From the mouths of babes

Sunday's hourlong Malcolm in the Middle season finale looked a bit over-the-top in previews, but turned out to be pretty satisfying. Taking a cue from it's Fox counterpart The Simpsons and their eternal toying with audiences over where Springfield actually is, Malcolm's writers had some fun by obscuring the gender of the baby by all means possible.

But the best part, by far, was the second half of the finale, with Hal and Lois faking religious conviction in order to join a church that provides free day care for their new child. I don't necessarily have a broad history of TV families at my fingertips, but the way they pulled this off seemed like one of the more scathing indictments I've seen of organized religion, particularly in the context of a sitcom. The culmination, by far, was youngest son Dewey telling his Bible study teacher how he would indiscriminantly kill the ants who may have been praying to him as a God, so there's really no point in it. The beauty of it was in the delivery, as I've never seen the church dismissed so thoroughly with such degree of comic tone and timing.

I'm curious to see if there's any sort of backlash against the network for what turned out to be a pretty rebellious evening, with The Simpsons taking a swipe at good ol' George Dubya in the hour before, but you have to figure the types who would be most sensitive to either of those messages probably aren't watching Fox.