The first three seasons revolved around Michael
Bluth (Jason Bateman) who did everything in his power to keep his family and
the family business together, against all opposition from without and
within. The series started with his
father, George Bluth, being arrested for fraud, but it quickly becomes apparent
that that is just the tip of the iceberg.
Hints begin early that he might have gotten involved in some sort of
“light treason,” consisting of an insane real estate scandal with Saddam
Hussein being a buyer.
But it’s the problems within that are really
wrecking the family, from the overbearing matriarch, Michael’s materialistic
sister, his delusional brother-in-law, two idiotic and insecure brothers, a
devious niece, and his shy son who has a secret crush on his cousin.
What defined the show for me was the brief
conversation Michael has with his mom, Lucille:
Michael:
There’s been a lot of lies in this family.
Lucille: But
a lot of love.
Michael: More
lies.
Despite all the edginess and ridiculously bawdy
humor, or perhaps because of it, Arrested
Development hit on a valuable truth: The lies and skeletons you keep in
your closet will come out and they will
ruin everything you love.
When they were cancelled, the show left on a hopeful
note. Michael failed to keep the family
and the company together, but for a brief shining moment, we got to see him run
to do right by his teenage son, George Michael, the only genuinely good person
in that whole messed up family. All of
his flaws come from puberty and confusion over right-and-wrong, all of which could have been fixed if his dad had been a
dad. The finale left us with some hope
that Michael finally got his act together and was going to do right by his son.
The fourth season came out on Netflix at the
beginning of the week and I watched it all in two days. It’s not what I was expecting, and that’s not
an entirely bad thing. In some ways, the
show is funnier than ever.
The format is unique and could have been annoying,
since it’s not told in chronological order.
The first episode begins where Season 3 left off and covers the span of
five years, climaxing at the local Cinco de Cuatro celebration (a holiday that
only this show would create.) It all
follows Michael’s journey and how he’s fallen apart since then.
The second episode covers the same time frame, only
this time through George Bluth’s perspective.
And the third episode from another family member’s perspective, and on
and on. Really, we never get past the
Cinco de Cuatro celebration except for brief excerpts of the morning after in
the final episodes. But what each
episode does is show how each family member is intertwined in the lives of each
other, even when they don’t realize it; and the results are hilarious.
Unlike the first three seasons, nobody is trying to
keep the family together. It has fallen
completely apart. Each character is
fending for themselves and doing all they can to try and hold their miserable
lives together, and they do that the same way they’ve ruined themselves this
whole time: lying. Even George Michael,
whose lies started out harmless, quickly finds how it unravels his otherwise
decent life.
The show is as edgy as ever: This is not a program for everyone. While the incest took a backburner (after
they revealed that the cousins really weren’t cousins, the writers realized
that they had taken the joke as far as it could go.) But they dive in with their faces forward
into some extremely bawdy humor, and nobody comes out clean (except the brother-in-law,
Tobias, who is truly a victim of circumstance more than any others.)
Every marriage and relationship gets ruined because
nobody ever took the time to communicate with each other or sacrifice for the
other’s good. It was too easy for all of
them to think of number one and lie their way through life. I’ve met and know a number of these people
and they are just as miserable in real life as they are on this show. For that alone, Arrested Development reaches beyond being just a funny program. The last minute of Michael and George
Michael’s conversation was devastating, when Michael’s latest lie is uncovered
and destroys any connection he had left with his son.
It made me laugh all the way through, but this show
is tragic in the truest sense of the word.
I am glad this story got told.
***
I do have one serious complaint with this latest
season, because it killed any love I had for one character and cast a long and
depressing shadow over the rest of the season.
It was during the first Gob (pronounced as Job) centered episode, which
follows his relationship with Ann.
Ann is the daughter of a Christian preacher and her
overzealous devotion and bad attitude was played for laughs and made her an
utterly vapid character in the early seasons.
Not the actress’s fault; she was given nothing to work with. Making her sex hungry by the end of the third
season made her a hypocrite as well as boring.
I sighed and chose to bear with it. Those in the film and TV industry tend to
have an ax to grind with Christianity, and it’s no surprise Arrested Development rides that same
wagon. Making fun of Christians is easy,
and though I hate admitting it, Arrested
Development hit the mark more than once.
I have known people like Ann and her father, and while they are not the
rule, they do draw attention to themselves.
Obnoxious people are skilled at that.
This season crossed a line. They didn’t just make fun of Christian
culture; it was like the writers knew they had taken Ann and her religious
family as far as they could go, so in a last hurrah, they chose to make a mock
of Christianity’s God and the heart of our doctrine.
The Gob episode begins with Gob planning to wed Ann,
only to get cold feet immediately after his proposal. Instead of calling it off before the wedding
(which would have been the responsible thing to do) he decides to perform a
magic show in the chapel, turning the Crucifixion and Resurrection into an
entertainment.
It’s hard to explain why this offends us to anybody
outside the faith, but making fun of Christ, and especially mocking his
Atonement, is like having your parents stripped naked and forced to walk down
Main Street on national television. It’s
humiliating and uncomfortable.
It also ruined any suspension of disbelief I
had. There isn’t a church I know of that
would permit something like that to happen, or if they did, over half the
congregation would have stormed out and not come back until the bum apologized
profusely. It was a stupid and mean joke
and disingenuous storytelling to boot. It's a black mark that stains what used to be one of the most honest shows ever produced.
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