Again, this is a review of Season 4 of Arrested Development and will feature several spoilers. If you don’t want to know what happens, stay out.
You have been warned.
I just finished watching all 15 episodes of Season 4. I paced myself and took it one show per night determined to enjoy it slowly and take in every double and triple entendre and catch every reference that they offered up. The first run of Arrested Development was such a delight to watch. A carefully crafted comedy gem.
How disappointed was I with this new season.
Maybe it’s because the first iteration of the show was so good that nothing that comes later will ever be able to match it. Maybe it’s because after such a long hiatus it’s difficult to pick up the reins and start off where you left before. Maybe I have to admit it’s just not as good.
Season 4 basically takes on a series of events happening in the present and views them from the perspective of a different family member each episode.
After the end of the last show of Season 3, Lucille, the mother, is arrested. The three fugitives headed to Mexico (Michael, his son, and his dad) decide to return to save the family. Michael falls apart and makes a series of business mistakes which eventually force him to try to sell the movie rights to his family’s story to Ron Howard. He spends the episodes running into family members trying to get them to sign away their rights. He also falls in love with Ron Howard’s illegitimate daughter called Rebel, who he thinks is Ron Howard’s girlfriend.
Lindsey splits from Tobias and goes to India where she is told to become more giving. She returns and falls in love with an environmentalist and through a series of mishaps becomes the mistress to a right-wing politician and eventually succeeds him as the candidate for his office.
Tobias takes up with a drug addict and is mistakenly arrested as a sex offender. He winds up at Lucille Austero’s rehab clinic as a therapist and tries to get the inmates to put on a play at a local event where the entire family is gathered.
Gob has continued to fail at everything. He resumes his relationship with George Micheal’s ex girlfriend, Ann. After embarrassing her on TV, they break off their engagement. He sees a chance to embarrass his nemesis, tony wonder, but instead starts falling in love with him. Unable to handle this he takes his forget me now pills.
George Bluth has started a men’s retreat in the desert with his brother Oscar. They charge obscene amounts of money to wealthy executives to feel good about themselves. After they both ingest massive amounts of maca root they undergo personality reversals and Oscar becomes aggressive and George becomes meek and passive. George hatches a plot with Lucille to exploit the government and build a wall on the border with Mexico thinking that the retreat is on the border. It is not, it is actually in Mexico. They go from wanting the wall to trying to stop it but still getting paid. Oscar learns of this and tries to thwart their plans.
Lucille is in a country club prison. She is filmed for a reality show about country club prisons but makes enemies of a gang of oriental ladies. She gets out on a work release program by agreeing to help Tobias out a Lucille Austero’s clinic to make a play.
Maeby got fired from her job and without income decided to stay in high school by pretending to be 17 for the next 5 years. She tries several money-making ventures including accidentally prostituting her mother but she settles on exploiting George Michael for an internet app as the best idea.
Left without his mother Buster degenerates to making a life-size doll of his mother to relate to. After his mother returns he tries to break free of her by taking up with Lucille Austero but again he seeks a mother figure. He tries to re-enlist in the army but is kicked out. He moves in with a right-wing politician trying to help veterans and has a short affair with his wife before being kicked out. He is last seen being arrested for Lucille Austero’s alleged murder.
In many ways the season is about Michael and his relationship with George Michael. After season 3 he goes to college. In school he tries to be cool and just when he almost has it his father comes to live with him in his dorm room. Maeby shows up and in an effort to look smart and rekindle his romance with his cousin he claims to have come up with an internet app to make people anonymous online called “Fake Block”. It is actually an app for playing wood blocks.
Maeby hypes this up and lines up investors. By coincidence, George Michael runs into Rebel and they start falling in love. In the last episode both Bluth men realize what has happened and George Michael punches Michael.
Other side characters make appearances. Lucille Austero is now the CEO of the bluth company and a candidate for congress. Kitty Sanchez is ron howard’s assistant and gets Maeby fired. Steve Holt reappears as a bug exterminator.
The new format is confusing. Maybe if I watch it enough times I will get it. But honestly the writing isn’t there. In the first run, the storyline flowed. The story went from one scene to another without pause. In this season the story jerks and twitches. It spasms from one scene to another. The continuity is there but you really have to look to find it.
Moreover I get this sense of tiredness from some of the actors. Michael Cera just does not seem like he wants to be there. He was very hesitant to do another season and it shows in his acting. Will Arnett resumes the role of Gob with less gusto than expected. Alia Shawkat, who plays Maeby is also less than effective.
Like I said maybe it’s the fact that the first 3 seasons were so good and my expectations are just too high. Something I fear will happen to Aggie football fans this year with last year’s success. Then again maybe this season was just not that good.
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