rewatching arrested development
is it weird i still think will arnett is hot?
because why not? (someone in my neighborhood gets it, as evident in their fourth of july chalk art)
Before I get into today’s HOT TOPIC a couple reminders!
Tonight is the LAST Writers’ Circle at Good Day Studios! 7-8:30 p.m., $10 drop in, 1040 H. St. Arcata, in the alley behind AMPT Skate Shop!
This weekend is the amazing OUTER ROOMINATIONS! Learn more and snag your tix for the rad arts and music festival out on beautiful Table Bluff here!
I’ve been feeling nostalgic lately, as evident in recent posts I’ve done exploring my past semi-failed attempts at being a writer back in the day.
Whether this is because we are currently living in a dumpster fire hellscape, or because I’m waiting until Mary Beth Barone’s stand up special drops to restart a streaming service,1 my former live-in boyfriend and I have once again been coming thru our DVD collection (remember those? Some folks hoard gold and seeds, I hoard physical media for the apocalypse.2), which prompted a “may as well!” rewatch of my once favorite show, Arrested Development.
Now, for those of you who don’t know/care,3 Arrested Development was a prime-time 21-ish minute show that originally aired on Fox from 2003-2006, with a much anticipated reboot on Netflix that I remember as being both disappointing and “brief.”4
To call it a “family comedy” doesn’t quite fit, but it does revolve around an excellent cast of characters who make up the hot mess family of the Bluths, who are a generally spoiled, awful bunch who made their stacks of money from the family real estate development business in southern California.
At the start of the show (spoiler alert), the patriarch and head of the Bluth Company, George Sr.5 (played by the now-cancelled Jeffrey Tambor, but don’t let this ruin things for you), is arrested (get it?) during his retirement party and thrown in jail for a long list of unspecified crimes.
As his brood of insane adult children have gathered for said retirement party, enter a situation where everyone is now forced to hang out indefinitely while they try to figure out what’s going on with pops as their bank accounts are frozen.
The most serious—and compared to the rest, most grounded—Bluth is Michael (Jason Bateman), the middle son who has dutifully, unlike his other siblings, worked for his father and had been planning on taking over said company, until the FCC fucked that plan up.
Michael has been living in the sole model home unit in a desert wasteland of a waiting housing tract development (because that’s just how committed he is to his work) with his dorky son George Michael (played by a baby Michael Cera), who, when you do the math, Michael must have had with his now-deceased wife when he was like 19, so that’s…weird.
Rounding out the cast is his drunk, brutal mother, Lucille (Jessica Walter, RIP to this legend!); his idiot part-time magician/Hot Cop stripper older brother GOB (Will Arnett, more on him later); his sexually frustrated socialite twin sister Lindsay (Portia de Rossi); her closeted, failed psychologist/actor husband, Tobias (David Cross); their rebellious, con artist daughter Maeby (Alia Shawkat, who, bless her, apparently found out the hard way that she didn’t get as much leeway talking shit about Fox cancelling the show as David Cross was allowed); his severely babied younger brother Buster (Tony Hale as you’ve never seen him) and George Sr.’s identical twin brother, Oscar, who is pretty much always high (and may be/likely is Buster’s actual father).
It goes without saying, this dynamic makes for a fun romp. Now, for further context, it should be noted that this was like my absolute favorite show when it aired and continued to hold that place in my heart for a very long time. My love of it dimmed slightly in my disappointment of the reboot and, more recently, when we tried to rewatch it a couple years ago, and it fell flat, as suddenly, for some reason, watching a bunch of self-obsessed über wealthy politically incorrect nepo babies had lost its appeal. (Strange, that).
Apparently we’ve gone around the circle again and are back to “life is so incredibly fucked that this is strangely soothing6,” so more recently, I’ve been once again appreciating the show in this viewing. This is why:
arrested as a rich text
Now, Arrested Development is often described as being a “dark”/”absurdist” comedy, from in an era when such things were routinely pumped out by independent film studios (remember those?), though the show is far less twee and hip, instead looking like it was styled by TJ Maxx and NXIVM.
One of the most notable things about this show is its use of political and cultural satire. As I was once an ^^^expert^^^ on this, having, I swear to goddess, written an actual research paper about this very topic in my graduate program that was not only funded by the great state of Minnesota, but that was also evidently so compelling and impressive that my professor encouraged me to submit it for publication,7 get ready to BE IMPRESSED by the depth of my knowledge when it comes to how Arrested Development is actually a shining example of political discourse during the Bush/post-911/Iraq War years8.
