Arrested Development – Season 4 Review

It all started to change around the turn of the century when shows like Buffy the Vampire Slayer jumped from the WB to UPN.  And Family Guy was cancelled, and then un-cancelled thanks to the strong ratings of reruns on basic cable.  Then Futurama got a new lease on life thanks to Comedy Central.  Now there’s going to be a Veronica Mars movie.

Hooray?

It’s difficult to celebrate the rebirth of mothballed TV series, because to me it’s representative of a larger problem: the brutal, constant beating originality has taken in Hollywood.  All these fans scream bloody murder. and a few fans get their wish fulfilled.  Like most resurrection scenarios, there’s usually a consequence for such insolence. 

Arrested Development was given the defibrillator treatment thanks to Netflix.  Fifteen original episodes launched simultaneously this past Sunday.  And over the past 72 hours, I have watched them all.

Like a lot of people, I was a fan of Arrested Development when it was on the air.  Back when the FOX Network seemed almost criminally unable to keep anything on the air that wasn’t animated. It was a well written, witty, and consistently entertaining show.  The critics showered it with praise, but the series never developed a strong enough following to keep Rupert Murdoch from putting a bullet in it’s brain pan.  Fans got three good seasons before Michael Bluth (Jason Bateman) and his son George Michael (Michael Cera) sailed into the sunset after abandoning their insane and endlessly incarcerated family.

The fourth season delivers much of the same.  Die hard fans couldn’t ask for more.  Each episode in this fourth season is broken up to feature an individual member of the family telling a story that intertwines with other story arcs that are woven throughout the season with a great deal of care.  I think I could make a strong argument that this may be the best written season of Arrested Development, featuring a comedic story structure that is meticulously constructed.  It’s also the most convoluted, which is saying something for a show that prides itself on its ludicrousness.  It’s also by far the most meta run of the show, with the kind of self referential winking that will elate some fans and drive others to distraction.

The Bluth family is as plagued as ever.  Michael is broke and forced to share a dorm room with his son.  Gob (Will Arnett) has sunk below rock bottom as he searches for purpose.  A failed wedding and a failed illusion have left him in a weird place as he crosses swords with a rival magician Tony Wonder (Ben Stiller).  Lindsey (Portia DeRossi) and Tobias (David Cross) are still estranged and on parallel spiritual journeys, while George Sr. (Jeffery Tambor) and Lucille (Jessica Walter) work on a scam to build a wall on the Mexican border.

The show’s trademark comedy is still very much present.  There’s a sharpness to the dialogue and an energy from the cast that really makes the fourth season work.  The new structure might prove alarming for longtime fans.  But the amount of layers at work in the fourth season is impressive.  There are so many small gags that you might not pick up on the first time you see them.  For example:

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I’m not going to explain that one.  It’s one of those little easter eggs that is littered throughout each episode. 

The fourth season is also packed to the brim with cameos.  There’s a lot of really good actors having fun in supporting roles –  Seth Rogen, Kristen Wiig, Mad Men’s John Slattery, Terry Crews, Conan O’Brien, John Krasinski, and Isla Fisher among them.  

I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention Ben Stiller’s turn as Terry Wonder which may contain the series’ best laugh out loud moments since the last time Franklin showed up.  Will Arnett and Ben Stiller are so perfectly matched on screen.  Stiller hasn’t been this interesting in ages.  And Will Arnett plays Gob with such reckless stupidity.  Their comic friction is the funniest thing I’ve seen in ages.  

I understand some of the complaints.  There’s some shoddy production values and a lot of the show’s weaker moments are due to a kind of excess that happens when creators are allowed a bit of indulgence.  On a network like Fox, there were constraints and pressure to make the show successful to a mass audience.  Some creative types flourish under that pressure.  When the network leash is removed and the creators are given license to go crazy, you wind up with something that has the spirit of the original but feels like it could use some pruning.  That’s the consequence of resurrecting a show.  Some ten years later, it’s never going to be the same.  It’s like a greatest hits tour by a band who broke up in their prime.  They got back together and cashed the check, but it’s never going to be as good as it was.  It’s a gift horse, which is fine as long as you don’t start probing it’s mouth… or other orifices.  

The first three seasons of Arrested Development are fantastic television.  The fourth season is pretty good.  For me, that’s enough…