't seem to know how to relate to Dewey
>> >> For me, the _worst_ MITM episode to date was "Health Scare", season
3.
>> To me it is a toss up between that and 'Contamination'.
>I think you are thinking of "Evacuation".
Er, yeah. That was the one I meant. Crazy part is I got the title
right further down...
>
>I wouldn't be that sure about the heart underneath. While these show her
at
>her worst, you have to consider the character in general. She answers
the
>door half ****d, for crying out loud. She doesn't really seem to be
>scrupled enough to not put someone else (except maybe Hal, who she also
has
>whipped into fear of her a lot) above herself.
She is a control freak. A self centered, egotistical control freak.
Hal plays to that, the kids are suffocated by it. But she doesn't see
that, she sees herself as reasonable. And from her point of view I
think she does care. It is just that her point of view is so twisted
that the kids really stand no chance.
>Lois never really seems to take to Malcolm or Reese the
>way she has Dewey, even though Dewey is now the same age that M&R
supposedly
>are/were when the show started. Maybe the baby will change that dynamic
and
>Dewey's in for a wakeup call...
I think it will be interesting if they play it that way. Only six more
weeks...
>To me that wasn't merely "parental overprotection" or whatever but just
>plain awful and selfish.
Which could have been attributed to irrational behavior with her not
dealing well with the chance Hal had cancer.... But
>But
>even after she knew, she kept up the shtick. You really have to be not
only
>a bad parent, but a bad person to do that.
That was the point I lost patience with that episode. Though I tend to
put it down to out-of-character writing for Lois rather than Lois
being that, well, plain evil.
>We're just not supposed to hear her say she is wrong (save the time
>it practically killed her to utter it in "Traffic Ticket").
Hmmm. I love that episode. And the fact the one time they manage to
force her to admit she was wrong, the one time they know she was was
actually right.
>Since it was schoolwork, I believe that may hold the key to Lois's
dislike
>of Malcolm. She has a beef with all of her children (save Dewey) based
>solely on consequences of their place in the family;. You have Francis
>where - well, we hit that one already. You have not-so-smart Reese that
>gets into trouble on the count of not being smart, always being blamed,
and
>being next to the oldest. Her beef with Malcolm,. I think, comes from
the
>idea that she may feel threatened by his super intelligence. For
whatever
>reason, Lois has an incredible ego and she is afraid of a sense of
>inferiority to Malcolm. Ergo, she keeps just as tight of a leash on him
(or
>maybe tighter) then the troublemakers.
She needs to control them all. She thinks she understands Francis,
Reese and Dewey - she clearly doesn't understand, but she thinks she
does. But even to herself she has to admit she does not understand
Malcolm. She can't outwit him the same way she thinks she does the
others, which is why I think she uses humiliation to keep him in his
place. It's all she has.
Why she freaked out so bad about schoolwork? I tend to blame the
writers. I can't really see at as anything but totally out of
character for her. Most other times she will about forgive anything
because it is for school. She was ready to let him go watch a meteor
shower at 2AM because she thought it was schoolwork. And when he is
playing 'not just any fairy, but the biggest fairy' in the high school
play, she is willing to trash her whole schedule for him because she
is so proud of him. She is the one who signs him up for advanced
cl***** that he doesn't want. And square dancing must be im****tant,
teaches him geometry. She might not understand any of it, but she is
concerned to make him suffer all that the school has to offer. She
wants him to succeed whether he wants it or not.
You know, I wonder how much the writers go into this stuff...
Sometimes it seems a lot. Other times like they make it up as they go
along.
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