Author: Philip J Reed

The previous two episodes, which centered around Maeby and George Michael, were great and very good, respectively. They represent exactly the late-season upswing I had been hoping for, and I’m overall quite happy with them. And there’s no reason “Off the Hook” couldn’t have been just as good. Instead, though, it’s a reversion to the bottom-rung material that’s hung like a smothering cloud over season four. Those two episodes were flukes, and “Off the Hook” wants to make sure we know it.

By the way, I’m not just saying that this episode could have been as strong for rhetorical purposes. Buster, as a character, was very much in the same boat as Maeby and George Michael; he lives in the shadow of a parent, and while the fact that he’s an adult makes that somewhat more tragic, it was otherwise a great complement to the situations of the actual kids.

Maeby lives under parents who don’t notice her, George Michael lives under a parent who doesn’t hear him, and Buster lives under a mother who actively holds him down. And just as the previous two episodes explored how those children grow up when separated from that defining dynamic, Buster’s can do the same. The plot has already taken Lucille from him, so what now? Where does he go? What does he do?

Almost any other answer to that question would be more interesting than what we got, which is an episode that uses Buster as a hook (ahem) upon which to hang both the Love campaign and Lucille 2 murder-mystery aspects of the season…which we might as well start referring to for simplicity’s sake as the two least interesting turds on this mountain of shit.

Buster’s always been a fascinating character, mainly because the show never quite knew what to do with him. I don’t offer that up as a criticism, but rather an endorsement. Even without a clear character trajectory, Tony Hale managed to bring a level of naive sincerity to the character that made him at once the most likeable and most fucked-up Bluth. He rarely got episodes of his own, and was just as rarely an integral part of somebody else’s. That’s why “Off the Hook” has more or less carte blanche; we have no expectations. A Buster episode can be anything, so all they really need to do is make it funny.

So what do they do? Replace the hook with a giant robot hand that plays music and breaks things. Great character work, boys.

This is the problem I’ve had with Arrested Development all season; for one reason or another, the writers seem to think that puns and pratfalls define their characters…and that’s absolutely false. Audiences responded to Arrested Development for exactly the opposite reason: these were characters in spite of those things…not because of them.

Did we like GOB because he was a deluded, conflicted charmer, or because he chased people around with bees and had buttsex with men because lol buttsex? Did we like Lucille because she was an icy, domineering presence or because she wrote songs for comic-book musicals and tussled with offensive Asian stereotypes?

Season four not only takes the laziest route through these episodes, but it also takes the most irrelevant. Consider Buster’s hand. Yes, the fact that he gets a robot hand is true to the character in the sense that in season two he also had his hand replaced by something, but isn’t that the most superficial connection imaginable? It’s literally skin deep.

What does this new hand say about him? I could write pages about what the hook said about him, both specifically and in more general terms about the tragedy of a missing hand being inflicted upon the already tragic Buster. It was funny, and it had resonance.

The robot hand has neither. Buster absent-mindedly attempting to rub Oscar’s shoulders with a hook is funny, and it taps into character work going all the way back to the first episode. Buster standing in the kitchen while his robot hand malfunctions and plays silly music isn’t funny, and taps into absolutely nothing.

The writers then knew what to do with a hook, and that’s why they did it. The writers now know nothing of what to do with the robot hand, and they do it anyway. That’s the season four difference.

Seeing Buster at the start of the episode with Ophelia Love is a great beginning, mainly because of the good will engendered by the previous Buster relationships we’ve seen…not the least of which was with Lucille 2, which was always such a tragically perfect pairing in itself. We have every opportunity to trod interesting ground here, but it goes nowhere. Ophelia falls for him, then doesn’t want him, then the episode ends. And Gene Parmesan is back because I guess Martin Mull was free for another day of shooting and they didn’t want to waste him.

