Where is the Family From / Live?
- Thread starter yardgames
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Richiepiep
Administrator
Aw, thanks for putting me straight on this. I got mixed up. Anyway, if the producers are deliberately unspecific about the family's last name and locations, I myself accept the quick, dirty but also very comforting notion that the family 'live' where the outside scene are filmed.
Rich
EVERYONE, I live in California and those are not the plates. Also 2 things,
1) It takes the family 10 hours to get home from Las Vegas, and even northern California from Vegas is only 8.
2) Francis goes to school in Alabama, yet he comes home very often, even sometimes riding the bus. The got to live some where atleast somewhat close I would think.
I highly doubt that it is California, but the Houseboat episode and the Traffic Jam episode could suggest that. Also it doesnt snow on the show and they do go to the mountians in " Hal's Christmas Gift ", actually, maybe it is California
1) It takes the family 10 hours to get home from Las Vegas, and even northern California from Vegas is only 8.
2) Francis goes to school in Alabama, yet he comes home very often, even sometimes riding the bus. The got to live some where atleast somewhat close I would think.
I highly doubt that it is California, but the Houseboat episode and the Traffic Jam episode could suggest that. Also it doesnt snow on the show and they do go to the mountians in " Hal's Christmas Gift ", actually, maybe it is California
Lparsons7981
New member
I think it is on purpose not possibly any one place in America. It is like the Simpsons in that respect I think.
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Yeah somewhere there.
If anyone know the exact place, if you do live in U.S.A near there, please take a photo of the house they've used.
It had much free space, a garage, a garden, backyard, oh well a great place to live in.:wub:
Amigo22
Super Moderator
I just Googled the address of the actual house and found this site with photos of what the house looks like both inside and outside, and the street view on Google Maps
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Richiepiep
Administrator
Brilliant finds all! That's a damn nicely decorated place. You couldn't imagine the Wilkersons living there - except in Dewey's fertile imagination
Rich
wherever it is, it rarely snows but it does happen. i remember in one of the intro clips Mal, Reese, and Dewey fooled the old lady like three times to get things out of her. in one of their schemes they wore winter clothes and said "we shoveled your yard" and then when Hal said in another episode "it hasn't snowed in a year"
i don't know if that helps at all, lol
i don't know if that helps at all, lol
People from California can get rich just by selling their house and moving to another state. It happens all the time.
They thought it was a pretty big deal to go to the tri-county fair, and their parents already knew the carnys.
I have an idea the state they are from begins with M. Because in the episode monkey, Reese wears a cap from the police which says MPD so obviously,M.........Police department. Its only an idea.
Well if it was the state police, maybe. I think he got caught by local police though. Actually when he was on the highway during his driving test, maybe there were some signs visible.
One time Dewey went to a dock to get sand for the baby. He was able to get there on local busses. The yard and the way the house has a mountain close behind it looks like any small town in AZ. Of coarse the counties in that state don't combine into 3 anywhere that I know of. Also judging distance by hours isn't at all constant. If you go to Las Vegas from anywhere, depending on the time of day or year it can highly vary your driving time. If you have to cross the Hoover dam it could be a 10 hour drive from pretty much anywhere in an adjacent state. I've lived in AZ and MA. When I had to take my wife to the hospital 20 miles away, in MA, it took an hour, because of their traffic patterns. That was on a 5 lane highway. In AZ I lived at a ranch 30 miles from town where the hospital was, and could get there in 19 minutes. The speed limit is 75 on that highway. Of coarse I usually drove 80.
Yeah, a dock can be at a lake or river, so it doesn't preclude landlocked states. It could be Texas, if you don't cling to the asumption everybody there is done up like cowboys. They even border the gulf of mexico, which could make for any mention of water bodies.
If you discount any mention of driving hours and only include actual miles mentioned, and consider even some of those were said in an emotional outburst and could be exadurated, then the impossibility fades some more.
