Season Overview
Arrested Development has always been keenly aware of itself. It’s highly anticipated fourth season even includes several references as to why it took so long to get made. Most shows, like Elementary or Mad Men, take themselves seriously, and are blithely unaware of any other narrative worlds. Arrested Development does neither. Its strengths – meta-jokes, running gags, outrageous characters, puns/word play, etc. – are actually dependent on the viewer’s knowledge of a myriad of cultural spheres and events. How funny would Tobias be if the viewer knew nothing of the Blue Man Group, sexual activity and positioning, or the desperate actor stereotype?
The show clearly has a formula, but that isn’t a bad thing. If you aren’t convinced Arrested is predictable enough to be spoofed and/or if you like Game of Thrones, watch this mashup of the two. Story is essentially meaningless in the world of Arrested Development, but it gives us a way to access the lesson each character communicates. The narrative progression serves only to prop up the next comedic bit, pun, joke, double entendre, slapstick gag, clever dialogue, or otherwise hilarious moment. Buster, pouting after being scolded by his mother Lucille, has no logical reason to go swim in the ocean, but he does. Then someone shouts, “Look out for loose seal!” He defiantly responds with, “I’m not afraid of Lucille!” and then a seal bites off his hand. We laugh and think, “Ahh, I see what they did there…”
Season four of Arrested Development took this method of humor to the next level. Fifteen interwoven episodes, each focusing on a different character, all set up jokes that pay dividends through multiple viewings. Critics are somewhat divided, but fans of the show naturally love more of Arrested’s unique brand of postmodern, post-narrative, post-everything humor. And so, here are 10 perspectives on Arrested Development’s fourth season, one for every main character, plus Ann. Wait, who?
Michael
Ah, Michael. As the ostensible protagonist of the show, Michael was, in seasons 1-3, the nexus around which the cast and narrative revolved. His was the only perspective we were given access to, and so the audience came to identify with him. The general impression after watching the first three seasons is that, while everyone in the Bluth family is demented, narcissistic, and delusional, Michael is slightly less so than the rest. If they would just get out of his way, he could put the family back on top!
That illusion is shattered in season four. We clearly see Michael, and he is just as demented, narcissistic, and delusional as the rest of the family. Paradoxically, there is a simultaneous compression and expansion of perspective that results from Arrested’s new approach of interwoven narratives. Seeing Michael from the perspective of everyone else in season 4 reveals a fallible foolishness that just wasn’t there in seasons 1-3. Yet, his likeable humanity remains, albeit in a different way.
It is awkward enough to see how blind he is to his own son’s discomfort while crashing in George Michael’s dorm room, but in George Michael’s episode it becomes downright painful when we see the other half of conversations and events that reveal just how annoying Michael’s presence was. Michael Bluth, unlike the show featuring him, has no self-awareness whatsoever. May we never be foolish or prideful enough to think that we know exactly how we are perceived (or what others are thinking), and may we always be open to receive whatever sign God might send us, whether or vulture at our housing development, a hot door handle on a Phoenix taxi, or pretty girl complaining about cheesy meet-cutes while engaging us in a cheesy meet-cute.
George Sr.
Ah, George. Like the rest of the characters, George Sr. had the volume of his own ineptitude turned way up when the audience follows events from his perspective. We get to watch him gradually lose his self-confidence, which is part of why I think most criticism leveled at season four lands mostly around George – that his storyline is boring, that gags run too long, etc. I think, when you take a step back, his somewhat depressing activity is fitting for a man who has lived a life of selfish scheming. It’s almost as if his whole life is an attempt to test every line in the book of Proverbs. This does not necessarily make for the most compelling television.
Fortunately, also like the rest of the characters, George Sr.’s episodes reveal great jokes that are easy to miss the first time around. My particular favorite was while George and Oscar talked at the Balboa club, and behind them HeartFire silently choked on wasabi because she couldn’t use her thoughts to alert the bartender. This kind of attention to detail and layering is very deliberate, and Mitch Hurwitz & co. want, at the very least, to give viewers a rewarding, rich, and rare media experience. At the very most, they are changing the way we define, process, and watch “television.”
Lindsay
Ah, Lindsay. Everyone in the world of Arrested Development is basically a stereotype, but Lindsay Bluth Funke as the insecure, shallow, vapid, flip-flopping cause-head still makes me laugh every time. “Other than her looks and her belief system, she’s the same old Lindsay.” Her selective hearing and memory are particularly delightful; whether interpreting an addict’s statement of, “You look like a junkie…what do you weigh, like 90 lbs?” as a compliment, or a shaman’s rebuke of “You are so full of s**t!” as encouragement, Lindsay hears what she wants to. I think her character is so bizarre because most of us do the exact opposite – over-analyzing every email, comment, or glance from strangers and friends in an attempt to preclude, predict, or prepare for any negative consequence.