Of course I’m cheating slightly, because the Ophelia thing does tap into one aspect of Buster’s personality: his need to be mothered. This is something the episode toys with, which is great. What’s not great is that it only toys with it, and never bothers to explore it. We never get anything deeper than Buster repeatedly stating outright that he wants to be mothered. I know I’ve used this comparison already, but the more I think about it the more I really do believe that season four of Arrested Development is exactly what the Robot Devil sees in his nightmares.

That’s not character work, any more than Dickens making Scrooge say, “I’m such a mean old man, and so stingy, and I won’t change my ways until some ghosts come and make me” would qualify as character work. That’s just characters explaining, and in a season that already relies far too heavily on a narrator to do exactly that, it’s completely pointless. It doesn’t suggest an understanding of the character at all…it suggests that the writers reminded themselves of who the characters were by reading a paragraph-long bio on Wikipedia.

The episode ends, of course, with something that has genuinely nothing to do with anything we’ve been watching for the past half hour: Buster finding the “dead” body of Lucille 2 on the staircar. Huzzah.

It has nothing to do with the story we’ve just been told, which is bizarre, because you’d think showing the “dead” body of a major character would be…y’know…worth building up to, or something.

I really do believe they dropped the ball substantially with this mystery aspect of the plot. For starters, I don’t care about it…but here’s why I don’t care about it: the season doesn’t convince me I should care about it.

Over the course of 15 episodes we only get a handful of mentions of Lucille 2’s death or disappearance (it’s the latter, of course, but we might as well play along), and most of them are exactly that: mentions. I think we spend more time with the fuckin’ ostrich.

So season four doesn’t even seem to be interested in her death itself. Why should I? Lucille 2’s fate is a shocking moment, but it’s shocking mainly for just how clumsily it’s revealed. This isn’t clever, this isn’t interesting…this is just there. Here’s a character, here she is lying in some blood (it’s not, of course, but we might as well play along), here’s George Sr. dressed as a woman talking to the cops. Great stuff!

The best comparison point for this is probably the Rita arc in season three. While it wasn’t overtly positioned as a mystery the way this Lucille 2 crap is, it followed the general template: we get a sense there’s something strange afoot, we’re led to believe it’s one thing, all the while hints are dropped as to the truth, and we arrive, at last, at a revelation that causes certain details and moments to play differently in retrospect. The mystery is solved, and when rewatching we can pick up on new things for ourselves, and hear the same old dialogue in new ways. It’s great; Michael’s a terrible detective figure and we’re likely to arrive at the conclusion ahead of him, but that doesn’t make it any less fun.

Here’s the template the Lucille 2 mystery follows over the course of season four: nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing, she’s missing, nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing, DEAD BODY IN SOME BLOOD, nothing, nothing.

Like everything else, it’s just a thing that happens. It has nothing to do with the character, or any of the characters, at all.

Maybe she got an attack of vertigo and fell over. Maybe Gene Parmesan went insane and slit her up with that knife he bought for no reason a few episodes ago. Maybe GOB put a Tony Wonder mask on her and anally fucked her to death.

Whatever happened, I don’t care. Neither do the writers, and neither does the episode I just saw that climaxed (in the loosest possible sense of that word) with her unconscious body lying on the staircar.

Here’s what a mystery is: a story told in tantalizing and well-layed fragments that eventually resolves itself into a clearer picture for the audience and, often, the characters involved.

Here’s what a mystery is not: a cheap flash of an old woman in some blood, and the assumption that someone gives a shit.

Because we don’t.

You’re killing me, Buster.

Episode 14: “Off the Hook”
Central Character: Buster
Other Family Appearances: Lucille, Michael, Tobias
Most Clumsy Reference to Original Run: The literal doctor.
Scene That Most Needed Tightening: Buster falling out of his chair and the Army treating it like an actual plane crash. I’d like to say it sounds funnier than it is, but…you know.
Best Line / Exchange:

BUSTER: Well, they said the miniaturization comes later. I mean you remember how big your first cell phone was!
LUCILLE: That was a phone. This looks like you’re pointing to a place that buys your gold.

“It Gets Better” really does live up to its name, serving as the second very good episode in a row, right after “Señoritis,” at a point when the season is running short on chances for redemption.

