1.4 "Malcolm in the Middle" - "Shame" Quiz

Answer: Frog

The episode starts with Malcolm, Reese, and Dewey holding a funeral in their backyard as their father Hal reads a newspaper nearby. Malcolm starts by saying they're gathered to say goodbye to "Jumpy number eight" but Dewey corrects him to "Jumpy number nine", suggesting that the family has now had nine pet frogs that are now dead. Reese brings up the time when Jumpy obstructed Lois's vision while she was driving, nearly causing an accident. The frog is sent to "rest in pieces" (since the boys launched it using a rocket) as Dewey salutes with his hand.

Frogs are amphibians that typically live near bodies of water or swamps. The animals are known for croaking, a type of noise they produce with their larynx and vocal sac.

Answer: Baseball

Malcolm and Stevie are playing catch with a baseball in their schoolyard. Because Stevie suffers from asthma, he takes a long time in setting the stage before he finally throws the ball back. When he finally does, he throws it really hard and causes Malcolm some pain. Malcolm throws the ball back but misses Stevie's glove, ending in Kevin's hands. Apparently, Kevin has only been at the school for two weeks but is hated by some of the other children, including Malcolm. Kevin refuses to give the ball back, starting a confrontation between the two boys.

Baseball started being played between the 18th and 19th centuries. The invention of baseball has been commonly attributed to Civil War general Abner Doubleday. However, that story is widely considered to be false. A New Yorker called Alexander Cartwright is credited as one of the creators of modern baseball in the United States.

Answer: De gustibus non est disputandum

Kevin calls Malcolm a "baby" and refuses to give the baseball back. He becomes even more irritating by repeating every word that Malcolm says. Getting increasingly annoyed, Malcolm hits Kevin with the Latin expression "de gustibus non est disputandum", which Kevin predictably doesn't understand. The bully tries to repeat it but fails and instead calls Malcolm "stinky". He also throws the ball away from Malcolm and pushes him before leaving and calling him "stinky" once again. Kevin was played by Robert Grovich, who made sporadic appearances in TV in the 2000s, including shows like "JoJo's Circus" and "Higglytown Heroes".

"De gustibus non est disputandum" is a Latin expression that translates to variations of "in matters of taste, there can be no disputes", or as Merriam-Webster defines it, "there is no disputing about taste". In short, the phrase means that matters of taste or opinion are purely subjective and therefore cannot be objectively argued.

The other options are also Latin expressions: "argumentum ad numerum" is a logical fallacy where something is assumed to be true or good just because a majority thinks so too. "Res ipsa loquitur" means "the thing speaks for itself" and is a doctrine in tort law applied in cases where negligence is clear because the incident itself implies negligence. "Finis vitae sed non amoris" means "the end of life, but not of love" and was the name of the fourth episode of Australian TV series "Harrow".

Answer: Climbing a tree

Hal comes into the house carrying Dewey while Lois retrieves an ice pack. Dewey is crying because he fell off a big tree he was climbing, despite his parents warning him not to. Dewey says that he couldn't help it and Hal pledges to cut down the tree. Hal explains that the tree has caused nothing but trouble: it forces him to constantly rake leaves, makes him see a "weird face" on the bark, and now injures one of their children. Still crying, Dewey asks if he can help "kill it", to which Hal agrees.

Answer: Pizza

In line to get his lunch at school, Malcolm tells us that he is looking forward to eating frozen pizza because it is the only food that Rowena (the lunch lady) can't ruin. Kevin rudely cuts the line and takes the last two slices of frozen pizza, forcing Malcolm to have "American goulash" for lunch instead.

As Stevie looks at his plate in disgust, Malcolm guesses some of the ingredients he thinks are in the dish: carrots and Skittles. Yet again, Kevin teases Malcolm by calling him "the goulash boy" and making his already terrible lunch even worse. Kevin chews the pizza with his mouth open and spits tomato sauce all over Malcolm, finally pushing the show's protagonist over the edge.

