Malcolm in the Middle: Season 3

Hal gropes a woman in a store after mistaking her for Lois, and Malcolm, trying to impress a girl, refuses to help him and leaves him to get arrested. Malcolm's family and the Kenarbans vacation together on a houseboat. Hal surprises Malcolm with a brand-new fishing pole and they go out fishing. Unable to catch anything, Malcolm finds the experience incredibly boring, especially as Reese and Stevie hang out with sex-starved girls from a nearby cheerleader camp. Just as Malcolm catches a fish and

Francis leaves the military academy and comes home a final time before heading out to join Eric in Alaska. However, Lois wants nothing to do with him, leading to a serious fight between her and Hal. Malcolm's new teacher, Mr. Herkabe (Chris Eigeman), sets up a ranking system to pressure the Krelboynes to achieve. They turn against each other until Malcolm develops a scheme to break Herkabe's system, humiliating him in front of the school principal.

Lois attempts to escape the boys' nightly misbehavior by joining a women's book club, but she soon realizes that it is merely an excuse for the women to socialize—and get drunk. Lois helps them plot against a wealthy PTA mother, Lillian Miller, who seems to handle all her motherly duties with ease while living in luxury. Meanwhile, Hal tries and fails many different ideas to keep the boys in order, and Francis hitches a ride with a trucker who makes him humiliate himself in exchange for the ride

After getting a girlfriend Sara Coleman (Alessandra Torresani, whose face is never shown on camera), Malcolm neglects his family and friends; the family reacts when they find out about her. Dewey uses his new friend's wealth to get the birthday party he's always wanted. Still en route to Alaska, Francis is briefly jailed, but starts to enjoy watching the guards' complicated lives unfold in the style of a soap opera.

Lois forces the boys into community service to build character. They choose to help out at a church, where they quickly go from trading their own stuff to stealing merchandise and creating a black market. When Hal discovers the boys' black market business, he attempts to make the trip back to the church to return the stuff they had taken and apologize. However, when his car breaks down and the police arrest him, Hal and the boys have an epiphany about their own actions. Francis finally reaches h

When news hits that Hal may have a serious illness, Lois becomes meaner than usual as she grounds Malcolm and Reese for drawing mud into the house. They later disobey Lois by going to a party full of girls only to come home in hot water. Meanwhile, Francis has a showdown with the combative Lavernia in Alaska, and Dewey becomes overzealous in taking care of his class' pet hamster.

As the boys ruin Christmas every year with their antics, Lois finally issues an ultimatum: either the boys behave until Christmas morning or the holiday is canceled. Her ploy works, but the boys realize that she could keep using this threat for every holiday and special occasion and decide they need to teach her a lesson. They draw an obscene picture on the garage wall and tear open their presents on Christmas Eve. However, remorse sets in when the boys realized that Lois bought them the present

Hal finally gets an invitation to Abe's poker game, but loses miserably. Hal believes that Abe's friends targeted him because of his comparatively boring job. Malcolm clashes with Stevie for filming him in a homework assignment, leading to a poker match between Hal and Abe. With Hal unable to attend the dance class he signed up for with Lois, she takes Reese instead, and so many old women want to dance with him that he starts charging them. He uses the money to buy Dewey a toy and smashes it in

Richie gets Reese a job at a fast-food place, but Reese gets into trouble when his co-workers think he stole money from the cash register. Malcolm finds himself eclipsed by the newest, youngest Krelboyne, Barton, Herkabe's latest attempt to get rid of Malcolm. Barton, Malcolm, and Reese confront Richie about stealing the money, which he denies until his girlfriend walks into the room and reveals the truth not knowing the boys are there. Richie has to agree to several services in exchange for the

Mortified when she learns that she performs poorly in Lucky Aide secret-shoppers' performance reviews, Lois tries to dress up her appearance. Her work life begins to improve after the makeover, but she removes all the makeup after a man mistakes her for a prostitute. Hal is re-energized after beating the boys at basketball until the boys discover his dirty secret and get their revenge on him. Francis deals with a rat infestation.

Juicy guest casting and ingenious plotting enliven an hourlong episode that airs in the plum post-Super Bowl slot. One storyline unfolds at Hal's company picnic, where Lois clashes with a blabby wife and her beleaguered spouse; and Hal runs afoul of his new boss and the big cheese. In Alaska, Francis's scheme to win a bet involves rigging a hockey game that pits loggers vs. a fearsome women's squad led by a blowhard coach.

