Fifteen years ago today, Malcolm in the Middle debuted on Fox and introduced many viewers to the man who, before he wandered through the deserts of New Mexico in his underpants, happily and without a shred of inhibition danced in his tighty-whiteys in a suburban kitchen.

Bryan Cranston, as Malcolm papa Hal, not only reveled in the freedom of maneuvering about the family home in his drawers — on multiple occasions — but spent dozens of hours learning to, acted as a human paintbrush, and allowed thousands of live bees to be slathered on his body to form a suit of stingers. There was little — actually, nothing — the future Emmy-winning actor wouldn't do as Hal, Malcolm creator Linwood Boomer tells Yahoo TV.



"The bee suit came out of a conversation with the writers: 'I wonder if there's anything Bryan won't do?'" Boomer says. "Because he also was willing to run down a crowded street in his underpants — in a very unflattering way. It wasn't like we put him in some kind of designer briefs or something. He was just wearing this pair of floppy tighty-whiteys, and he was fine with that."

Here, a look back at Cranston's most delightfully over-the-top Malcolm performances, and what he was willing to do to make us laugh.

"Rollerskates," Season 1

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When son Malcolm (Frankie Muniz) asks Hal to teach him to skate, Hal is only too happy to help Malcolm join "the brotherhood of the wheel." Hal, we soon learn, is a roller disco champion, having once performed a routine that "won me a gold medal, a macrame plant hanger, and your mother's heart all in the same afternoon," he tells his son. And while an experienced stunt double performed the complicated jumps in Hal's routine, Boomer says the actor learned a new skill to pull off a large chunk of Hal's routine.

"We said, 'Listen, we're going to do this thing where you do roller disco,' and Bryan said, 'How much time do I have?' I said, 'A couple weeks.' He said, 'OK,' and he just basically practiced roller skating every free second that he had off the show and became an incredibly proficient roller skater very quickly and in time for the shoot," says Boomer, who won an Emmy for the Malcolm pilot. "I asked him, 'How many hours did you spend?' and he said, 'Hundreds.'"

"The Bots and the Bees," Season 1

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