To be fair, there are elements of this show that haven’t…aged great, though, really, when you look at a lot of popular media from this time period, it is far less cringy than most (I think?). Still, if you employ the lens of political satire that underpins the show, we can read it as pushing against the various prejudices of the day (which still continue, mind) around things like homophobia, racism and immigration (like I said, a rich text).
It’s also worth noting, ahem (putting on my grad school cap here), that humor viewing is complex in that it has been shown that people tend to take away different readings from the same piece of media depending on their own political views and leanings. (Hence, why both lefties and conservatives may enjoy South Park9). I think it is also safe to say, however, that Arrested Development comes down pretty hard on the side of being critical of Bush and all of his bullshit.
So despite some of the “does this still work?” questions, there was something strangely comforting in seeing just how much this Fox show was taking the piss out of Bush and the whole post-911 Iraq War “debacle” as well as spoiled conservatives. It has (I think?) also been pointed out just how questionable the cancellation of said show was, considering it had developed a rabid fan base and was a critic darling10, nodding, perhaps, to the network not being entirely thrilled with its rather clear political stance.
In hindsight, despite my previous Deep Read on the show, it was rather…striking, this time around, to really note just how hard it went on the political commentary, especially given how it had been aired on conservative media’s home network, Fox, of all places.
You could read my research paper on the various and many ways this shows up throughout Arrested’s first three seasons (I honestly can’t tell you if the political satire bent continued in the reboot because I only watched it once, unlike the, oh, 215 times I’ve seen every episode of the original series), but as I have literally no clue what burnable cd it exists on, please just trust me on this (or, better yet, watch and witness for yourself!)!
Before we move on, I do need to say that while the show does a bang up job of capturing the zeitgeist at that point in time, and indeed, points to the continuation of increasing cultural tensions, for what it’s worth, the inclusion of Anne Beale, George Michael’s mousey religious girlfriend, and her family still 100% SLAPS.
“she’s in rehab!”
Okay so now that we got all serious-like, back to how my original love for Arrested was primarily rooted in how it spoke to my college-era…lifestyle, which was apparently a thing (i.e. getting great joy from watching the antics of debauched humans, as also seen in my deep love for Absolutely Fabulous).
One of my favorite things about this show (and perhaps most troubling) is how alcohol plays a near constant role in it. The fact that I found Lucille’s constant booze-fueled existence so fucking funny was pretty clearly an issue of projection (i.e. “Well, at least I’m not as bad as her,” when I would regularly down three three shot dirty gin martinis while watching tv alone at night (do the math. Also, I was still in college, so pretty fucking classy, eh?)).
Now that I am more…elegantly refined in my drinking habits (snort), I can still say I find the role of alcohol as a characterization vehicle and plot device quite enjoyable in the show, because there are fewer things more satisfying than watching morons get drunk and do dumb things/insult their equally moronic adult children.
the sexiest show on television?
Another revelation in rewatching Arrested is that I still find early aughts Will Arnett to be shockingly attractive. Which is odd because his character, GOB, is an objectively terrible human.
While this experience is relatively consistent with me11, of finding that the people I thought were hot decades ago are still hot when I revisit their work, it also has brought up a strange phenomenon I’m not sure what to do with.
Specifically, in that watching shows I had originally seen when I was far younger, and thus was, at the time, younger than the actors and henceforth, not creepy (? is it?) to be like “hey boy,” but then, to find myself, years later, rewatching said shows and thinking similarly but then realizing that I am now far older than the actors were at the time of shooting, which, because our society is sexist(?) feels way less cute.
If you can stay with me on this, a bit of internet research has shown Will Arnett to have been the strapping age of 33 (!) when the show began, which means I’m like…11 years old than that now. Hot? Or not? Who is to say?12
I mean…how can you not?
Even MORE confusing is when I say, watch Northern Exposure in present day and am like “okay now I get why everyone thought Chris in the Morning was such a hottie,”13 and yet nothing put me off more from continuing a show I was mildly interested in than that horrendous phone sex scene between Aidan and an unsuspecting Carrie in the Sex & the City reboot.