After Hal is mistaken by his new boss, as that guy's boss, Hal plays along. Malcolm is in a three-legged scavenger hunt with the girl he likes, but becomes upset after he confesses he likes her, and she says she likes another boy. Reese is also the the scavenger hunt, and at first doesn't like the big dumb bully he is with, but they grow to like each other when they bond over beating up the other contestants and stealing their items. Lois continues to balance keeping Dewey intact and dealing wit

Reese gets his driving learner's permit, but after another student named Jackie makes him miss his turn for a driving test, he steals the Driver's-Ed car and ends up in a chase with the cops. However, he drives back to the driving course and makes a perfect score, impressing Jackie and his whole family. After allegedly throwing eggs on Craig's house, Lois makes Malcolm clean it, but Craig actually framed Malcolm so he could have Malcolm's help to set up his new home cinema. Francis makes several

A moody Cynthia returns from Europe and Malcolm discovers it's because she was hiding a more developed figure. When Reese finds out about this, he tries to date her. Malcolm outsmarts him by asking him Cynthia's name in front of her, which Reese had not bothered to learn. Desperate, he grabs her breasts in a last attempt and Cynthia beats him up. Lois' friend Karen tells her that she kissed Hal on New Year's Eve, but he denies it completely, and Lois realizes that Hal loves her more than she lov

Lois arranges for Francis to come home on Hal's birthday as a surprise, but the real surprise is on everyone else when Francis arrives with a wife, Piama (Emy Coligado). Malcolm, Dewey, and Reese are immediately sent to bed while the arguments rage on with Lois and Francis. The boys sneak off to a hotel with Hal's credit card to start a new life, but are soon caught. The entire family eventually do celebrate Hal's birthday before Francis and Piama return to Alaska.

Hal decides to coach Dewey's soccer team and turns them into monsters. When Malcolm and Reese get a computer from their neighbor Ed, they discover his big secret and Reese blackmails him into doing favors for him. However, Ed turns the situation against him when he learns of Reese's infractions at school and finally makes him return the favor. Malcolm starts playing a game called The Virts (a parody of The Sims), where he recreates himself and his family, but gets obsessed when his virtual self

Dewey finds a dog, hides him from his parents, and trains him to attack Malcolm and Reese on command. When Craig comes by to return some dry-cleaning, Dewey holds him hostage. Craig manages to escape but the dog mauls him. Because the dog is gone, Malcolm and Reese torture Dewey as revenge. Hal and Lois go on a date, and neither will admit that they caught Craig's flu. In Alaska, Francis comes face-to-face with his former commandant Spangler, who blames him for not only losing his job at Marlin

Hal, Abe, and their poker buddies start to compete over minor issues. Reese sets Stevie up with two popular girls, Chandra (Dana Davis) and Kristen (Lindsey Haun), telling them that Stevie is terminally ill. Malcolm discovers that one of the girls has a handgun and tries to hide it from her. Eric suspects that Piama is having an affair, but Francis finds that Piama was merely talking to her estranged father.

Believing the boys ruined the car, Hal forces them to see a psychiatrist, Dr. Kennedy (Andy Richter) to cure their bad behavior. Soon the three open up and tell him all about their family, which escalates into a big fight between the boys, freaking out the shrink. During the cold opening, Francis tries to fix a clog in his house's sink, almost getting his hand caught in the sink vent.

While Malcolm and Reese spend a day exploring a sewer with Dewey and Stevie, they can't stop bragging that they saw Kitty naked over the weekend. Lois serves jury duty for a stolen motorcycle case; and, as she's not allowed to discuss it, Hal and Abe think her case is a high-profile murder case and spend the day proving their own theories about it. Lois forces her fellow jurors, who want to declare the defendant guilty and go home, to properly analyze the case. Francis is trapped with the crew i

Back in the general school population, the Krelboyne whiz kids wind up in cliques with jocks, skateboarders and brooding "Goths."

After knocking out a burglar, Reese believes he has a future in law enforcement, so he instantly begins imposing his brutal rule on the neighborhood. He takes it too far by smashing Lois' car window when she refuses to move it for pedestrians. Hal, who did not even make it out of bed when the burglar broke in, tries unsuccessfully to prove to himself that he can be macho. Dewey is too scared to sleep, keeping Malcolm awake too. Elsewhere, Craig is incapacitated by the injuries sustained from Dew