Michael Cera’s obviously been busy enough in the Arrested Development downtime to hone his comedic chops, and fans of the show get a big payoff here as his focal episode manages to be funny, painful, and surprisingly insightful. It works as a character sketch and it also works as an exploration of how a young man finds his identity. It may also double as a sort of origin story, but we’ll get into that in a bit.

It’s not quite on the level of “Señoritis,” though that’s mainly down to structural differences. Whereas that episode told a more or less complete story, “It Gets Better” doesn’t manage to wind itself to a conclusion. We just get a shot of Michael and Ron Howard hanging out next to a photo booth and that qualifies as an ending only because the “On the next…” title card follows it. Which is a shame, because “It Gets Better” was heading in a very interesting direction by that point, and it would have been nice if the episode had the courage to see its own story through.

George Michael’s always been a great character, and one of the things Arrested Development always did so well was allowing its characters room to grow. That sort of thing is easier to handle with the adult characters, as a simple change in occupation or a new relationship is enough to shake things up, but for the kids it’s a little different. Their lives change much more rapidly — and the aging of the actors is much more apparent — so the shakeups need to be a little more severe if anything’s going to qualify as growth.

So what we get here is a great little episode that shows us exactly that. George Michael goes off to college, and on behalf of every socially-retarded young man who did the same thing before him, let me say that his transition from insecure boy to awkward man is absolutely perfect.

College is perhaps the one time in everybody’s life where we fit. That’s not because we have any more to offer at that point than at any other time in our lives, but rather because it’s such a broad experience. You can immerse yourself in studies, sports, girls, boys, drinking, drugs, sex, road trips, video games, music, theater or anything else you like. Absolutely every possible interest you might have is covered; there’s always somebody there waiting to share it with you.

And so your confidence grows. You might have felt like the only sane person in your town (or family), but you meet like-minded individuals. People laugh at your jokes. Someone thinks you’re cute. You get along with a particular professor. You feel, for once, like a complete human being. And all of a sudden, whatever life you had before college? It just feels so empty.

Which is George Michael’s arc in a nutshell. At UCI he falls in love, has his heart broken, makes a friend, is betrayed, makes amends, and experiments time and again with who he is. A new beverage with breakfast, some facial hair, a different shirt before a girl comes over. It’s a character becoming human.

We blow through the first three years of his college career, touching upon all of the expected rites of passage along the way, but things slow down for us exactly when they do for him: when his father moves into the dorm during senior year. Suddenly he’s just a boy again. That glorious, temporary new world gets snatched away from George Michael one year too soon.

So far, so excellent. And there really isn’t much to complain about here at all, apart from the fact that the narrative chooses to fray and unravel rather than lead us anywhere of merit. We get some nice toying with the idea that George Michael becomes more like his father the more he tries to distance himself from the man, but it’s a little too obvious (and is spelled out explicitly at various times) so there’s little joy in connecting those dots for ourselves.

Oh well. I’ll trade a solid plot trajectory (not that we really had one in the first place this season) for a great piece of character work any day, and that’s what “It Gets Better” is. It’s a too-brief moment of personal triumph for George Michael, and an ultimate reminder that the real world is always there, just around the corner, waiting to take it all away from you again.

I guess I do have to mention that we see George Michael’s mother for the first (and so far only) time in this episode, in some archival footage. The idea is nice, but I’m not sure I buy that Michael would allow his infant son to share a crib with a painfully hot, sharp metal box…Bluth Company product or not.

Also, as long as we’re on the subject, abrupt editing of the Cornballer infomercial can’t disguise the fact that at one point we used to put Jeffrey Tambor in a wig to play a younger version of himself, and that Seth Rogen with a mustache is really no substitute for that.

The young Barry on the other hand? That’s Henry Winkler’s actual son, and that’s spot-on perfect.

Anyway, we move on to the final two episodes now…and there’s absolutely no chance you’ll see the phrase “spot-on perfect” again.

