In the early 2000s, I often bounced between San Jose and Austin. Oftentimes, I’d spend the night in a hotel on Sunday night before catching the early morning flight back to the West Coast (R.I.P. “Nerd Bird”). As part of the Sunday-night return ritual, I would catch the airing of Fox’s “Malcolm In the Middle.” One episode has stuck with me across all these years because it said something revolutionary about class in America, gender relations, and features a blistering monologue about nascent incel-culture delivered fantastically.

In the exposition of episode 207, “Robbery (2000),” the working-class-to-working-poor mother of the series, Lois, portrayed by Jane Kaczmarek, is working the evening shift at her retail pharmacy store job.^{1 2}