While flipping through the channels recently (something I do surprisingly little of these days thanks to the magic of the DVR) I stumbled across an old episode of Malcolm in the Middle.
I pretty much missed out on the show during its original run, but have heard good things about it over the years so decided to check in on it for a few minutes. And, of course, I was curious to check out Bryan Cranston, who plays dad Hal on the show, from the vantage point of having experienced his astonishing work on Breaking Bad over the last few years.
So, watching Hal – a role that Cranston put in 151 episodes worth of work for by the way – it's simply hard to believe this is the same actor that cooks up meth and juggles an increasingly precarious lifestyle in the Albuquerque badlands. Hal is earnest and good natured and has a touch of the sitcom dad sensibility, albeit with more serious undertones than you generally see. As an aside, Malcolm in the Middle was quite good for the little bit I caught of it.
What's interesting is you get a hint of Hal when Walter White of Breaking Bad fame is around his wife and children and playing the role of the normal dad within the scope of that character. In other words, that's the character that Walter White plays when he's not breaking bad or in the Heisenberg role as we've come to know him.
An actor that comes to mind when thinking of a similar-ish transition is Michael Chiklis, who was mostly known for his affable police chief character on The Commish before transforming into the iconic badass Vic Mackey on The Shield. And looks like Chiklis will be trying to "head back the other way" now, so to speak, in starring in the new ABC show No Ordinary Family this fall.
In other Bryan Cranston news, he'll be hosting Saturday Night Live and starring in an indie flick called The Grief Tourist. Let the reign of Bryan Cranston continue, says I.