I had been wondering, and then thought it was Jetson because of Reese's Liscense he used to get into the Army, but I guess it was fake.
the weather and school look like any place in AZ, NM or maybe TX and OK too. It could be NV as well because the traffic is so slow near Vegas any amount of time would mean nothing of the distance from there.
I am casting my vote that the family lives in Southern California somewhere. My reasons stem from a few episodes, but mainly "Burning Man". Burning man is a real festival held every year in the desert of Nevada just south of Las Vegas. Now, if they live somewhere in S.California, it should only take a few hours to get out there, and you remember that Malcolm and Reese were going to hitchhick their way to the festival. Malcolm and Reese were going to leave on a Friday(in my book) and said they would be back on Monday. That would be an appropriate time frame to get to Burning man from S.California, stay at the festival a few days, then get home Monday.
Anyway, thats what I believe.
Didn't the kids at Marlin Academy also mention going to Burning Man?
If it is California, at all it should be easy to figure out. It's in a tri-county area. They let their kids go outside, and there are no drivebys, so it isn't a gang neighborhood. Everybody seems to know English too. I would say that excludes most of S. CA, but it's TV so it doesn't really.I am casting my vote that the family lives in Southern California somewhere. My reasons stem from a few episodes, but mainly "Burning Man". Burning man is a real festival held every year in the desert of Nevada just south of Las Vegas. Now, if they live somewhere in S.California, it should only take a few hours to get out there, and you remember that Malcolm and Reese were going to hitchhick their way to the festival. Malcolm and Reese were going to leave on a Friday(in my book) and said they would be back on Monday. That would be an appropriate time frame to get to Burning man from S.California, stay at the festival a few days, then get home Monday.
Anyway, thats what I believe.
The high inflation of California may have an effect on their finances. They never mention how much they make, but they have cable about half the time and live in a house rather than an apartment. They have a lot of kids to feed and both parents always work, yet are home at the same time, around half of the time. Flashbacks indicate that Hal used to be a Yuppy, a successful office worker of the 80s. They could be in Texas if his company was Enron. Nobody mentions that state. It's a very large state and it's ignorant to assume every town there is loaded with dinner plate buckle wearing country fans.
So apparently I wasn't part of that debate after all.
there was a place called Wet and Wild in Las Vegas, a water park. and there is a mountain behind their house. Also, even if the Grotto is near Tucson, it takes a long time to drive between places in AZ. Texas is also big. They don't have to be outside Texas due to lack of drawl, or any other southern state. They all have communities that don't fit stereotypes. Where is Linnwood from? If you include factors added from his childhood and consider the show is made in California, it may be some good elimination.
All I can say is "Wow!" These people have really thought this through and provided excellent supporting evidence to back up their claims. They should go join the Lost forum (those people love to analyze every single little detail and every comment a character makes too
I tend to agree with those who think it's somewhere in the southwest (Arizona, New Mexico, S. Colorado, or even Nevada and Utah.) Maybe not so much Nevada since they had to travel to get to a casino and in Nevada there's casinos almost everywhere. I've been to all of those states and the background scenery in many of the driving scenes is very similiar to what you would see in any one of them. As BigFitz79 mentioned in Yardgames's post above, it looked like a very arid, desert region that they were driving through when they were coming back from the waterpark. Also in Jessica Stays Over, we see Hal driving to work and the scenery in the background looks very similar to what you would see in those states as well (dry-looking, not a lot of greenery, mountainous).
In addition, in several of the episodes there are hints that The Grotto is no more than a days drive from their home as well as in Malcolm's job when Dewey is able to get there all by himself. And we can be fairly certain that The Grotto is in either Arizona (Tuscon being the closest major city as mentioned above) or New Mexico due to hints about the Roswell incident from the episode where Francis dresses up as an alien (can't remember which one this is.) So in my opinion, most of the evidence clearly points to somewhere in the southwest.
