Fifteen years ago, when Aaron Spelling was having contract negotiation problems with the cast of Dynasty, he sent a gang of terrorists into the season-ending cliffhanger, a perfect example of the "shoot 'em all and let the lawyers sort 'em out" school of business. People still talk about the Moldavian Massacre episode. By next Sunday, they'll have forgotten most of what Fox offered us last Sunday. It's a shame, because Sunday nights on Fox used to be the best night on TV -- they've been holding my attention every week for years -- but nothing lasts forever. Most of the line-up has gotten old and tarnished, with Malcolm in the Middle providing the only bright spot -- a spot no longer marked by an "X."

Poor Chris Carter. He had his Moldavian massacre last year, when the faceless aliens incinerated virtually every regular evil cabal member guest star. Combined with The X-Files movie that gave away everything behind the conspiracy but then pulled back as if none of it had happened, this is one show that has overstayed its welcome. Last season was ripe for a grand finale. By now, this plum tomato has gone more than rancid. Once again, Carter pulled a UFO out of his ass to whisk away Fox Mulder pending David Duchovny's contract negotiations with and lawsuit against Fox. The results of the contract talks were announced last Wednesday -- Duchovny will be back -- so there's not a lot of suspense here. The real loss to the series, though, was the apparent death (finally) of William Davis' Cancer Man, the only consistently interesting character on the show besides Krychek (Nicholas Lea, who has just about the strongest onscreen presence of any actor now working). Carter is spinning off his Lone Gunmen characters for a series slated for winter, 2001, but he's making a mistake. Those three guys are boring and, frankly, pretty hard on the eyes. Spin off Cancer Man and Krychek into a black comedy from the conspirators' point of view, then wrap up this now very tired retread of The Night Stalker. Fast. Of course, it's always possible for Cancer Man to make a comeback from the grave -- he's done it before -- but maybe Davis' agent finally priced him out of the market, or he got tired of commuting from Canada. Who knows? Who really cares? Just promise us one thing for season eight -- for fuck's sake, don't let Duchovny near another writing or directing assignment, not after the moonlight tango zombie disaster of "Hollywood A.D."

Most of the rest of Fox's Sunday finale line-up was about as lame. Okay, animation is supposed to be two dimensional, but that doesn't mean flat. Flat is certainly what we got with both The Simpsons and King of the Hill. The premise for The Simpsons' finale was promising; a mock Behind the Music-style exposé. Okay, it's not that original an idea, but it could have worked if it were done right. Instead, every choice was beyond obvious, with each of the Simpson's off-screen personae identical to those onscreen, making it a sort of twisted Ozzie and Harriet story, with nods to The Partridge Family thrown in. But how much more original would it have been to make the "real" characters different than their screen characters? In the business, they call this breaking format, and The Simpsons does it frequently -- q.v. their annual Hallowe'en shows. Instead, we got a weak and predictable half hour -- friction within the family, troubles with the IRS, etc., etc., ad infinitum ad nauseum.

King of the Hill didn't even feel like a season finale, but they've had two very big finales in the past, one with Peggy Hill and a failed parachute, the other with an exploding Megalomart. Hard to top either of those, and maybe they were wise for not trying, but in casting an assortment of country western singing stars as guest voices, the cornpone content was cranked way up high. I've found King of the Hill to be very hit-or-miss since its second season. Some episodes are good, most are so-so. The finale didn't even try.

This leaves us with Malcolm in the Middle, the only new show in the bunch, and its first season finale.

One word, Benjamin. Brilliant.

I swear I grew up with Malcolm's family as neighbors, the dysfunctional parents with children raised by wolves terror house that exists in at least one iteration on every suburban block. Parents hate these families but kids love them because they're the one chaotic refuge they can go to and get away with everything they can't do at home. Malcolm in the Middle has been consistently funny, edgy and very true to life its entire first season and this year's finale capped a perfect year with a cliffhanger while keeping everything just as darkly hilarious as always. All that, and they managed to pull off a couple of touching moments completely in context.

Mom and dad (Jane Kaczmarek and Bryan Cranston) decide it's time for a family vacation to the water park, but they won't be bringing youngest son Dewey (Erik Per Sullivan) with them -- he's prone to ear infections. The parents hire a sitter and set off with Malcolm (Frankie Muniz) and Reese (Justin Berfield). Naturally, the two brothers end up doing everything possible to bug the hell out of each other in an escalating game of "now we're even," culminating in the (inevitable) public pantsing of Reese by Malcolm, leading Reese to want to do some serious damage to his younger brother. This chase drags mother Lois into things, and she delivers a tirade as only she can, but happens to be standing precariously close to the mouth of the big monster water slide of death, The Liquidator. Malcolm just can't resist this opportunity, but his act of defiance sends all three of them down the tube backwards. Maternal retribution next season is sure to be nasty.

While all of this is going on, Francis (Christopher Masterson) is enduring life at military school, playing pool (to lose) against Commandant Spangler (Daniel von Bargen). When Spangler finds out Francis has been hustling at a local pool hall, he demands a rematch in which his opponent doesn't hold back. Francis could wipe the floor with Spangler, but his fellow cadets insist that he lose, else the Commandant will make life miserable for all of them. Caught between a rock and a hard place, the game between Francis and Spangler turns into a contest of who can scratch in the most spectacular manner. This leads them to a strange camaraderie and understanding in what was an unexpectedly touching pay-off.

