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Mr. Lionel Herkabe is Malcolm's hateful, sadistic teacher. He was introduced as a Krelboyne teacher as a replacement for Caroline Miller in the episode Emancipation. In the episode Humilithon, he transferred from teaching middle school to high school, just as Malcolm graduated, just to continue following him around.

He serves as one of the primary antagonists of the series.

Biography

Lionel Herkabe was born on July 8, 1963 to John and Ida Herkabe. Herkabe was a Krelboyne in his youth and attended Princeton and earned a double doctorate in business at Harvard. His life all started going downhill when he quit a government think tank job to start a dot com, with that he dropped from one time net worth 2 hundred million to a mere $137. He was previously married, but his wife divorced him after his poor decision. He first became a teacher at the school in the episode Emancipation. Following the events of Caroline Miller giving birth in the episode High School Play, someone had to fill in for her. However, instead of someone equally as nice and caring as she was, Mr. Herkabe came in and immediately started mistreating his students. Despite being a former Krelboyne and having suffered the same bullying as a child that his students do today, he was absolutely disrespectful and cruel to all of his students and tried making them all feel terrible.

Mr. Herkabe very quickly became Malcolm's Arch Enemy and did the same for all the other students. He shares the same traits and personality as Malcolm, but he hates him profoundly and goes out of his way to try to kick him out of the Krelboyne class. He brought in a young boy genius named Barton in the hopes of kicking him out of the class so he doesn't worry about him later on. Unfortunately, he not only proves to be helping hand to Malcolm, but also his father hated how Herkabe was treating him like a piece of glass and pulled him out of the class for him to be a normal kid.

He is generally emotionally abusive towards his students. In his first appearance he set up a board at the front of the classroom, which ranked each student from smartest to least based on extremely small decimal point differences between their relatively equal grades. This caused the Krelboyne's to become so stressed they could no longer function properly, with Lloyd not even being able to remember his own name. He was particularly cruel to Dabney Hooper. He announced to the entire class that Dabney was an emotionally needy bed wetter who did not receive affection at home. He then advised him not to attempt to seek said affection from him. He also caused Dabney to break down into tears by moving Dabney's name down nine spots on the board after he'd given an answer about the book "Moby Dick".

In the episode Humilithon, Malcolm and the other Krelboynes graduated middle school and went onto North High School. On the same year, Mr. Herkabe transferred schools and went to the same one Malcolm did, just so that he could continue harassing him. He also had the job of giving orders to the parent volunteers at the school, meaning that he could also harass Hal and Lois for working at the school.

In the episode Academic Octathalon, both he and Lois blackmails Malcolm in joining the Octathalon with the Krelboynes. When he discovers that it's an all out cheat race, he makes everyone pay by secretly stealing the results of the Octathalon which ends predictably in disaster. When he learned that Malcolm had snuck into the host's room to get the answers, Herkabe was actually nice to him thinking he had done it to give North High an advantage. He didn't harbor any antagonistic feelings for Malcolm, until Herkabe discovered exactly what he had done. The host orders him along with the other teachers in the conference room for a meeting to discuss their actions. The humiliated Herkabe walks with the other teachers to the room where the host confronts them for their actions.

He was shown again in the episode Tiki Lounge, where he puts Malcolm in the Boosters Club trying to go after him again. Instead, he once again respects Malcolm for trying to raise the funds to improve the club by using unorthodox techniques.

In the episode Malcolm Defends Reese, Herkabe convinced Malcolm to fail all of his classes intentionally, on the condition that he leaves Reese alone; this was so that Herkabe could keep his crowning achievement: being the record-holder of the school's highest GPA and the award that came with it. However, Herkabe makes a big mistake: in his gloating, he casually confesses to Malcolm that during his senior year, he had cheated his way out of gym class the whole second semester, and covered it up in order to protect his GPA award. Malcolm gets his revenge on him by telling the school principal, Mr. Hodges (Steve Vinovich) about it. The next day, Herkabe is humiliated when he loses his GPA award as his punishment for skipping gym and lying about it for years. The GPA award is returned to Edna Thornby, a blind and clubfooted woman who managed to pass gym despite her disabilities. Herkabe was last seen when, after trying to re-take gym to re-claim the GPA award, he finds being humiliated by an overly excited Reese whe pelts him with dodgeballs at him out of revenge for all the humiliation he endured at Herkabe's hands. After that, Herkabe is not seen again for the rest of the series.

Personality

Herkabe at heart, is a conniving, vile, hateful, despicable man who shows complete disrespect for his students. He attacks them with insults and offensive comments that mainly focus on their intelligence and overwhelms them all with tons of mental challenges that are too much for them to handle. However, Malcolm is the only one who is seen to handle Herkabe's mental abuse due to dealing with a similar one from Lois.

However, Herkabe's conniving and despicable ways came back to haunt him when Malcolm exposed his horrible secret in cheating his way out of Gym and covering it for years to Mr. Hodges, North High School's principal. After getting his award revoked and returned to it's original recipient, Herkabe tried to make one final comeback at Malcolm by taking a semester of Gym to get his award back. However, Reese, out of gratitude to his brother and revenge against Herkabe for all the previous humiliation he put Reese through, humiliated the uncoordinated and disgraced teacher by pelting him with dodge-balls, to the point that even the class joined in on the fun. After this, he was never seen again.

Episode Appearances

Trivia

  • It's implied that Herkabe is Ida's illegitimate son with another man named John Herkabe. He could be Lois and Susan's half-brother, Hal's brother-in-law and the boys' uncle.
  • Originally Herkabe was supposed to be a good nature character, former Krelboyne and a successful businessman. He was originally linked to Caroline and had a daughter with her. Herkabe shows concern for the Krelboyne class when she becomes neurotic, controlling, and cynical in taking her anger out on them by using a point system and making them do extra homework. He becomes friends with the class, especially Malcolm as he was once the normal kid in the class.
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