Despite her life being a mess, Lindsay is remarkably optimistic. Certainly, now and then it behooves us to be able to focus on one thing at a time. Lindsay’s character is queen of the zoom-out gag, and that is where we can learn from her. She wonders why her marriage feels distant, then the camera zooms out and we see that, in their bedroom, she and Tobias each have their own outrageous custom beds that are 10 feet apart. She thinks the realtor is hitting on her when he asks if she and Tobias have kids, and after taking a minute or two to recall the existence of their child, the camera zooms out to reveal that Maeby was standing behind them the whole time. May we be blessed with the wisdom to know when to have singular focus, and when to zoom out and get a bigger perspective on a situation.
Tobias
“Hey, is that a gal I see? No, it’s just a phallus, seeeee!”
Ah, Tobias. Perhaps the fan favorite. I still laugh when I see a “never-nude” at a Halloween party. Reaching stunning new levels of layered comedy, Tobias’ episode makes his homosexual tendencies into a running joke when Lindsay tells him homosexual tendencies have become a running joke, thereby causing him to examine his homosexual tendencies, even as they become more of a running joke.
“All I need you to do is tell people what a terrific actor I am, because I can’t do it believably.”
When watching season four the first time through, it is right around Tobias’ episode that the strength of Arrested’s new format becomes clear. Jokes that were funny in Lindsay’s episode become funny again, but for different reasons. We realize, yes, we correctly heard her call a bad driver an “anus tart”, and now we know why.
“Oh, I assure you, there’s nothing ambiguous about me. I’m Johnny Storm, the human flamer!”
As the most exaggerated stereotype, Tobias is easy comedic fodder, but also the easiest for us to comfortably laugh at. It painful to watch Michael infringe on his son’s personal space; because we all struggle with relationships where boundaries of family or intimacy are breached, it can hit close to home. However, I don’t know many people who are so dumb as to tell the host of a “To Catch A Predator” show that his little girl is 19, but he likes to think of her as 15. Tobias’ distance from reality makes him a comfortable yardstick against which we can measure ourselves, but his hyperbolic tendencies can still serve as a reminder to watch what we say.
“Daddy needs to get his rocks off.”
Lucille
Ah, Lucille. The pursed lips that sank the ship. I wasn’t sure she warranted her own episode, but wow, the Bluth family’s quickest wit (and sharpest tongue) quickly reminded me what a delight she is to watch. Putting a racist bigot in with the “Real Asian Prison Housewives of the Orange County White Collar Prison System” provided great conflict. Some jokes (having the Asians mispronounce “loophole” as “ru paul”) seemed a bit lazy, but some (“I got Olive Garden to offer us unlimited bread,” a ramen noodle shiv that Lucille makes flaccid with water) were great.
In the demented and deluded family of Bluths, Lucille is the only one who isn’t mentally challenged – and she’s in prison. In season four, everyone else has matured along their own path from the first three seasons. George Sr. has gone from failing patriarch to utterly inept. Michael has gone from bumbling upwards to failing patriarch, now occupying the role previously occupied by his father. George Michael has gone from inept to bumbling upwards, occupying the “almost successful” role his father played in seasons 1-3. Only Lucille remains above the fray, still pulling the strings of everyone else, even from “prison.” Aside from a hatred of Lucille 2, she has few weaknesses. Yet, she might be the only character to feel something that almost resembles human emotion. Why is this? Perhaps it’s because, unlike Lindsay, she was able to turn her queen around.
Buster
Ah, Buster. As Lucille puts it, he’s happiest when he feels useful. I wonder if she held on to that sentiment when she returned home for house arrest only to find dozens of martinis waiting on the table and Buster lying on top of a homemade doll with her face plastered onto it. Buster has more mother issues than “Balboa Bay Window” magazine, and, like his brother G.O.B., his issues give us an amusing metaphor for failing to deal with sin directly. When he defiantly declares his independence from Lucille, only to run directly into the arms of another mother figure, Lucille 2, we have a wonderfully Oedipal representation our inability to resolve deep issues by ourselves.
Without Christ’s redemption, our aims and desires will only ever exist in their altered state of misdirection. This means that (if we are like Buster) we spend our days trying to get our mother to love us, and our nights trying to get our lover to mother us. That means (for the rest of us) that our wires get crossed; we look for emotional fulfillment in food, or sexual fulfillment online, or relational fulfillment in hobbies or objects. Maybe it takes a wicked juice hangover (or being a blindside monster for Herbert Love) to make us grow up from motherboy to motherMAN. (Excuse Buster’s lack of gender-inclusive language.)
