100 Favorite Shows: #11 — Arrested Development
“Now that’s a clear cut situation with a promise of comedy. Tell your friends.”
[Disclaimer: Jeffrey Tambor, who played George Bluth on Arrested Development, was accused by multiple women of forcing himself on them and of sexual harassment. More information was reported by Deadline in 2017.]
Arrested Development was the story of a wealthy family who lost everything and the one son (Jason Bateman’s Michael) who had no choice but to keep them all together. Created in 2003 by Mitch Hurwitz, Arrested Development was a different kind of network comedy. Packed with intricate running gags, archival reflection, and a self-aware narration from Ron Howard, Arrested Development was way ahead of its time. As a result, it was unceremoniously canceled by Fox in 2006, just two years after its Outstanding Comedy Series Emmy win for its first season. It developed such a following that Netflix originally resurrected it as one of the streaming platform’s first original programs. It put up two more seasons on Netflix (one character-based arc that was later remixed and one more standard Arrested Development season) before finally being laid to rest in March 2019.
(Spoilers for Arrested Development, remixed or otherwise, are contained within this essay. Speak now.)
There is no greater joy in the world of bonding over shared television favorites than when you find someone who has spent some time with the Bluths. Finding out your friend loves Arrested Development is euphoria (right, Zendaya?) that is unmatched, save for perhaps finding a fellow Greendale Human Being (yet, Community is so obviously in the lineage of Arrested’s massive influence that even this tether could not exist without the Bluth clan).
Instantly, an endless vault opens up to you, filled with in-jokes and references that could further endear your friendship. You can go the popular route and reference some of the biggest icons of Arrested lore (the kind featured on the thrilling season four posters), like “Mr. Manager,” dead doves, and juice boxes. Or you can go a bit more niche and hum “Mr. F,” dish up some hot ham water (“like water, but with a smack of ham to it”), or profess your love for the show on banner. Friends love banner!
It’s a testament to joke density on Arrested Development that these are only six of perhaps three thousand references that could only be in reference to the Bluth family and their assorted hijinks. However, it’s also a testament to the wide range of recurring gags (and wide range of styles of humor) that cemented the show as a sitcom no one had ever seen anything like before.
Running gags that helped to maintain the series’ convoluted continuity (blue hand prints on the walls, continued destruction of the model home, misguided chicken sound effects, the mindlessness of the Bluth employees, solemn walks to Peanuts music). Misunderstandings lacking in self-awareness (“She thinks I’m too critical. That’s another fault of hers,” Buster’s (Tony Hale) belief that Rosa’s (Gloria Sandoval) home is the kitchen). Sexual innuendos and double entendres (“Maybe I’ll put it in her brownie,” Tobias (David Cross) as a “Discipline Daddy,” Lindsay’s (Portia de Rossi) flamboyant pirate blouse). Visual gags (the Bluth office’s gay employees avoiding Gob’s (Will Arnett) unwitting advances, Ice’s bounty hunting and party planning newspaper ads, Emmett Richter, the life ring Gob tosses to his one-night stand when George Michael (Michael Cera) shows up to the yacht, Lindsay’s use of a trivet as a ladle). Jokes that required intense cultural awareness that I still don’t always have (“Andy McMahon” used to describe Andy Richter, Ron Howard’s narration pointedly rebuking a derogatory Opie reference with, “Jessie had gone too far and she had better watch her mouth,” Andy Dick reflecting on the ‘70s). Even long-con jokes that didn’t unfold until moments, episodes, or seasons after they were first introduced (the model home mirroring the Saddam Hussein hideout, Gob’s “fucking $3,200 suit,” the potential pedophilia in the supremely religious Veal family, Buster’s stuffed seal being an award for marksmanship).
