Arrested Development Season 4 Review

It’s no exaggeration to say that the return of Arrested Development is one of, if not the biggest TV event of the year.  The much beloved, but shortly lived show’s return after seven years with all fifteen episodes released at once was practically a nerd Christmas.  Few shows get a second chance like this one did; its journey here is quite the feat in and of itself.  Yet revivals and comebacks have a mixed history: for every Serenity there’s a couple Phantom Menaces.  I’ve gone on record with my apprehension towards the new episodes, but ultimately gave it as fair a shake as I could like any good critic.  While I was a little premature in tweeting that we got “Phantom Menaced”, I can’t help but feel disappointed in this new season.

The first part of season four, until around episode 4 or 5, is the worst run of episodes the show has ever done.  The show was awkward instead of creating actual jokes.  What happened to the clever call backs, word play and elaborate twists?  It didn’t feel like a fourth season.  This felt like an eleventh.  To be fair, some of the things that happened later have me interested in trying it again, but that first go through was disorienting and sad.  The show found some footing as it progressed.  Once we got to the first Tobias centric episode things fell into place, but the season never came close to reaching the heights of the previous three.  It became clear early on this was basically one really long episode, which is one of the reasons why the second half is so much better: the pay offs to early stuff don’t happen until the later episodes, leaving them with all set ups and no punch lines.

One of the problems this season faced getting made is dealing with the actors now busy schedules.  So the writers wrote around it, focusing an episode on one of the characters and having the rest of the cast in a smaller role or in some cases green screened in.  As a result this season doesn’t feel like the others because it lacks a lot of the fun dynamics of several character storylines playing out and interacting over one episode, with a few scenes involving all the characters broken up into small bits throughout the season.  Instead these dynamics play out over the course of a season to varying effect.  The writers get better at hiding this shortcoming as the season progresses, especially during the Cinco De Cuatro event the season and many episodes lead to.  I also appreciated the character development, although some of the directions I contend with, like the first Michael episode.

The timeline of this season is so nonlinear it makes a Tarantino film look like 12 Angry Men.  Covering what’s happened to the Bluth family in the last seven years is daunting enough, but short of introducing time travel into the narrative, there was no way to make it more convoluted.  It was hard to tell when some of the events were in relation to each other; the events could’ve taken place over five weeks, months or years.  With a timeline this complicated, a couple time cards would’ve been extremely helpful.  It took me until the fourth or fifth episodes to get a hold of the flow of the episodes.

This leads to another problem of this season and probably the biggest: the pacing is way off.  When Arrested Development was in its prime it was one of the best plotted shows on TV, advancing the story, calling back to its rich past and teasing what was to come for several storylines as few shows can in a tight 22 minute package.  These new bloated episodes—they average at over a half hour, some even go to 35-37 minutes—have a lot more trouble keeping that up, especially when it only has a fraction of the storylines.  Sometimes I think the episode reached its logical end point and found out there were 10 more minutes left.  Arrested Development wasn’t a show known to wander around while we hang out with the characters.  This season feels like too much plot for a movie, yet not enough for a show with this many episodes.  Not to mention a lot of stuff, victims of the shifts in character focus, just drops off the radar never to be heard from again (a major business deal in the Bluth company in the first half is more or less forgotten in the second).

I know it sounds like I flat out hated it, but I didn’t.  In the second half a lot of things are paid off, or we’re given a new perspective of something we thought we fully understood the first time.  It captured the spirit of Arrested Development despite these limitations.  That tied into Netflix’s delivery system.  Putting it out all at once is no doubt a different experience than the once a week model.  Seeing it all at once I was able to notice a lot of the recurring gags scattered through the season, although I wasn’t allowed to appreciate them as individual episodes, not to mention there are a few rough patches as I’ve mentioned.  As much as I respect people wanting to spread it out evenly, unless I were to unplug for the entire summer, there’s no way I could stay unspoiled (but this is another commentary altogether).  I wonder if I’ll end up liking the episodes better on a second watch when I have a chance to give it some time to breathe as I did watching the first three seasons.