Episode 13: “It Gets Better”
Central Character: George Michael
Other Family Appearances: Michael, Maeby
Most Clumsy Reference to Original Run: “Stay on top of her. You may need to ride her pretty hard.”
Scene That Most Needed Tightening: The reprise of the back and forth messages between Michael and George Michael, which not only goes on too long but almost completely dulls the emotional impact that the scene had originally earned.
Best Line / Exchange:

GEORGE MICHAEL: Boom! And that’s what we call only being behind by three.

Not a moment too soon — arguably around ten episodes too late — something genuinely incredible happens: we get a truly great episode of Arrested Development season four.

If there was ever any doubt that Alia Shawkat was one of this show’s greatest assets (and seriously, if there was any, you and I need to have a serious talk), “Señoritis” should dispel that immediately.

In fact, between this episode and the next (“It Gets Better”) I really started to hope that the concluding episodes of the season would retroactively make what came earlier play that much better. They’re both very good, though I think this one edges “It Gets Better” out, and particularly in this case it does a great job of filling in gaps and layering new details onto what we’ve already seen.

Sadly, as with just about anything good in season four, it’s an exception. But it’s an exception I will happily take, and it’s the one episode from this mess that I think might be able to stand next to the classic years.

“Señoritis” reveals that even though we haven’t seen much of Maeby, she’s been in the background the entire time, pulling strings and orchestrating (knowingly or not) much of what’s been happening to the rest of the family. This is both welcome from a narrative standpoint and absolutely true to the nature of the character.

The Bluths can be divided fairly evenly into three groups. There are the Leaders, who tend to set the direction that others will take (Lucille, Michael and Maeby); the Followers, who will go along with whomever appears to be in charge at the time (George Sr., Buster and George Michael); and the Bystanders, who won’t do much of anything unless it’s forced upon them (Lindsay, Tobias and GOB).

Maeby is a doer, and as much as what she does might be self-destructive — as evidenced here by continually re-enrolling in high school, backing a non-existent company and sleeping with an underaged boy — it’s always pro-active. Maeby may be the architect of her own misfortune, but in a season so aimless it’s positively thrilling to see somebody grab things with both hands and set a course of her own…even if that course is directly into the ground.

I love Maeby. I’d rank her right up there with Lisa Simpson as one of my all-time favorite female characters on television, and while I’m sorry we didn’t see much of her this season, that might be for the best. I came out of “Señoritis” wishing Maeby got a second episode (rather than, say, Tobias or George Sr.) but the way things have gone episode two would probably have been about Maeby traveling through time with a wise-cracking kangaroo so I’m not losing sleep over it.

The half hour or so that we do spend with her is so strong that it almost takes deliberate effort to notice why: Alia Shawkat herself. While the episode feels less sloppy and better written, the more I think about it the more I think we can actually attribute that to the actress herself, who simply takes command of the material in a way that her elder co-stars do not.

“The Netflick” isn’t a funny joke…mispronouncing “heiress” isn’t a funny joke…knocking a chair over at the end of a board meeting isn’t a funny joke. None of that would play on paper, and most actors wouldn’t know what to do with it. In Shawkat’s hands, however, these moments are hilarious. She’s evolved over the years from being an underutilized player to a driving comic force, and seeing her leap to the fore this late in the season with such a strong presence is extremely rewarding.

Her speech at The Opie Awards, it has to be said, is the single funniest sequence in the entire batch of episodes, and again that’s all down to the woman behind it. There’s nothing funnier than Maeby’s overconfident, profane screed (bookended by a perfect Kirk Cameron joke and a spot-on observational gag about the rigid structure of award shows) and it belongs on a highlight reel right between Lucille shrieking at Gene Parmesan and Michael reacting to the Mayon-egg.

I could pick things apart here, I’m sure, but as I mentioned in a previous review I’m only doing that when I’m not laughing. If I’m laughing, the flaws don’t matter. They smooth themselves over in service of the experience, and I’m happy to let that happen. It’s only when I’m not laughing that my mind wanders, and not once in any of the times I’ve viewed “Señoritis” has my mind wandered. That’s saying a lot.

It is worth mentioning though that as much as the episode paints Maeby into scenes we’ve already encountered, it’s really the small stuff that resonates most. While the “biggest” reveal is probably that she posed as her mother’s shaman in India, far more rewarding are the simpler details, like Maeby squawking like a bird just off camera when she’s caught by surprise. It’s not a problem, but just an observation…and again further reinforcement of the fact that Alia Shawkat works wonders with the smallest moments.

It’s probably also worth discussing the ending. While the episode (rightly) shows Maeby facing a very large consequence for sleeping with a minor, I do think it plays differently to the audience than it would have if the genders were flipped. I think Hurwitz and co. actually have some fun with this, as Maeby herself shrugs it off and she says she’ll be fine…whereas I think that would be a lot less funny if it were George Michael saying the same thing about sleeping with a high schooler, or Tobias after actually having done what that entrapment show believed he wanted to do.

There’s a double standard at work there, and I like that Maeby’s shrug is so obvious that it can’t help but also play as an observation of that imbalance. It’s a great moment that makes you laugh, and then very quickly reconsider that laughter. (Just as Maeby very quickly, in “episode time” at least, reconsiders that shrug.)

I like “Señoritis.” And — spoilerzz — I like “It Gets Better.” As down as I’ve been on season four, I really feel as though there are about five or six great episodes’ worth of material here. In most cases it would require a lot of whittling to find the gold, but “Señoritis” arrives fully formed. Much like the character of Maeby herself, who has the singular distinction of making it out of this clusterfuck unscathed.

I salute you.

Episode 12: “Señoritis”
Central Character: Maeby
Other Family Appearances: George Michael, Lindsay, Tobias, Michael
Most Clumsy Reference to Original Run: Nothing! This was actually a really good episode.
Scene That Most Needed Tightening: Detailed explanation of how George Michael kisses…though admittedly that’s the joke.
Best Line / Exchange:

KITTY: Guess what!?
MAEBY: What?
KITTY: I’ll just tell you because I feel like we’ll be here forever and I have a meeting.

“Colony Collapse” was a flawed piece of television, but it worked well enough as a character sketch…as a method of plumbing what we knew of GOB Bluth and filling in some aspects of his humanity. It was also, overall at least, pretty funny, which is why it qualifies as a genuine highlight of season four.

“A New Attitude” seems dead-set on making up for that accidental success, and giving us a poorer, stupider episode about GOB that fits much more in line with the rest of the season.

One thing I’m noticing is that the second episode about each character is significantly worse than the first. “Flight of the Phoenix” was very much about the two most important things in Michael’s life (his son and his Sudden Valley project) and what it means when he botches them both, but “The B. Team” was about him being a movie producer and the straight man to some self-indulgent jokes about Ron Howard. (Wasn’t there also some simmering feud with Kitty, which was never mentioned again? Better not think about that…)

George Sr.’s first episode, “Borderline Personalities,” was about his relationship with Oscar, a construction project, and his latest scam business, but his second episode, “Double Crossers,” was about all the extra footage they had lying around that didn’t fit into other episodes…and also he becomes a woman.

Both Lindsay and Tobias had terrible first episodes, but their second installments still managed to be worse, which I guess qualifies as a kind of accomplishment.

Now we follow up on “Colony Collapse” with “A New Attitude,” which spends an awfully long and tedious time setting up the fact that GOB is going to pork Tony Wonder. Or vice versa. It’s not character work and it’s nothing to do with who GOB is as a person (one detail notwithstanding, and we’ll get to that in a moment)…it’s just something to laugh at, because gay sex is funny. I guess.

The one aspect of GOB’s personality that this does tie into is the fact that he doesn’t have any friends, and so when he has “feelings” for Tony, the narrator informs us that it’s friendship. GOB, without prior experience of this strange emotion, mistakes it for physical attraction. It’s a bit of a stretch, but it has its roots in a good idea, and it would have been far more affecting (and funny, and interesting, and clever, and everything else) had the two buffoons simply circled around each other this way, misunderstanding their own feelings, and confusing themselves about a romance neither of them actually wants.