Whatever kind of joke Arrested Development could make, they found a way to include that type of humor in the show. Furthermore, anything that could be a joke was a joke. Ron Howard’s narration did not have to be the glue of the disparate story lines (though, it could react to the characters in real-time, in the case of, “Well, if you consider crying like a girl doing something”). Instead, he could have plenty of meta moments and fourth (or, in the case of narration, fifth) wall breaks. “On the next episode” segments could have extra jokes that would never actually occur. The pseudo-documentary style format the show slipped in and out of seemingly at random also allowed for plenty of cutaway gags to deepen the scenes playing out in real-time. Every single scene went to such impossibly impressive lengths to pack a joke into the main scene and dialogue, as well as in the audio of the moment and even in the background. It’s why you could get exhausted by a single installment of the show. They were only twenty-two minutes at first, but they felt like someone was packing an entire marathon into a 100 meter dash. It remains one of the cleverest shows to ever somehow slip past the stodgy network executives who eventually wrought cancellation on Hurwitz’s brilliance.
And while we’re in the joke portion of the essay, I’d be remiss not to remark on my favorite types of humor that were prevalent on Arrested Development: musical cues and wordplay. The musical cues are fairly obvious. Whenever an allusion to Oscar (Jeffrey Tambor) is featured, “Big Yellow Joint” plays to underscore his affinity for weed. (It also plays in “Afternoon Delight” when Buster ties the episode’s many stories together by using his claw machine skills to pluck Gob from the crushed Banana Stand that Lucille (the recently, sadly departed Jessica Walter) had just driven into.) However, when there is a call to Oscar’s Measure for Measure-esque fatherhood of Buster, faint, sentimental music is heard every time (eventually to the eye rolls of Lucille). Whenever the Hot Cops (plus one construction worker) show up, their dance party music kicks in and they can’t help but start gyrating. Fierce whimsical music scores any moment when Gob’s alliance of magicians (“We demand to be taken seriously”) is photographed. When George (Tambor) finds religion in prison, mystical music of ancient times scores each Judaic reference. I don’t know if I’m just particularly delighted by music or if the scene always cut away quick enough to land the joke, but the show’s use of tunes was always a cut above any other show’s generic elements of song.
The wordplay, however, is where Arrested Development really shines. (Sometimes, I think entire arcs and characters would be crafted solely for the purpose of making certain jokes. For example, giving Maeby (Alia Shawkat) the name Maeby opens up tons of possibilities for wordplay in the future. Like, you know, every time she’s mentioned to be George Michael’s cousin. Maybe.) Obviously, “There’s always money in the banana stand” is such a big one that it’s hard to even put yourself in the place you were in when you first heard it and you thought it was just a metaphor, rather than hundreds of thousands of dollars literally lining the walls of the banana stand.
Yet, there’s also plenty of instances where the joke is made without ever being returned to. If you got it, you got it. “Dad’s gonna be crushed,” Gob says in “Righteous Brothers” when he sees George Michael and Maeby kissing in the sinkhole. George Michael responds, “You don’t have to tell him!” Gob only cares about the fact that, when he last saw George, he was literally underneath the model home. In “The One Where They Build a House,” Michael says, “Get rid of the Seaward,” referring to the family boat. Lucille can only think to respond, “I’ll leave when I’m good and ready.”
Even every character’s name was made with an intended joke in mind. Julia Louis-Dreyfus’ Maggie Lizer lies her ass off. Maeby’s alias is Shirley. George Michael doesn’t reference the Wham! singer until the show’s tenth episode, “Pier Pressure.” Scott Baio’s Bob Loblaw’s law blog lobs a law bomb. Bob Einstein’s Larry Middleman provides surrogacy services for a house-arrested George. To me, it’s all so brilliant. I know that many consider puns to be cheap forms of humor, but puns were never so genius as they were on Arrested Development, where they contributed to the show’s prestige form of humor.
