Broke, homeless and now in hock to Lucille Ostero, who he may or may not have slept with to get more money, he goes to live with George Michael in his college dorm, and becomes the nightmare parent he always threatened to be. After a certain amount of time-leaping (and a somewhat disconcerting cameo from Amanda de Cadenet as a newscaster, although at least she's better than Seth Rogen who is horrendously miscast as George Sr), we learn that Michael's attempts to go into the real estate business failed, partly because California's property market crashed, and partly because the only inhabitants he could lure to Sudden Valley were a vulture and a scrubby bit of tumbleweed. With the kind of confidence that Hurwitz has always exuded with this show, he opens proceedings with the most complicated and probably least funny episode. I didn't adore the show in the way I instantly adored the first three series, but I was admiring it, and even enjoying it in a new way. It takes some getting used to, but by the fifth episode, the patience begins to pay off. Sometimes it feels breathtakingly brilliant and other times it just feels confusing. It's extraordinary how much Hurwitz packs into each 30 minute episode. It demands the same kind of patience from the viewer as a show like The Wire, but with more ostrich attacks. Hurwitz has spoken often about his desire to make an Arrested Development movie and he has taken advantage of Netflix's plans to release the whole series at once to make a sitcom that has cinematic scope. There are also, as if paying the fans back for their long memories, little nods back at passing jokes from the first three series, such as Michael's youthful performance in "You're a crook, Captain Hook" and Lucille's cry, "Look what the homosexuals have done to me!"īut as a watching experience it is entirely unlike the past three much-cherished series, and unlike any other sitcom. All of the main characters and essential subsidiary ones are back, including Barry Zuckercorn, Bob Loblaw, Sitwell, Carl Weathers, Warden Gentles and, of course, Lucille Ostero, and there are, if anything, even more blink and you'll miss 'em background gags (later on, Lucille's prison numbers are 07734, or "hello" upside down, referring back to her adopted Korean son, Annyong, who she names the Korean word for "hello") and eye-popping weirdness (did you really just see Liza Minelli attacked by an ostrich? Yes, yes you did). Each of their storylines is utterly credible to the character (of course Lindsay would, inspired by Eat Pray Love, go to India "to let go of all possessions and to find something cute to keep her possessions in") and the show's style (of course George Sr would open up a sweat lodge on the Mexican border to con CEOs out of their money and to try to screw up Stan Sitwell's plans). But change always takes some getting used to.Įach episode of the show focuses on one character ("It's Michael's Arrested Development," intones Howard in the opening credits of the show, helping the viewer along), catching viewers up on what's been happening in their lives for the past few years. Well, what's happened is that, just as the show's creator rehauled the traditional sitcom in 2003-06 when the original three series aired, he's trying to do the same again seven years on. Um, what's happened to Arrested Development? From this very first scene, all of those devoted fans of the show whose loyalty helped to bring the show back might be feeling as nervous as Buster Bluth about all of this change. But as ace as Wiig is at capturing Lucille's casual racism ("It's all part of the Mexican war on May fifth!") and threatening eye movements, she's no Jessica Walter. In the first 10 minutes, there are more confusing leaps in time than Back to the Future 2 managed in the whole of its film, including a flashback to several decades past in which Seth Rogen plays George Senior and – much more successfully – Kristen Wiig is young Lucille. The metaphorical ones come from the dizzying jumps in time that the viewer is expected to keep up with from the very start. The literal clears of the throat come from the narrator, Ron Howard, whose gentle coughs make a promising opening for the first episode, winking, in that distinctively Arrested Development way, at the audience. With a couple of clears of the throat, literal and metaphorical, the much anticipated fourth series of Arrested Development arrives at last on Netflix today, dumped in its entirety with the enthusiasm of one of the members of the Bluth family eagerly offloading its stock in the family business, risks be damned.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |