Hal is a fictional character from Malcolm in the Middle. He is played by Bryan Cranston.
Hal is married to Lois, and is father to Francis, Malcolm, Reese, 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 isn't around. Several episodes refer to him as a former rebel and troublemaker, much like his sons. He ran a pirate radio station in college under the name of Kid Charlemagne. His indecisiveness supposedly stems from a childhood incident in which he accidentally caused a clown to get attacked by a snake (both of which he is now afraid of). 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).
Although he doesn't 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 constant fist-fights with a man who stole a great idea from him long ago. 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 gets freaked out very easily over cartoon characters like Rosie the Robot and "evil puppet" movies.
He is quite passionate about a range of activities, such as roller-skating, painting, pirate radio and race walking. He comes from a large and rich family, all members of which have some (repressed) problem or another. They rarely visit because of the intense friction between Hal's relatives and 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 it is revealed that he is dead.
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 many years. He stated in the sixth-season episode Motivational Seminar that he works in systems-management. In another episode the head of the company Hal works for stated that he was one of the best systems managers he'd ever had, however in the seventh-season episode College Recruiters Hal says he could be replaced at his job in an hour and is seen to love domino toppling.