I was wary going into this essay that I would just start rattling off my favorite jokes from the show because it would be easy to do so. I hope that I’ve framed them within a context of why I loved the sense of humor of the show and why I found it so exceedingly intelligent, but it’s hard not to just gush over how funny the show was. From the very first episode (“Pilot”), Arrested Development was exactly what it wanted to be. In my estimation, it’s one of the greatest pilots ever created because of how it so efficiently introduces every character in the form they’ll take for the rest of the show’s run, as well as how absurdly funny it was from the jump.
Because of Ron Howard’s narration, which sets a base line for who each of the Bluths (or Fünkes) are (mother, brother, sister, niece, etc.), the characterization is able to instantly go to the next level through the figures’ interactions with one another (though, the brilliance of the actors is also paramount. No scenes were better than the ones with large ensembles, which is why the Netflix revival produced middling results). In “Pilot,” we instantly establish Michael as a man who thinks he knows best for everyone and George Michael as a demure kid who goes along with what adults tell him when Michael asks his son, “What have we always said is the most important thing?” George Michael responds, “Breakfast.” It’s a quick scene, it’s subversive, it’s funny, and it sets up these two perfectly. They’re efficiently established in a way that also props up one of the show’s running questions: Should anything come before family?
Ultimately, the best characterization in “Pilot” comes in the form of Gob Bluth. Audiences first met Gob (or, G.O.B., meaning George Oscar Bluth and providing one of the show’s strongest parallels to their ongoing Bush family parable (Jeb, of course)) when he said that he performs illusions, not tricks. (“A trick is something a whore does for money,” he says, to an onlooking crowd of children, prompting him to course correct, “Or candy!”) From the outset of Gob’s arc he is a Segway-riding bluster of a man who is a failed magician, arrogant blowhard, and needy child starved for approval in equal measure. He’s also far and away my favorite character (and the one who uses bleeps and beads to the best effect).
Something about Gob just appeals directly to my sense of humor. The fervency with which he performs his illusions as “The Final Countdown” plays overhead (and “I Want to Know What Love Is” plays while he’s breaking down). The loyalty he shares with his racially-ambiguous puppet, Franklin. The panic attack he suffers when he becomes unable to say any word except “should.” Gob is a perfect, fully-formed creation. Arnett’s performance is devotedly blithe and it results in some of the best deadpan moments (“I never should’ve given up animation rights”), some of the most humorously mundane moments (“[Work] as what? A waiter? ‘Can I get you something madam?’”), and some of the most over-the-top (“Return from whence you came!”). Gob could deftly move between these three levels of comedy, serving any purpose Arrested needed and grabbing the scene (like his cartoon likeness grabbed (read: stole) bananas) along the way.
While “Pilot” performs an impressive feat in its characterization, the show still made use of episodes and seasons over time to develop its narcissistic bunch of misanthropes. For example, the first episode ships George off to prison, allowing the character to spend huge chunks of episodes at a time always in a different location. He spends time in jail, in the model home’s attic (“Pop-Pop gets a treat?”), and under house arrest. Over time, it’s shown that, no matter where he is, George is always the one pulling the strings.
Along with Lucille, of course. Their children have no real power because George and Lucille are of the mindset that they’re the only ones to be trusted with any tangible control over the company. Walter plays Lucille to perfection, too, as a satirical Emily Gilmore. She might just be the funniest performer on the entire show, able to wring the same amount of laughs from a narrow-eyed glance over a martini glass as she does from a delighted squeal when Gene Parmesan (Martin Mull) reveals himself. Lucille is incredibly shallow and even though she’s superior to Buster intellectually, her concept of the working class is akin to her youngest child’s (in that, Buster thinking Rosa’s car was the city bus is not too far off from Lucille thinking bananas cost ten dollars).
One look at Buster is enough to realize that he might be the show’s most prominent example of having arrested development. His speech patterns take after Lucille’s (in a warped sort of way) because Buster’s whole life has been the life of a devoted motherboy. His conception of what is wicked and what is wild is so far from how those adjectives operate in reality that it’s completely understandable why Buster is the only one who never picks up on the endless foot-in-mouth moments of Tobias.
