The following article contains minor spoilers for Malcolm in the Middle: Life’s Still Unfair.

It’s been a couple of decades, but I can’t say I remember Malcolm in the Middle being this much of an unfunny bore. Which is strange, because the four-episode reboot now streaming on Hulu is reminiscent enough of the OG: one-time kid whiz Malcolm (Frankie Muniz), now a doting dad in his 30s, still endures a fractious relationship with his chaotic family. There are the fourth-wall-breaking narrative asides that serve as a window into our titular lead’s neurotic self-torment. And yes, the four episodes largely sustain the original series’ signature anarchism. But as with many of the questionable nostalgia-baiting reboots that have become a cornerstone of the streaming era, it’s hard to shake the jarring dissonance between its dated sense of humor, resurrected from the early 2000s, and its simultaneous desire to modernize. Perhaps it’s as simple as this: Malcolm in the Middle shouldn’t be in 4K. It just looks and feels wrong.

Not that it’s all bad. There are funny enough moments, and even poignant callbacks for fans who still spin the classic episodes. But there are also misfired gags that just make you cringe down to your core. Take the rote, boomer-coded jokes—which seem odd for a show that was a millennial staple—about our crazy modern world, from the ubiquity of Zoom to “pronouns,” with the youngest kid, Kelly (Vaughan Murrae), having grown up as non-binary. (Though the show should be credited for its surprising sensitivity as to how it eventually handles their gender identity.) Maybe this is just appropriate for a reboot that revolves around the lead up to Hal (Bryan Cranston) and Lois’ (Jane Kaczmarek) 40th anniversary party, but the experience of watching Malcolm in the Middle: Life’s Still Unfair is like begrudgingly hitting up an awkward family reunion packed with half-forgotten figures from your past, albeit one you have zero obligation to attend. It hardly helps that the pilot opens with a greatest-hits montage of the series’ most memorable moments: ultimately, a reminder of what it’ll never live up to.

Thank god, really, for the TV powerhouse that is Cranston, a beloved fan-favorite from the original Malcolm who became a generational figure in his own right as Breaking Bad‘s Walter White, one of the great antiheroes of the prestige era. Always a hoot as sad dad Hal, he returns for the reboot as a legend of the game, and his performance feels all the more weightier for it, helped by the fact that he’s arguably given the best material out of the cast. The third episode, the standout of the lot, is all his.

Across the revival, Hal undergoes something of a late-stage identity crisis, wrapped up in questions as to why his kids remain so cruel and destructive in their adult lives. After Malcolm refuses to reunite with his family in person, made worse by the reveal that Reese (Justin Berfield) has used daily hangouts with his dad—performing unnecessary DIY tasks around the house—as a ruse to make humiliating content for his YouTube channel, Hal is sent into a state of nigh-on catatonic depression. (He even turns down sex.) In an attempt to shake him out of it, best buddy Abe (Gary Anthony Williams) drags him to a dodgy dispensary run by a zany, self-described “shaman,” where he swallows a fistful of hallucinogens and has the craziest, most intense trip known to God.

Will Smith could flash me with one of those Men in Black memory erasers, you could bonk me over the head with a hammer, or even tear out a hefty chunk of my brain: I may lose my ability to swallow or salivate, but I will never, ever forget the image of Cranston nakedly wriggling around on the floor, reenacting his own birth with the deranged commitment that only a true GOAT could conjure. Better even are the scenes where he debates his relationship to fatherhood with the neckerchief-wearing embodiment of his ego, also played by Cranston, who turns out to be pretty damn evil. The finale ends with a gentle tribute to his resilience as one of TV’s most tortured dads, a touching note to go out on—wrapping up an arc that meaningfully evolves on the original show. You just wish that the rest of the revival was nearly as satisfying, or at least didn’t feel so redundant.

This story originally appeared in British GQ.