So don’t hate this look but also it kind of reminds me of one of my uncles from like twenty years ago so that is confusing too
In conclusion: getting old is WEIRD/when am I going to start getting, like, into Gandalf?14
a show for perverts?
But it’s not just that GOB inexplicably did/does something for me— it’s also notable that Arrested, despite being relatively PG as far as the actual visuals (this isn’t HBO, people!), is a show where everyone is pretty much obsessed with sex—which you usually don’t get in a family show so if that’s not a case for this being a true Hollywood gem, I don’t know what is!
George Sr. and Lucille in particular are stunning examples of sexually active elders15, though neither are great at sticking to fidelity. Michael finally gets back on the horse with a few women, breaking his record of “most times having sex in one night” (which had been previously set at two, SAD.). GOB tries (not always successfully) to bang everything in sight, including any woman he believes Michael to be interested in, Buster’s first love interest (his mother’s neighbor, also named Lucille, played by a stunning Liza Minelli), and his nephew’s girlfriend (like I said, an objectively terrible human). Tobias and Lindsay are, of course, both sexually stunted in their respective roles which leads to some laughs, and even George Michael and Maeby get in on the action with some (innocent! This is a family show!) cousin crushing.
TBH, in hindsight, seeing drunk horny old people when I first watched this show as a young 20-something was mind-expanding in a way that I will carry with me for the rest of my years. Here’s to Jessica Walter for showing me the way!
If this gallop down the media/political landscape of 2003/my brain hasn’t convinced you to watch Arrested Development, well then, I’m surprised at your conviction in getting to this point, so thank you! Good job!
xo,
Holly
Hot tip: wait until the shows you want to watch stack up, then pay for one month and binge all in a blaze of glory—and be sure to set alarms (MULTIPLES! DON’T RISK TWO MONTHS!) to remind yourself far in advance (like a week) to cancel your subscription before the month is up. This process is foolproof and has probably saved me roughly $80 in the last two years.
Yes, I know DVDS don’t help if we have no electricity, but as I once saw a very cool demonstration with an exercise bike powering a DVD/TV set up, I”m confident I can be solutions oriented around this one.
I once read somewhere (I think from Samantha Irby?) that Arrested Development was a show that only white people ‘got,’ which is fair and I’m also unable to confirm as I am one such person.
The latter of which, as it turns out, is demonstrably false as the internet tells me the reboot ran from 2013-2018(!)—technically two seasons (they apparently were still trying to dial in how to do “original programming” over at Netflix), which included some sort of “remix” with the first 15 episodes, to generate an new 22 episode format, which is just too complicated for my brain to follow.
?” Do “Seniors” officially change their names after having a child that then becomes the “Junior”? Or is it a preemptive move?
This sort of thinking is the only thing I can imagine that explains the pandemic-era runaway success of the Tiger King
Which I obviously did not do.
Actually maybe not, as I’m already running out of room on this lengthy treatise and there are more exciting reasons why this show is fire coming up.
Which I may or may not have watched the entirety of during the course of the Pandemic. Stay tuned for a possible think piece on that runaway train!
The blurb on the front cover of the season 2 DVD, from the San Francisco Chronicle, proclaims (in all caps, I’m not just embellishing here for the sake of it): “ONE SEASON-LONG PIECE OF GENIUS. IT’S THE FUNNIEST SHOW ON TELEVISION.”
The one glaring exception to this rule is that I can say, with absolute certainty, that my very first crush (?) did not stand the test of time, which tracks as it was, for some reason, on Leonardo (as in the cartoon teenage mutant ninja turtle (!?!?), not the Romeo & Juliet-era DiCaprio, tho I also had that too…and come to think of it, he also doesn’t hold up but I DIGRESS).
The longer I interrogate this, the more I’m realizing it’s not about age gaps, per say. IRL, for instance, I have plenty of friends who have been with or are with much older or younger partners, and it doesn’t matter because we are all ADULTS. I think the perceived weirdness actually comes from the fact that, in watching these old shows, as Matthew McConaughey put it so eloquently in Dazed & Confused (in what is actually a creepy context), “I get older, they stay the same age.”
More maths indicate that John Corbett was 29 when that show started so…the gap widens.
Yes, I KNOW HE’S GAY.
According to the internet, both Walter and Tambor weren’t technically “elderly” at the start of the show, but they were in their 60’s and actually looked their age (can you believe it?!?! A woman with wrinkles at 62?!?!) so let’s go with that.