Today, we are continuing a five part series on season 4, the Netflix season, of Arrested Development. In this series, much like in season 4 of the show, Matthew Pittman takes on one character at a time, considering what defines their character and what we might learn about ourselves by laughing at their foibles. Parts 1-5 will post each day this week. – Editor
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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.)
Next time on Arrested Development Unwound… George Michael and Maeby demonstrate why growing up is just so hard to do.
