Hal

Hal, played by Bryan Cranston, is married to Lois, and is father to Francis, Reese, Malcolm, Dewey, and Jamie. He is more relaxed in his parenting than Lois, mainly because he is afraid to make the wrong choice. However, he does discipline his boys; most of the time when Lois is disciplining them to back her up, and sometimes even when she is not around. Several episodes refer to him as a former rebel and troublemaker, much like his sons. The episode Hal's Birthday reveals his birthday is in March and it is assumed he is born in the same year as Lois. He ran a pirate radio station in college under the name of Kid Charlemagne. Despite all that, Hal blends well with his neighbors, sharing similar interests. His indecisiveness supposedly stems from a childhood incident in which he accidentally caused a snake to strike a clown (as an adult he is afraid of both snakes and clowns). When Lois is away, he quickly loses self-control and indulges in his baser enjoyments, such as smoking, gambling, loud music, and building "killer robots" (as explored in one episode). Even with Lois with him, in one episode, he steals a car that was speeding up and down the street in front of his house (subsequently pushing it into a lake with her help). In another episode, Hal is seen to love domino toppling and in the episode Bowling, he is seen as a skilled bowler (he almost bowls a perfect game, but Malcolm accidentally knocks down the pins, causing the results to be inconclusive). Hal has been revealed as a talented hairdresser. There are also hints that he has a foot and fatness fetish. In "Hal Sleepwalks" it is implied Reese is favorite and Malcolm's genius scares him.

In the episode If Boys Were Girls when Lois imagines what her life would be like if she had four daughters as opposed to four sons, she imagines Hal as overweight, most likely because of all of the stress of having five women in the house, and overprotective. He is also blamed by Francis, the oldest daughter, for none of her marriages working out. Although he does not show it much, he has a high temper, and usually flies into fits of rage over petty annoyances, frequently engaging in self-destructive vendettas against those who cross him. In the second-season episode Convention, when he and Lois go to a convention, he keeps getting into fist-fights with a man who stole a great idea from him long ago. Also when a clown at a batting cage insults Lois he immediately strikes the clown and continues to get the whole family involved when other clowns join the fray. Another example of his high temper is in the fifth-season episode Reese's Apartment, when he gets furious and starts speaking angry gibberish after hearing the horrible, outlandish thing that Reese did (which is never revealed). He is also very squeamish, and is terrified of cartoon characters like Rosie the Robot and "evil puppet" movies.

Hal is very devoted to his wife Lois. He likes the fact that he is "the only one who really understands" her and believes her to be his "special treasure." He also believes that both his happiness and the well-being of his sons depend largely on her. As a result, Hal supports Lois on most things and allows her to handle disciplining the boys. However, as a man, he often understands what his sons are going through better than Lois, and helps them accordingly, sometimes behind Lois' back. (For example, he drives Francis back to military school when he runs away, preventing Lois from finding and punishing him.) Although he usually defers to Lois, he also knows when to disagree with her; he calms Lois down when she starts going overboard, as she tends to do, and provides a balance to her abrasive and intense personality. In the episode "Mono" he believes her to be the most amazing, wonderful, beautiful woman in the world. It is also said that he loves her more than she loves him.

Hal has sunk to some great lows during the course of the show. He stole money from Francis to pay for paint, and stole Malcolm's new credit card to pay for a ski trip while trying to outdo the boys on Christmas, and lies to Dewey constantly. He even stole a present for Lois from someone in the mall. He is shown to be quite cowardly; when he and an idiot friend knocked down his bedroom wall in a drunken haze he tried to think of some way to blame it on the boys. When he ruins something he often bribes his sons to take the blame. While he and Lois blame a lot of their misfortunes on the boys, a lot of it seems to stem from Hal's own poor work ethic. He has also been shown to be criminally negligent with his children, he almost drove off with baby Jamie on the roof of the car, and once stated he left Dewey in Mexico

When he tries to help his sons, Hal usually only succeeds in humiliating them and himself horrendously.

Hal is not above throwing tantrums, or falling into complete despair. An example of this was when Lois's hateful mother Ida sued them and with a new baby on the way, and already hopelessly in debt, while he put a brave face on for Lois, he assumed no one was watching when he fell into a horrendous, wailing, sobbing fit (with Malcolm watching).

Hal fears Lois more than anything else (even more than the boys do). A great example of this was when he forgot to renew their health insurance (which was overdue for months). He madly tried to keep the boys from hurting themselves, only to have a section of the roof fall on top of him breaking his leg. When Dewey called Lois for help, Hal ripped the line out, preferring to deal with great pain than face his wife.

Hal (like everybody else in his family) is intensly disliked by almost everyone he knows, especially with his co-workers. When his company was facing scandal, his co-workers set him up to take the fall.

He is quite passionate about a range of activities, such as roller-skating, painting, pirate radio and race walking. He also has a passion for electronics and listening to old music. Many subplots involving Hal are that he becomes obsessed with a single topic (usually an activity or errand) that he hopes to do or finish, which usually (but not always) ends with failure and frustration. He comes from a large and rich family, all members of which have various (repressed) problems. They rarely visit because of their intense friction with Lois. Hal's family believes that Hal deserved a high-class woman, instead of Lois, who has a lower-class background. His father (Christopher Lloyd) never listened to him, and so he always made jokes or tickled Hal before they both could speak about Lois. In the seventh-season episode Hal grieves his father's death.

Hal works as a low-level, cubicle-bound, white-collar worker in a large, scandal-ridden corporation. He was used as a scapegoat for much of the company's shady business practices, a charge that would have resulted in a lengthy prison term. However, with the help of Malcolm, Hal proved that he could not possibly be the guilty party because all of the incriminating evidence against him took place on Fridays, and Hal presented inarguable proof that he had been skipping work on Fridays for 15 years. He stated in the sixth-season episode Motivational Seminar that he works in systems management. In another episode Hal's company head stated that Hal was one of the best systems managers he ever had, however in the seventh-season episode College Recruiters (2) Hal says he could be replaced at his job in an hour.

Hal gives each of the boys "one free pass". He does so when they do something so horrible that he can't tell Lois about it. They don't get to choose when to use it, Hal decides by how bad it is, and how Lois would punish them if she found out. Each of the boys used their pass at a fairly young age apparently. In a flash back, Hal remembers all the times he gave them their "One free pass". Francis used his when he got handcuffed to a pole at a strip club, trying to get his money back from the stripper. Reese's was when he strapped roller skates to a horse and accidentally killed it in the driveway. Malcolm mixed the wrong chemicals in his chemistry set and blew/burned his and Hal's hair off leaving their scalps red, with some smoke trailing off. Hal caught Dewey smoking some of his ten year-old hidden cigarettes, which he had hidden all over the house when he was smoking, but had since forgotten. When he caught Dewey he had already become addicted to them, to the point of going in to the "crawl space" under the house to find more (as stated before Hal hid them ALL OVERthe place). However Lois found out and Hal had to find all of his hidden cigarettes. "Mom made Dad get rid of all of his old cigarettes, and said she would make him eat any she found, he's pretty motivated" Malcolm said as his dad opened an air vent letting at least 250 cigarettes come falling out.