Welcome to a new Sitcom Tuesday! This week, I’m continuing my rerun series celebrating the 25th anniversary of the 2000-2001 season, counting down my picks for its ten best sitcoms. Up for consideration is every comedy that I’ve ever covered from that particular TV year, both on Sitcom Tuesdays and Wildcard Wednesdays. In addition to directly comparing each show’s 2000-2001 output, my ranking is also factoring in how each season fares in the trajectory of their own individual series, along with how each show’s ultimate, overall (and average) quality measures up to the others. That is, I’m mostly looking at what was produced in 2000-2001, but I’m not ignoring the broader intra-series and inter-series implications of such a list.

With all that reiterated, here’s what I’ve featured so far:

#10. BECKER (Season Three)

#9. FRASIER (Season Eight)

#8. CURB YOUR ENTHUSIASM (Season One)

#7. THE KING OF QUEENS (Season Three)

#6. WILL & GRACE (Season Three)

#5. TITUS (Season Two)

#4. FRIENDS (Season Seven)

#3. THAT ’70S SHOW (Season Three)

For this post — #2 on the list — I have selected Season Two of MALCOLM IN THE MIDDLE, which I first wrote about here: https://jacksonupperco.com/2023/09/12/the-ten-best-malcolm-in-the-middle-episodes-of-season-two/

Malcolm In The Middle is a generally underrated domestic comedy that doesn’t reinvent the wheel in terms of premise — I mean, it’s always a fairly simple family show. But it’s got great characters (particularly the two parents) and a modern, 2000s-predicting comedic sensibility that makes the proceedings feel fresh and creative, especially in its first few years. Specifically, Malcolm operates at a faster pace than most comedies of the early 2000s, and its somewhat rebellious (but soon to be ubiquitous) single-cam setup enables a sort of outlier sensibility that helps it stand out from the crowd (a torch later picked up and run with by joke-a-second single-cams like Arrested Development and 30 Rock). Frankly, I don’t think it’s ever the absolute best sitcom on the air — mainly because its stories with the kids sometimes lean too much on generalities or clichés, despite each boy having a basic consistency that’s delineated well against each other. However, it’s always in the conversation for a Top 10 list, and half the time would probably make my Top 5 — certainly in the early seasons where it’s most able to play to its specific situation about the title character being a genius misfit in a family that’s demographically ordinary yet extraordinarily chaotic. Here in 2000-2001, during which Malcolm offered its second (and first full) season, the show reaches its highest heights, both in terms of its own standards and compared to the rest of the genre’s. That is, this is the best that Malcolm In The Middle ever will be — the ideal intersection of novelty and knowingness — and it’s at its most competitive against other contemporaneous sitcoms as well. Indeed, there’s only one show that I feasibly could have ranked higher on this list, and, well, I did — but for reasons that have much more to do with that series’ own unique excellence than any shortcomings here with Malcolm, the reliable yet oft-overlooked family comedy that was truly one of the newest and funniest sitcom prospects at the turn of the 21st century. Bested only by #1 — coming next week…

Notable Episodes: “Traffic Jam,” “Lois’ Birthday,” “Traffic Ticket,” and “Bowling” 

Come back next week for #1 on my countdown! And stay tuned tomorrow for a new Wildcard!