Without spoiling too much, it seems that Hurwitz and company are putting a lot of eggs in the movie basket because the season just stops.  For all the coverage the Cinco De Cuatro ceremony received, the pay offs are dissipated so much the season lacks a proper ending.  We saw bits here and there, but it seemed like it was going to come to a head and things were going to go forward.  Nope.  No closure, just hopefully we can get a movie to wrap up some cliffhangers.  Considering this will likely be a big hit (who knows but Netflix, who refuses to release any data on their shows), it’s likely to go ahead, but considering how tough it was to get everybody the first time, who knows when we’ll see it.  For a season that was designed as one long story, the climax was a little weak.

As far as reunions go, it was nice to see the Bluths again, but I can’t help but feel limitations of reassembling the crew and the restrictions of the medium kept this from being truly great.  I can’t imagine this is what Hurwitz has been envisioning with his constant promises of more Arrested Development.  Despite my hesitations, I really wanted this to be amazing.  But for now it feels like one of those be careful what you wish for scenarios.  This beloved show came back, and it hit some right notes, but it just wasn’t right.

Overall grade: C

Miscellaneous (Spoilers Abound):

Especially considering Ron Howard was a recurring character, the narration was completely wasted this time around, which is especially bad considering Howard’s narration in the original show was integral and provided a ton of great material.  His info dumps really hindered those first couple episodes.

“And Jeremy Piven” was my favorite sight gag of the show.  That could’ve been a joke Stefan would’ve used on SNL

One of the big laughs was the reveal of how Rebel Alley got her name.

I wanted to see more jokes about the taglines for movie production companies just describing what the logo does.

To Catch a Predator jokes, in 2013?  I also don’t buy that Tobias would become a sex offender just because of his poor word choice.  If that were the case he would’ve already been one because of his analrapist card.

The only way they could’ve driven the sex offender stuff more is if Sargent Hatred moved in to Sudden Valley.  There was a lot of uncomfortable sex stuff this season, more icky than funny.  Although I appreciated the shot of the kid diving in the busy pool and when he emerges the pool is completely empty in one shot.

The Showstealer watermark joke never worked for me.

Another new bit that didn’t work at all: the Bluths refusing to tip African American workers.  While it was true to the characters’ racist beliefs, as a recurring bit it never landed.  Maybe if it paid off later.

Fun changes in perspective: the twist that revealed the shaman Lindsay talked to in episode three was actually Maeby in heavy make up and the Tony Wonder/GOB reveal.

Also liked the de-evolution of Fakeblock from some pioneering anti-piracy software into a wood block simulator app that blew out of proportion.

They did a good job with the Andy Richter recurring quintuplets gag.

The “Sounds of Silence” bit is one of the few new recurring gag from this season I liked.  I also liked the cutaways from Rebel’s bad behavior to her recording a PSA about it.

Loved seeing MST3K show up in Debrie’s acting reel, though did they do anything in the second clip?

Also enjoyed Terry Crews as the Herman Cain-esque Herbert Love.

For a show known for meta humor, they couldn’t seem to find a way to put in more mentions to the show’s cancelation and rebirth?  There were a couple, but nowhere near as much as I expected.

Was it just me, or was the audio mixing problematic?  There were times when the dialogue was drowned out by background music or narration, and not in a way where it was intentional.

I guess that’s the closest we’ll get to seeing Michael’s wife/George Michael’s mother.  I hope I’m wrong and we see more of Maria Thayer in whatever comes next.

I wish Mary-Lynn Rajskub had some lines.

No Franklin or the Banana Stand.

As inspired a casting choice having Kristen Wiig play a young Jessica Walter, it felt a little bit like a stunt since in the past the older actor would just throw on a wig and pretend to be younger.  Rogen didn’t fit as well, though I think he would’ve been better as young Oscar considering his persona.

I also liked the personalization each opening credit sequence got, tailored to whichever character the episode was the focus down to having a special instrument playing during it.

Some nerd should get to editing these episodes down, like Topher Grace did with the prequels, into a movie.