The real emotional bang, though, came in Dewey's story, as he's foisted off on a babysitter, wonderfully underplayed by Bea Arthur. At first, she looks like the sitter from hell, insisting Dewey do nothing that makes noise -- meaning, nothing at all. Eventually, though, they bond during a Sisyphian task of button sorting, culminating in what I think was the most charming yet twisted moment I've seen on TV this entire year as Dewey and the sitter dance a duet to Abba's Fernando. This scene was remarkable as a six year-old boy and sixty year-old woman create their own playland together, like the indulgent grandmother when the folks aren't around, if, that is, grandma happened to be severely fucked in the head in some way. The punchline to this scene sends Dewey off in pursuit of an errant red balloon and thence to parts unknown, giving us our end of season cliffhanger -- where is Dewey, anyway?

I sometimes have a feeling watching the show that Erik Per Sullivan, who's eight years old, is one of those "wind 'em up and let 'em go" child actors. That is, they stick him in front of the camera, give him a real simple direction, then hope he manages to hit what they want. On the other hand, according to the Internet Movie Database, he's a first degree black-belt in Tae Kwan Do and speaks fluent Swedish, so maybe the kid is a forty year old midget in disguise. Whatever he is, he's perfect on this show, establishing probably the most distinctive character with hardly more than five words per episode.

Frankie Muniz is definitely a forty year-old midget in disguise. He's the older of the two teen regulars on the show but plays the younger brother. His narration holds each episode together as he addresses the camera directly, and he's certainly the most perceptive character. Muniz is unique, with a sort of burnt-out sag in his eyes that reads far beyond his fifteen years. He reminds me a lot of David Bennent, the little boy who refused to grow up in The Tin Drum. Muniz definitely has charisma, providing the relatively sane center to the chaos swirling around him.

A big chunk of that chaos is thanks to Justin Berfield who, at age fourteen, has been in the business nearly two thirds of his life. You might remember him from Unhappily Ever After, in which he was very young. On the far side of puberty now, he's developing into a very edgy and intense character actor who might start to inherit Gary Oldman's old roles in a few years. He's perfectly cast as the volatile, trouble-making brother, the kid whose head might suddenly explode without warning in the middle of a particularly intense argument.

The oldest brother, Francis, is played by Christopher Masterson, real-life kid brother of Danny Masterson (Hyde on That 70's Show). Hey, no one ever said Fox wasn't incestuous. Again, the casting is on the nose. On sight, Masterson looks like one of those kids who fancies himself a bigger delinquent than he really is but still manages to get into enormous trouble with endless minor-league Sgt. Bilko schemes. Interesting, too, that the brothers Masterson play such similar characters on their respective shows. That's either genetics or a relative high up in the Fox hierarchy. I'm not sure which.

Amazing, in such circumstances, that dad could be so calm, but nothing ruffles him. As Hal, Bryan Cranston comes across as that 1950's everydad -- a look that landed him prior roles as astronauts Buzz Aldrin and Gus Grissom. It wouldn't be at all out of place for this dad to come home in suit and fedora, light up a pipe and put on his slippers. Of course, the hat would be fetish-wear, the pipe would be full of something besides tobacco and the slippers might be big, pink and fuzzy, but Hal wouldn't care. Cranston obviously takes a lot of enjoyment in underplaying a character who is either a bigger delinquent than all his sons combined or utterly clueless, and he never quite lets us know which it is. Every time we seem to get a hint in one direction, he drops a bomb in the other, and so we're always kept off guard.

The real star of the show, though, and the holy terror who keeps everyone jumping, is mother Lois, the utterly astonishing Jane Kaczmarek. I can't rave enough about this actress who, like everyone else, is perfectly cast. Kaczmarek can veer from sweetness to Satan and back in a single breath and she makes completely plausible both that Hal would have fallen in love with her and her kids would be in her absolute control. One of the season's better moments came when Francis was completely unfazed during a secret-society initiation hazing, explaining that he'd had far worse growing up courtesy of mom. So moved were his tormentors that they were soon terrorizing new recruits with a litany of "you'll never amount to anything" mom speeches -- proving even more effective than branding irons and live rats. That sums up the character's power in a nutshell, but only an actress with talent, a strong personality and a voice that could poach an egg could manage to make it work. Kaczmarek had better win a friggin' Emmy for this. Hell, the whole show should win an Emmy. Since its midseason debut this spring, I have not seen a bad episode.

Of course, with time, any fresh and exciting new show can get tired. The Simpsons veered into hit-or-miss territory half a dozen seasons back and The X-Files never recovered from season five. King of the Hill was never consistently good to begin with and continues to circle the drain. Malcolm in the Middle certainly has an uphill row to hoe, and a double danger to face. Not only do its producers have to keep it original, but they've got that great bugaboo of "kid" shows to deal with -- the kids on the show are going to get older. Malcolm and Reese's fratricidal tendencies are funny now, but they may read entirely differently in two or three seasons. Dewey can only play "somewhere between an infant and a hamster" for so long. That's the one advantage The Simpsons has over non-animated shows, and perhaps the reasons it's now in its thirty or fortieth season or somesuch -- cartoons don't get older, animation cells don't demand more money or go on strike, and voice actors can be replaced seamlessly. But, put it all together and you still get a cartoon...

Catch Malcolm in the Middle now. It's the only non-cartoon on Fox's Sunday night schedule, but it's more animated than the rest of the evening put together. I can't wait to see where they go with it in the fall. That's more than I can say about any of the other shows.

Jon Bastian, a native and resident of Los Angeles, is a playwright and screenwriter who works in the TV trade to keep his dog rolling in kibble.

Got a problem? Email Jon at filmmonthly@hotmail.com