Ida's Dance is the eighteenth episode of Season 6 and the 125th episode overall of Malcolm in the Middle. It aired on April 17, 2005.
Plot
Lois goes over to visit Ida, but gets unpleasantly surprised by the St. Grotus Day festival from "the old country", where Ida and her elderly friends make Lois miserable and force her to bake a huge and complicated tart (and bringing one of their own just to piss her off). In retaliation, she humiliates them by stomping on both tarts and angers Ida. To make it up to her, Lois and Ida perform an old dance of Croatian origins. Malcolm fails a music appreciation course, and reluctantly goes to Dewey for some tutoring, who enjoys the situation but then, Malcolm causes them both to become temporarily deaf. Reese and Hal secretly watch scary movies while Lois is not around, but it ends up revealing some unexpected secrets about both Reese and Hal.
Trivia
- The dance Ida and Lois perform is called Tinikling. Although it is presented as being found in Balkan culture, it actually has its roots in the Philippines.
- it is revealed that when Lois was a little girl and refused to make the tart for saint Grotus day, Ida would leave her in the forest and nailed her hand to a stump.
- Ida would also force Lois to dance the vlatnis, dragging her through her pigtails forcing her to dance in front of drunken smelly men. When Lois was sixteen she refused to dance the vlatnis and Ida feed her nothing but bark for a week.