I just watched the final episode of Malcolm in the Middle and I never realized how powerful the message was in that episode

TLDR - Malcolm is a genius who lives with a dysfunctional family and believes that he deserves better. His family does not want him to have the easy life because of his intellect and want him to suffer and continously work as hard as he can in order to eventually use his intellect for the right reasons and to eventually become the president of the United States and use his future position to support other people instead of selfishly supporting only himself

For those of you who do not watch what the TV show "Malcolm in the Middle" is about, I'll try to tell you this in a nutshell -

The show is basically about the life of Malcolm Wilkerson who happens to be lucky to be lucky with genius IQ and possess unimaginable level of intellectual prowess (although other members of his family are intelligent as well sometimes) however his life is not so lucky

He lives with a very dysfunctional family where his parents are often seen as abusive (especially his mother sometimes), neglectful (mostly his father), unintelligent, primitive, chaotic and even irresponsible, he is often bullied by his brother (he has 4 siblings in the show plus another future sibling in the final season) and also bullied by his peers at school and his family is not the most likeable family and their neighbours often celebrated their absence when they are away during weekends.

Malcolm happens to be a smart kid who is in a very unlucky position and he often exhibited traits such as egocentrism, sometimes rude or brash behaviours, arrogance, and often broke the fourth wall and tells the audience how much he really deserves better in his life.

These kinds of chaotic and dysfunctional behaviours are what made the show stand out because it made good comedy and Malcolm happens to be a guy who feels like he is a super genius surrounded by primitive people.

In the final episode, Malcolm is going to graduate high school and plans to use his intellect to find a job straight out of high school and become super rich with his genius prowess.

But his family would not let him do it and went through extremes to make sure to not get a job straight away and achieve the easy life and want him to go to Harvard.

At first glance, this looks a lot like family abuse and his mother actually demanded Malcolm to go to college and eventually become President of the United States

But in reality, she wanted to do this for a reason.

Apparently, despite the sometimes destructive and dysfunctional nature of Malcolm's parents and family, they are fully aware that Malcolm is smart beyond their expectations and they wanted Malcolm to go the right path and eventually use his intellect for the right reasons.

For this reason, they actually wanted him to suffer despite that Malcolm himself said that he grew tired of suffering and getting the short end of the stick (and rightfully so because he got a ton of punishments and other stuff throughout the series) and wanted him to use that suffering of his to use his intellect to help the common people - the kind of people who are often neglected and treated like garbage by others. They wanted Malcolm to work continuously hard, if not harder than ever, and they know that he will continue to suffer because of it becuase they know that many people will do anything to make him suffer (because people can be pretty selfish jerks) and want him to realise that this suffering will be his motivation to work even harder and eventually become the President of the United States, if not one of the best presidents ever and be regarded as a good president instead of one who just bought his way to become president.

I already watched this show before and I was already aware how powerful the message was but after seeing that show again, I never realised that how powerful it is for me and perhaps for the entire world because the world loves to glorify intellect and sees smart people as heroes or icons such as Einstein, Steve Jobs, Elon Musk and so on. But it is somehow also crucial to not neglect wisdom or priorities intellect over wisdom as it is just as important in today's world, if not even more important as Malcolm happens to be a guy who has a lot of intellect but little wisdom or even likeability because like I said, he often behaved in arrogant and selfish ways.

I never actually realised how deep the message is for today because despite that many people love to glorify intellect (even I do whenever I realise that I did something smart), it is not seen very often where people use that intellect for the right purposes or for good intentions. In fact, this kind of treatment and respect from others for such actions are often done after the person already passed away or died or ceased to exist by other means

It is also a bit ironic too because in today's society, there are tons and tons of things happening at once and we often talk a lot about how much sufferring there is in the world (not as much as before but there still is) such as poverty, famine, racism, bigotry, corruption, unfair and selfish treatment from others just because and so on. And we often talk a lot about how much we want to end that kind of suffering or eliminate as many of it as possible (and rightfully so) but we rarely even mention how this kind of sufferring also has its own purpose in life despite its negative implications.

It builds character, empathy, wisdom, grit, moral values and so on.

It is quite powerful that we often glorify smart people for having their abilities which can later be used for good intentions in order to end the suffering of many people (even though many smart people in history also did the opposite) but we never really go deeper of how this kind of suffering is also helpful for others too, even for smart people who are often regarded as people who deserve better treatment because of their "gifts"

Submitted April 02, 2018 at 07:20PM by sammyjamez https://ift.tt/2In78ky