George-Michael
The storyline that paralleled The Social Network was appropriate for George-Michael. Like Mark Zuckerberg, he possesses dubious social skills. Unlike Zuckerberg, he does not possess the coding skill or marketing savvy to create any sort of successful software. The only thing George-Michael has going for him, other than his new post-Spain O.S. (overtly sexual) demeanor, is the innate Bluth gene for deception. Once he taps into this, George-Michael begins to bumble upwards through the ranks of faux success, much like his father did in previous seasons. Fabricating such hype out sheer nothingness results in something that is sort of like having pedophiles throw you a pool party: a success on some level, but for the wrong reasons, and you probably won’t like what happens next.
Michael Cera seems born to play George-Michael. He captures every nuance of awkward adolescence, including the fleeting nature of confidence and desire. He represents a different sort of flip-flopping than the rest of his family. When Lindsay flips politically, it almost makes sense, but she still is doing it for personal reasons like insecurity. When George Sr. goes from pro-wall to anti-wall, it is also for personal reasons: spite and greed. But when George-Michael flip-flops, it is sweetly genuine. Like when his desire to educate his cousin outweighs his desire to kiss her. Or when he goes from not willing to promote the lie about his fake company, to all in favor of it. Even though he just wants to get laid, something about him remains pure. Why is his selfishness so different?
Maeby
Ah, Maeby. More mature than both of her parents, with a better job, yet still just wants to be noticed by them. But she doesn’t want it so bad that won’t pimp her own mother out for some extra cash. Maeby is a funny character – wildly talented and successful in some areas, but mixed-up priorities and emotional scarring keep her from reaching her full potential. I think we all know at least a few people like this. It is difficult to watch someone with enormous potential continue to shoot themselves in the foot.
This might be one of the most important functions of a community. Calling each other out, speaking truth into others’ blind spots, etc. – these are the functions of community that Maeby is without. She has always been an outsider, relegated to the periphery, not only of her family’s consciousness but the shows focus as well. Her episode reflects that. Jokes and scenes unfolded for a third layer of humor (sitting behind Tobias sitting behind Lindsay on the flight to India, coughing to get their attention after the Queen Mary crashed). We might not always get community right the first time, but with persistence, patience, and grace – all of which take practice – we can find like-minded believers to spur us on. And practice makes perfecto.
G.O.B.
Ah, G.O.B. Nobody likes dealing with uncomfortable situations. Maybe it’s not as awkward as confronting your nephew after stealing his evangelical girlfriend, realizing you are not actually friends with Justin Beiber/Mark Cherry but merely his getaway driver, or failing to recruit Mexican day laborers to help you build an anti-immigrant wall on the U.S./Mexico border, but we all do whatever it takes to avoid discomfort. When it does happen, we wish we could forget that it ever did.
That’s part of what makes G.O.B.’s roofie circle so incredible. Aside from being really funny, it is actually a metaphor for what most of us do every day. The presence of sin in our lives is like a dull ache that we don’t want to acknowledge or deal with. Instead, we use whatever distractions we can to anesthetize ourselves. G.O.B. is aware of the one person who could help him, but instead of being interested in salvation, he is more concerned with Jesus’ abdominals.
And of course, when we only treat the symptom instead of the root, sin misdirects our originally good desires. When this happens to us, it is devastating. When it happens to G.O.B., and he mistakes feelings of friendship for homosexual urges, because he has never cared about anyone other than himself, it is funny. Just about everything G.O.B. does is funny, but the twists and turns his relationship with Tony Wonder takes are genius.
Ann
Her? The presence of Ann on Arrested Development gives the show yet another group of people to stereotype and deride: evangelical Christians. The fact that so many Christians love the show has always been something of a curiosity – do evangelicals have good taste in media, or do they simply enjoy (or at least not mind) seeing themselves stereotyped and mocked? I’m leaning toward the latter, and here is why: every Christian I know fancies him or herself as the exception to the rule, the one non-cheesy believer in a world of trite evangelical kitsch.
Arrested’s stereotype of Christians checks all the boxes: frigid and motionless during sex and reluctant to have it at all? Check. Spouting unwanted spiritual nonsense at inappropriate times (Like Kirk Cameron’s introduction of Maeby at the “Opies”)? Check. Clinging to archaic language, and therefore ideas (“And as it is such, so also as such is it unto you”)? Check. In general, being utterly bland in every way? Double Check. Ann is only memorable for being forgettable. Who?
But these would not be funny images unless there was some truth to them. Stereotypes are stereotypes for a reason. And that is OK – Christians shouldn’t feel the need to acquiesce completely to culture to the point that the Gospel indistinguishable from it. Somewhere in-between Westboro Baptist’s ignorance and Universalism’s compliance lies fertile ground for the many denominations and theologies that give every believer a foundation to stand on as he or she participates in the Kingdom of God, in whatever way the Lord leads. Just don’t be led to marry a guy who insists on doing a crucifixion magic trick at your wedding.