Instead it ends with GOB and Tony buttfucking in the model home, so…nuts to that.

There’s a lot that this episode does wrong, and even more confusion that it causes, so I can’t even begin to touch upon everything. As far as the timelines go, either I’m very stupid or things got botched on the production end, because GOB makes an unwitting reference to Ann’s pregnancy before his wedding (something to the effect of “We had sex once and now she’s out to here!”) but here she says the child is Tony’s, because he slept with her after GOB ditched her at the altar. Could be a deliberate lie or mislead, but since I also don’t know why GOB still has the limo, what Michael does for Google or why we’re supposed to care at all about Herbert Love, the wall, or anything else introduced by season four, I’m happy to consider it some more sloppy writing and move on.

Then there’s the matter of Tony and Sally Sitwell, which a friend of mine astutely described as happening only because the actors are a couple in real life. There’s no narrative reason for them to be together, and far less of a reason for Sally to suddenly be a villain, embezzling from Lucille 2 as she twirls a non-existent mustache.

In the original run, Sally was a great (and wisely brief) addition to the show: she was a sweet, attractive example of what Michael could have if he let himself overcome his personal hurdles…as well as a comic reminder of how much of a child he still is. In the opening scene of this season she sees him at Cinco de Cuatro and makes a sarcastic comment about how she’s sorry she let him get away, and that works very well because it’s an immediate and biting acknowledgement of how far he’s fallen. Fine.

Now, however, forget all that…she’s just a scheming bitch. Once again, season four not only has no interest in building its characters, it actively wishes to dismantle the building done by seasons one, two and three. It’s disappointing, there’s no comic mileage in it, and — all together now! — it goes nowhere.

Speaking of going nowhere, we also get an interlude with Michael tearing up the movie rights in front of GOB, Lucille and George Sr., spouting off the little catch-phrase that couldn’t: “You’re outta da movie!!!!!” Can’t wait to buy that on a t-shirt.

So Michael spends the first half of the season or so collecting signatures for the movie, then the rest of the season ripping up the papers. There’s the germ of something funny there, but it doesn’t really land. I think I’ve figured out why: nobody actually gives a shit if they’re in the movie.

The one exception is Tobias, and that’s also the funniest “out of the movie” moment. After the debacle in Ron Howard’s office, Michael gets Tobias to sign the release. He then takes the paper and rips it up right in front of him. This is a funny moment, mainly because Tobias is so excited about it, and Michael gets a rightful moment of dickishness out of that.

In every other case, though, nobody cares. Lucille doesn’t give a shit, George Sr. doesn’t give a shit, and I don’t give a shit. It’s just one more example of season four keeping its balls in the air — so to speak — because it has no idea what else to do with them. There’s no destination in mind, no light at the end of the tunnel, and no conclusion or climax toward which we’re building. It’s a series of 15 episodes in which things happen, most of which aren’t funny and all of which are terribly boring, and then suddenly stop happening.

There’s also a pretty clear unbalance in these episodes, as we have four episodes left and all of them focus around characters we’ve barely seen so far. I think the season would have been better served by mixing them up a little better, so we don’t front-load certain characters and shrug off others entirely, and by limiting each character to one episode. I have nothing against devoting two episodes to somebody in theory, but in practice, the show loses track of what it’s trying to accomplish.

If it’s trying to accomplish anything at all.

Which…yeah. Fuck it.

Episode 11: “A New Attitude”
Central Character: GOB
Other Family Appearances: Michael, George Michael, Lucille
Most Clumsy Reference to Original Run: The Gothic Arsehole?
Scene That Most Needed Tightening: Same! Or the mask / sex scheming. It’s hard to say. This was a really bad episode.
Best Line / Exchange:

TONY: You can’t tell a soul.
ANN: No one I know will care.

As I said. Bad episode.