I think they did mention Roswell in that episode. There have been UFO crashes near Kingman AZ and the Phoenix lights a couple of times, but NM has a lot of Reservations that keep major cities from growing, so it could be either one. They do border.
There are Beaches at lakes too, I've been to them.
That's awesome. It is the closest airport with economic flights for hundreds of miles around. I pretty much always used it rather than the Phoenix one, when living in AZ. It may have been a better alternative than LA's as well, or from Utah.
That's like in a show when somebody is lying down and they might be dead. You still can't tell if they're supposed to be, or not, even if they breath, shift or fart.
Networks do that all the time. It's like a King a couple of thousand years ago, put a guy on the front battle lines and told everybody to run off and leave him, so he could get the guys wife. They set things up to fail, just so they can pretend that it's what people wanted. They really aren't interested in what the audience wants, or they wouldn't feel in control. Most of my favorite shows get hung out to dry this way. Some even survive it, being moved without notice to different time slots, so they can say nobody was watching it. There was Sliders, The Flash, Starman, The Wonder Years, Married With Children, My So Called Life, Terminator, Sarah Connor Chronicles, Knight Rider, Kyle XY, Journeyman, Do Over, Second Time Around, Now and Again, and they killed Star Trek the same way, once after each season it had to be revived by loud fans. After 3 they just didn't listen. The funny thing with Sliders though, was that they did a Weekend at Bernies with the 5th season. Dragging around a corpse.
Some Sci Fi takes place in the past or present. Star Trek did like to cram in a lot of political crap though. It's a lot like school house rock: Ooh a cartoon! wait a minute, this isn't entertaining, they're trying to make me go to school on Saturday! Fortunately I guess sometimes when it went too far, somebody grounded Star Trek. well they let 3 of the series' continue to the end, but the Original and Enterprise offended a lot of sensibilities, when they would go where nobody wanted to.
It's like the news networks. They assume you're already rooting for who you want, and they support the less popular notions, and even present them as what everybody likes. Notice they can never do an opinion poll in one take?
Well that could be just over the Hoover dam on some days of the year.
8 states is kind of specific. What's 8 away from AL?
The weather is only a factor of it's filming location. Only leave out Ohio if it's too far away from the other places Francis had to come home from.
There are mountains in OK. Also they might have been passing through the Ozarks on the way back from Oceans of Fun in KC MO.
I would agree except for how bad traffic can be in the Cities of Las Vegas and Los Angeles. That can take all day if you include their city traffic.
In the house boat episode, that appears to be a river and or lake. If it was CA or they drove there from CA It might be Lake Mead and the Colorado River, or Lake Havasu.
The Simpsons are in OR. Springfield is a town in most states, but the one in the Simpsons is actually based on St. Helens, OR.
Stevie's family is pretty well off. They may have just moved from California, where you can sell your crummy little house for $200,000 and make out like a bandit anywhere else in the country. They often do this and drive up the housing prices where they move to. But this was before the market fell like one of those cakes that do when you make too much noise.
that's the place on the other side of that portal in the mom's closet.
these colors match Winetonka High School in Kansas City, MO
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Millbrook,
Reese had an MPD hat which would mean Millbrook police deparment. In the Reese joins the Army episodes, Hal was aressted, but when he went to the Library and said he was with the bomb squad none of the cops or people knew who he was execpt for the guy who told him to go there. It would make sense if the Library was in another city since in the Billboard episode they travel to other cities to buy items. Hal also says he is with the Millbrook bomb squad.
Richiepiep
Administrator
See article thread
In another unusual creative decision, certain key details in "Malcolm in the Middle'' - also starring Jane Kaczmarek as the no-nonsense mom, Lois; Bryan Cranston as the dad, Hal; and Christopher Kennedy Masterson as their smooth-talking oldest son, Francis - are kept ambiguous. For example, the family's last name, city of residence, the dad's exact profession and the show's time period are never discussed.