In the world of television characters, the four archetypes are said to be “matriarch, patriarch, craftsman, and clown.” If those are Lindsay, Michael, Gob, and Buster, respectively, then this leaves Tobias on the outside. This allows him to be the wackiest character.
“I’m afraid I just blew myself” is obviously one of the show’s most iconic lines, but upon a recent rewatch, I found myself drawn to two other Tobias quotes in particular. In “Good Grief,” he says to Michael, “Here he comes. Here comes John Wayne. I’m not gonna cry about my pa. I’m gonna build me an airport. Put my name on it.” In “Sword of Destiny,” he says (again to Michael), “Time for me to take off my receptionist skirt and put on my Barbara Streisand in The Prince Of Tides ass-masking therapist pantsuit.” This is such a perfect encapsulation of Tobias. He does have a base understanding of how theater, culture, and normal society work, but he is completely oblivious as to how he’s supposed to fit into them. It’s why he takes on the Mrs. Featherbottom persona to the point where he’s running up the stairs horizontally, driving on the wrong side of the road, putting bangers in Michael’s mouth, and mixing up the Mrs. Doubtfire tropes with the Mary Poppins ones (George greets a disguised Tobias with, “Hi, Tobias” and Tobias sings back, “Whenever I get a wee bit scared, I hum a little tune.”).
Tobias may be the least prickly of the Bluths on the surface, but he does have the capacity to blow up. When George Michael takes Tobias’ hard-boiled eggs for Egg (sorry, Ann (Mae Whitman)), Tobias blows up with, “Where the fuck are my hard-boiled eggs?” It results in yet another instance of Peanuts-centric grief and the family’s perpetual distaste for the secular flesh-craving Ann (“She’s really funny.” “Well, let’s hope so.”) It’s also another instance of Tobias caring selfishly for himself solely and not at all for Lindsay (his wife) or Maeby (his daughter).
Of course, Lindsay is so wrapped up in her own shit that she could hardly be bothered to care. Pretty quickly after the show’s first batch of episodes, Arrested Development abandoned the alleged heart of Michael and Lindsay’s twin relationship. From this, Lindsay was allowed to go full trainwreck. Her character arc suffers from de Rossi’s retirement from acting by the time Netflix rolled around, but there are still plenty of moments earlier on that make for Lindsay being one of the show’s most underappreciated characters. (Her insatiable desire to be hit on by any man she comes across, only to learn that her family is paying people off not to catcall her comes to mind. Or her insistence that she’s a good mother, which often results in statements like, “I punish thee.”)
Fortunately, Maeby is so opportunistic and self-motivated (aside from her academics, unless you count finding a way to get out of them) that she hardly needs Tobias’ or Lindsay’s presence in her life. In “Switch Hitter,” Maeby stumbles into the backlot of Tantamount Studios and slowly rises up in the ranks of film producing. She becomes a major, lifetime achievement award-winning movie executive and all she ever needed to do to assuage doubt was to say, “Marry me!” (Or, in one instance, “Babysit me!”) No one could pull off a slew of simultaneous, Oscar Wilde-esque cons like Maeby could and the Bluth family members were too wrapped up in their own affairs to ever notice what Maeby was up to. (Not an eyelash comes to bat when Maeby asks of Mrs. Veal (Ione Skye), “Does she look like she could play Topher Grace’s mom?”)
Ultimately, Maeby is a schemer. “That’ll show ‘em,” she says, when she teams up with Michael to make George Michael and Lindsay jealous, respectively, in “Afternoon Delight.” It’s played off like a bonding moment between uncle and niece, but it’s no less scheme-oriented than when Maeby and Lucille forewent a loving relationship just to get back at other family members.
Maeby is the perfect character to play this off with because she tends to be the brains behind any convoluted plots. Besides, Michael and Lucille are basically the same person. Why wouldn’t they feel drawn to scheming with Maeby?