Answer: It was his birthday

Malcolm had enough of Kevin's games so he starts beating the bully up and smearing pizza on his face. Soon, however, Malcolm would find out at the nurse's office that Kevin is only seven-years-old! Malcolm can't believe this because Kevin is bigger than he is.

The nurse scolds Malcolm as she tries to clean the mixture of blood and pizza sauce from Kevin's face. Caroline, Malcolm's teacher, is shocked to learn what happened and oddly blames herself. Malcolm is ashamed and tries to apologize to no avail. Kevin cries that this is "the worst birthday ever", prompting the nurse to shut Malcolm out of the room.

Answer: Thug

On their way back from school, Reese is reading a letter detailing what his brother did to Kevin. Malcolm seems ashamed, but Reese is proud of his brother's "inappropriate and vicious" actions. The letter also called Malcolm a "thug", something that Reese says he's never gotten before and which he compares to the Oscar. Meanwhile, Dewey thinks that Malcolm can now help him beat up Susie Gunther, a girl from school that ate his crayons.

When the boys get home, they find Hal sawing down an enormous tree. Hal tells his children that once the tree came down, all the car alarms around the neighborhood went off, squirrels came out of the tree's branches, and then dogs chased down those squirrels. Reese and Dewey are upset that they missed it, and even worse, they now have to help their dad clean up. The family even gets to eat robin eggs that Hal got from the tree for breakfast.

Answer: Winnie the Pooh

The neighbors are upset at Hal for taking down the tree, but the Wilkerson family doesn't care. Instead, Hal gets a wood chipper to get rid of all the logs he just took down. After Dewey throws his lunch box into the machine, Hal and the boys wonder what else the wood chipper can destroy. They also throw in a rug, a shirt, Dewey's Winnie the Pooh stuffed bear, a watermelon, and a basketball. A big man then shows up at their house trying to intimidate Hal because Malcolm hit Kevin. We then find out that the man, who was significantly bigger than Hal, was only 15-years-old and Hal beat him up!

Malcolm is still ashamed about what happened at school but his family doesn't seem to care. In fact, when Malcolm asks when he's going to get punished, everyone laughs it off. Hal says that it may have been embarrassing, but it was still an honest mistake. Malcolm then says that there is something "seriously wrong" with his family. Malcolm then goes to several spiritual leaders to seek guidance, but ends up frustrated and confused.

Answer: No

The episode's parallel storyline takes place at the military academy where Francis is. There, Commandant Spangler tries to scare the cadets away from having sex. He explains that resisting temptation is the only way to prevent sexually transmitted diseases. He "educates" the cadets by showing a slideshow with cheerleaders followed, apparently, by images of diseased body parts (we can only assume this part because all we see are the reactions on the cadets' faces).

Commandant Spangler's sex education program has seemingly worked, as one of the cadets says that the only woman he can now think of without vomiting is his mother. Spangler plans to give the same lecture to the underclassmen, so Francis wants to steal Spangler's slides to "save" the younger cadets. When he walks into his office, he easily finds a tape labeled "Sex Slides", as well as another tape of one of Spangler's vacations. He switches the labels so that Spangler projects the wrong tape.

Francis then goes into Spangler's lecture to enjoy the fruits of his labor, but for the first time (of many) in the series, Francis is outsmarted by the commandant. Spangler projects embarrassing pictures he took of Francis, making all of the younger cadets laugh. At the end, Spangler leaves Francis with a lesson: "a good soldier always checks the chamber".

Answer: In the bathroom

To cancel out the shame he's feeling, Malcolm decides to run a marathon for charity. He struggles to find donors at first but ultimately succeeds by pretending to be in Stevie's wheelchair. Caroline hopes Malcolm runs well so that they can raise thousands for charity, but unfortunately, he trips immediately after beginning the race and is trampled by all the other runners.

Later that night, Lois treats Malcolm's injuries in their bathroom. Malcolm says he can't get over the horrible feeling he has from hurting Kevin. Lois tells him that's his conscience, and he should be thankful for having one because most people choose to ignore theirs. Malcolm feels much better after he talks to his mom. When he leaves the bathroom, he says good night to Hal, who was sitting in the toilet all along!