Arrested Development’s style is unlike any other US sitcom I’ve seen, it’s choppily edited, location shot and employs a flash-forward/backward technique to tell non-linear stories that I’ve only seen since in Family Guy. Full of jokes based on the clueless nature of the large Bluth family at the centre of the show, its idiotic characters are not hideous, but neither are they particularly lovable! Every character has their peculiarities, and each is selfish in their own special way.
My favourite character (although this is liable to change as with my faves in Ugly Betty and Desperate Housewives) is Tobias – and it’s only on a second watch of the season that I’ve realised he’s not in every episode – boo! His obliviousness to the many, many gay innuendos he makes are genius, as is his failed acting career. Everyone else is almost as great – Lucille the family matriarch has an acid-tongue; imprisoned George Sr. is deliciously sardonic; Michael’s attempts to bond with his son are cringe-worthy, as is George Michael’s hopeless crush on his cousin; Buster is charmingly inept and attached to his mother; Gob is just generally stupid, and a magician to boot; Maeby is a devious child, playing her parents off against each other; and Lindsay is a spoilt socialite desperate to prove her worth.
The support cast and guest stars are just as fantastic – my particular favourites are Henry Winkler (the Fonze!) as the sexually-ambiguous and inept Bluth-family lawyer and Buster’s replacement mother-figure and girlfiend, Lucille 2 played (with more wit and comic ability that I knew she possessed) by Liza Minnelli. Lucille 1 adopts a Korean boy, named Annyong (Korean for ‘hello’), making for some hilarious rivalries with Buster. Julia Louis-Dreyfus is marvellous as pretending-to-be-blind lawyer Maggie Lizer.
I particularly like the way Arrested Development doesn’t treat its audience like idiots – the jokes and plots are not all necessarily spelled out, some involve paying attention to background activity or seemingly innocuous snippets of dialogue. For example, there are clues scattered around season one that George Sr. has been doing deals with Saddam Hussein before all is revealed in the final episode, such as MADDAS stamped on crates, etc.
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