Today, we are wrapping up 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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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.