Add to that the touchy question of Malcolm's age. When the pilot was shot in 1999, Muniz easily passed for his character's age of 9. Since then, he's grown a foot taller and started to look post- instead of prepubescent
"We've decided not to say anything about his age on the show,'' Boomer said. 'It's like the city they live in. We're just saying he's attending middle school, not the actual grade level. We don't want to be locked into something. Kids are so protean with what they say, anyway. Sometimes they act like 9-year-olds and sometimes like 30-year-olds.''
In another unusual creative decision, certain key details in "Malcolm in the Middle'' - also starring Jane Kaczmarek as the no-nonsense mom, Lois; Bryan Cranston as the dad, Hal; and Christopher Kennedy Masterson as their smooth-talking oldest son, Francis - are kept ambiguous. For example, the family's last name, city of residence, the dad's exact profession and the show's time period are never discussed.
Add to that the touchy question of Malcolm's age. When the pilot was shot in 1999, Muniz easily passed for his character's age of 9. Since then, he's grown a foot taller and started to look post- instead of prepubescent
"We've decided not to say anything about his age on the show,'' Boomer said. 'It's like the city they live in. We're just saying he's attending middle school, not the actual grade level. We don't want to be locked into something. Kids are so protean with what they say, anyway. Sometimes they act like 9-year-olds and sometimes like 30-year-olds.''
I have very little idea why but I've always assumed it was set in Oklahoma, apart from several production goofs, many things such as minimum wage, distances from key geographical landmarks and the education system match up to Oklahoma, but again, I don't have nearly as much evidence as others have
Edit: In reference to Richiepiep's post, I'm pretty sure the time period was mentioned several times as being in the same year as it went out, but that article doesn't seem to be completely accurate anyway
Edit: In reference to Richiepiep's post, I'm pretty sure the time period was mentioned several times as being in the same year as it went out, but that article doesn't seem to be completely accurate anyway
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MellonCollie1984
New member
Surprised no one mentioned this
Hi, all...I'm new here. Although this topic seems to be somewhat outdated, I just recently found this site and felt the need to reply regarding the location of the "Wilkersons" on MITM.
I scanned through all of the pages on this topic, and was surprised that no one mentioned the Season 5 episode, "Victor's Other Family". If anyone did and I missed it, my apologies.
In this episode, Lois and the kids are going to visit Lois' half-sister in Canada...before they leave, Reese makes a comment about little Jamie crying and says something to the effect of, "21 hours of this". With the crappy condition of their vehicle in mind, 21 hours is still a very long drive.
I'm originally from Ohio, and have lived in New Jersey and now currently live in Delaware. I've also been all over the USA, as I was in the military. Being from Ohio, I can tell you that there are no landscapes such as what's depicted on MITM - we have no dry, desert-like climate/environment and definitely no palm trees. As a matter of fact, there's rarely a winter/cold season where there's not several feet of snow. I'm only mentioning this since several people made the comment that perhaps they're from Ohio. I can also guarantee that it wouldn't take 21 hours to get into Canada from Ohio, as well. However, since the USA shares it's entire northern border with Canada, their point of entry into the country has so many possibilities...but I'd be willing to bet that they went up through the western province of British Columbia, probably in the Vancouver area.
I've grown to accept, for my own inquiring "always needing to know more" mind, that MITM takes place in California - however, I've considered the possibilities of it being located in Arizona, New Mexico or Nevada as well, judging by the landscape/environment depicted in the show.
I've tried many times to look at license plates, but it's all for nothing. I've never seen a plate that depicts their state, and I think that's intentional. I found it funny, in one episode's cold opener, Lois is putting a picture in her wallet, and her driver's license is shown. I paused Netflix to take a look, and not only do they not show the state on the license (as American licenses do), but the picture wasn't even of Lois! LOL. I just found that funny. I'm sure that they weren't expecting people like us to analyze things such as this!