I don’t mean to say that Michael is not at least slightly more competent and slightly less evil than either of his parents. After all, Jason Bateman is one of the all-time great straight men in the world of acting and his sardonic, sarcastic replies to his family reflected how funny he could be on his own. (He delivers the Succession-esque, “I don’t want to ruin the surprise,” when he gives up on explaining to the Bluths what a “job” is. He asks if the family has a chatroom when the entire family knows he denied a frozen banana to Gob. He also remarks to his mother, “Guy has no idea what he’s in for,” when she announces her plans to “blow” a balcony burglar — with an air horn.)
Despite Michael’s perceived superiority over the rest of his family, he’s just as lacking in self-awareness as the rest of them. Time and again, Michael proves that he, too, is a clone of his parents, even if he would protest this. He does love George Michael, but it’s a holier-than-thou sort of love. Michael hardly ever listens to his son and is quicker to use him as a pawn than to not use him at all.
Michael is so convinced that he’s the only normal one in the family that it blinds him to his actions and dialogue that consistently mirror that of his parents’. A school about emotional intelligence (“I know you got a crocodile in spelling”) is referred to as a “feel-gooderie” by both Michael and George. He teams up with Maeby, just as Lucille did. And in “Pier Pressure,” he called in J. Walter Weatherman (Steve Ryan) to teach his family a lesson, in the same way that he learned to leave notes and turn off the air conditioner. He’s so hellbent on trying to prove a point that he doesn’t realize he’s just another carbon copy Bluth, destined to fuck up their child or push them away forever.
Ultimately, one has to think the family is better off being left to self-destruct, especially when the only one who’s genuinely nice can’t stop looking for a work-around on incest. (No freebies here.) They couldn’t possibly be the “sympathetic and relatable” family they pretended to be in “S.O.B.s.” And they always knew that. After all, Gangy wordplay, entire jokes centered around meta discussions about television production (HBO v. Showtime, episode orders being reduced from 22 to 18 episodes), and allusions to throwaway gags (Red McGibbon and the Bullet) are inaccessible to audiences who tune in just to check out an episode of a series that’s been developing a Jenga tower of comedy for three years.
That’s what makes “S.O.B.s” one of the best episodes, even if “Pier Pressure” or “Meat the Veals” is my favorite. It’s a meta commentary on the cheap ploys (3-D scenes, live moments, celebrity appearances, a tease of death) that shows with low ratings are expected to stoop to if they want to be renewed. Because it’s constantly mocking these elements, “S.O.B.s” never made a genuine attempt to appeal to new viewers. Instead, it continued pushing forward with the show’s most beloved elements, all of which were emblematic throughout the installment.
In this way, the biggest influence for Arrested Development’s existence has to be The Simpsons. The influence of shows like Happy Days and Three’s Company is palpable, especially with how slavishly Arrested pays homage to them (Henry Winkler’s Barry Zuckercorn mirrors The Fonz when he shrugs off a attempt at combing his hair). But the constant in-jokes and creative joke structures is perfectly in line with The Simpsons’ influence on the comedy landscape. (This also receives an homage when Dan Castellaneta’s doctor character mutters, “D’oh.”)
This influence was evident in how Arrested Development could satirize any of the most hot button topics in mid-2000s America, from religious denouncements to political jockeying to the war on terror to, of course, the Bush administration, as a whole. Yet it was also evident in the immense effort the show’s creative team would go to, even for just a joke that some fans will eventually die without ever seeing. (Maeby’s grocery bags for the Oscar-search road trip are seen for a gleeful half second. George Michael eats from a candy dish with colors that match his shirt.) The lengths the Arrested team pursued will always delight me and they will always impress me.
That’s why I’m not as ardently against the Netflix seasons as some fans are. Yes, the quality is more uneven and convoluted than the original three seasons ever were. But even one extra joke from the Arrested world made it all worth it. Like Michael with the rest of the Bluths, sometimes it’s just not worth trying to keep something together. But it’s always admirable to try.
