Since great television comedy always begins with the script, this series of posts considers the individual episodes that have claimed the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Writing for a Comedy Series over the years.

To understand how distinctly unique Malcolm and the Middle was when held up against every other broadcast network sitcom airing the year its pilot episode snared the Emmy for comedy writing, it’s useful to consider some of its competitors. In the category, the other half-hour programs that wedged in commercial were Everybody Loves Raymond and Frasier, fine shows but also as conventional as they come. Scripts from Sex and the City and Freaks and Geeks were also in the mix; although those shows stood out in various ways, they were also built on frameworks of immediately recognizable narrative structures. Malcolm in the Middle had a whole different energy.

Written by series creator Linwood Boomer, the pilot episode lays out the particulars of the show. It’s a family sitcom, but the family in question is unusually hectic, in no small part because of a clear burden of economic hardship. The mother (Jane Kaczmarek) has to constantly triage resources to keep the three boys in the house fed, for instance. In a rare circumstance of opportunity coming their way, Malcolm (Frankie Muniz), the middle child in that trio of siblings, is determined by a school counselor to have a genius-level IQ, and he is given the opportunity to move into advanced courses. He’s initially against the change, but is persuaded that moving up on the education ladder is the right course of action.

The general details of the plot are properly put in place, as any good pilot must do. What makes this inaugural episode of Malcolm in the Middle so striking is how the more unorthodox dynamics are of the series are effectively established. It’s shot with the single-camera method when three cameras and a live studio audience were very much the norm (Everybody Loves Raymond, Frasier, and Friends were among the nominees for Outstanding Comedy Series, and Will & Grace won that trophy; the last time a three-camera sitcom was even nominated in the top category was 2014, when The Big Bang Theory made the cut). The episode has a brash, cartoonish energy and demonstrates a willingness to be abrasive, mostly in the anger Malcolm regularly flashes. And Malcolm regularly breaks the fourth wall to speak directly to the audience. That trick goes back to the earliest days of television, when it was a device on The George Burns and Gracie Allen Show, and comedy characters addressing the camera was a few years away from becoming commonplace after the U.S. version of the The Office, which debuted in 2005, beget a host of imitators. When this middle schooler did it, though, it was wild.

There’s solid writing in the pilot episode of Malcolm in the Middle, but it’s really more a feat of directing. Even the best gag, delivered as an aside to the camera by Malcolm in the midst of telling off a bully and including a perfectly executed callback, is helped considerably by the crack timing of the moment as rendered by director Todd Holland. The Academy of Television Arts & Sciences evidently realized this, too. The same year the Malcolm in the Middle pilot won for writing, it also snared Holland an Emmy for directing.

Other posts in this series can be found at the “Golden Words” tag.