I LOVE this show - it's unusual, witty and hilarious. One thing I'd like to point out that makes the show more real for me is that the overall set of the house doesn't look like your typical television series set. What I mean by this is that the lighting is just right (no ridiculous fluorescent lighting because of the soundstage), and there's a "real" feeling about the house because there's rarely a proverbial fourth wall...meaning we see all angles of the house. I've always been interested in TV show sets, and I found this one to be most interesting because of its realism. Matter of fact, when I first started watching the show, I thought that maybe they had filmed the interior in a REAL house...so great job with set design, MITM!
Okay, that's all from me - great site, great forum, and excellent discussion topics!
Hi, all...I'm new here. Although this topic seems to be somewhat outdated, I just recently found this site and felt the need to reply regarding the location of the "Wilkersons" on MITM.
I scanned through all of the pages on this topic, and was surprised that no one mentioned the Season 5 episode, "Victor's Other Family". If anyone did and I missed it, my apologies.
In this episode, Lois and the kids are going to visit Lois' half-sister in Canada...before they leave, Reese makes a comment about little Jamie crying and says something to the effect of, "21 hours of this". With the crappy condition of their vehicle in mind, 21 hours is still a very long drive.
I'm originally from Ohio, and have lived in New Jersey and now currently live in Delaware. I've also been all over the USA, as I was in the military. Being from Ohio, I can tell you that there are no landscapes such as what's depicted on MITM - we have no dry, desert-like climate/environment and definitely no palm trees. As a matter of fact, there's rarely a winter/cold season where there's not several feet of snow. I'm only mentioning this since several people made the comment that perhaps they're from Ohio. I can also guarantee that it wouldn't take 21 hours to get into Canada from Ohio, as well. However, since the USA shares it's entire northern border with Canada, their point of entry into the country has so many possibilities...but I'd be willing to bet that they went up through the western province of British Columbia, probably in the Vancouver area.
I've grown to accept, for my own inquiring "always needing to know more" mind, that MITM takes place in California - however, I've considered the possibilities of it being located in Arizona, New Mexico or Nevada as well, judging by the landscape/environment depicted in the show.
I've tried many times to look at license plates, but it's all for nothing. I've never seen a plate that depicts their state, and I think that's intentional. I found it funny, in one episode's cold opener, Lois is putting a picture in her wallet, and her driver's license is shown. I paused Netflix to take a look, and not only do they not show the state on the license (as American licenses do), but the picture wasn't even of Lois! LOL. I just found that funny. I'm sure that they weren't expecting people like us to analyze things such as this!
I LOVE this show - it's unusual, witty and hilarious. One thing I'd like to point out that makes the show more real for me is that the overall set of the house doesn't look like your typical television series set. What I mean by this is that the lighting is just right (no ridiculous fluorescent lighting because of the soundstage), and there's a "real" feeling about the house because there's rarely a proverbial fourth wall...meaning we see all angles of the house. I've always been interested in TV show sets, and I found this one to be most interesting because of its realism. Matter of fact, when I first started watching the show, I thought that maybe they had filmed the interior in a REAL house...so great job with set design, MITM!
Okay, that's all from me - great site, great forum, and excellent discussion topics!
Very good points. I personally believe they live in California, a common thought. But I wonder where in California? What area would be so far from Canada? My guess is that it it is somewhere in equal distance as Arizona. I don't believe the family is from Nevada because of the episode "Vegas." If they lived in Nevada, it would be possible for Hal to sneak off without bringing the whole family. (Let me know if that is unlikely/ ridiculous) They also mention in this episode that they live 10 hours from Vegas. For me that puts them in Southern California. Also, the fact that Francis takes a plane to visit while he is working in a west(?) southern state (dry desert land) I believe that the Wilkerson's live a decent distance due to the fact that they would not pay for plane tickets if not necessary. Therefore, they are probably very west, in California rather than Arizona or New Mexico.