The Return of 'Arrested Development': There's Still Money in the Banana Stand

What makes something good?

This is, of course, the broadest and dumbest question that has ever been written, and I am sorry to have started off with it. But while watching the belated, Netflix-only fourth season of Arrested Development, it was a question that came to my mind time and time again. There is no mathematical formula that makes something work as a piece of art or entertainment; you can’t just throw talented people in a room and expect everything to work out. I mean, Robert De Niro and Al Pacino co-starred in a police movie just a few years ago, and it was terrible. For something to really click, all the magical pieces have to come together at just the right time, and once those pieces are disbanded it usually cannot be captured again.

There are examples of this all over the place, with the most infamous being George Lucas’ Star Wars prequels, which I tackled individually here, here and here. Everything about them suggests they’d be good. They’ve got the same creator as the original trilogy in Lucas, they’ve got the same universe everyone loves, they’ve got Yoda, what could go wrong? While I do not despise those movies in the same way that a lot of people do, there’s no denying that Lucas didn’t quite recapture the magic of the original trilogy. This is true of just about every belated sequel or resurrection of a franchise once thought to be lost. It’s hard to unplug the machine for a decade or two, turn it back on again and expect all the pieces to still be working.

This is what I, and many fans, were afraid of when we finally pressed “play” on the first episode of Arrested Development’s fourth season this past Sunday. Most people with half a brain knew it wasn’t going to be as good as all that came before, but many were afraid that it may be a disaster. When articles like this one came out just before release, I was even more skeptical. There was reason to be excited—this was a new season of Arrested Development, something that no one ever thought could come to fruition—but it had just as much potential to disappoint fans as it did to live up to their expectations. I eventually reached a mental place where if it was just good, I would have been thrilled.

As such, I am happy to report that season four of Arrested Development is indeed good, and as such I am moderately thrilled. Of course it never reaches the heights of the seasons that came before it, but in my mind it didn’t have to. All I wanted was to see these characters again, hang out in the world, laugh a lot, and at the end of the day be happy that I was able to have this one more experience with the Bluths. That Mitch Hurwitz and the rest of the Arrested Development crew had higher ambitions is both a blessing and a curse.

The blessing: holy crap, is the timeline stuff they’ve pulled off here impressive. They actually wanted to do something with this series order and not just coast for 10-15 episodes. And they could have! And a lot of people would have been fine with it! Instead, Hurwitz and company have created something so ridiculously elaborate that it must be seen to be appreciated. The curse: it occasionally distracts from the business of making something that builds up to some kind of climax. It’s fun to watch the show take us through this absurd maze, but I kept waiting for it all to come together in a fascinating way and it just… doesn’t. Hurwitz has talked a great deal about this series leading up to an Arrested Development movie, and the series here certainly shows that everyone involved intends on giving us more down the road.

Here’s the thing: it is a freaking miracle that this fourth season exists. This kind of resurrection never happens. These extra 15 episodes are a gift. I would have lived a healthy and productive life if Arrested Development never came back. But here it is, and it has given us a season that content-wise doesn’t give us much besides some set-up for whatever is coming next, despite the fact that as of right now nothing is coming next. Netflix has said that they have no immediate plans to bring it back. And as far as the movie is concerned, it doesn’t exist. No one has stepped forward to make it, and it’s hard to imagine anyone will even if this Netflix series takes off. Really, a movie makes no sense. Even with the augmented popularity, the market for this show is too narrow to justify doing anything theatrically. At best, we’ll get another Netflix season or so. But a lot of hairs had to pulled in order to just get this done, so I wouldn’t hold my breath.

But enough with the negativity! As I said before, I enjoyed my couple days watching this new Arrested Development season. One of my greatest fears about this season was that it would feel like a bunch of people playing Arrested Development dress-up rather than the real deal, and for the most part these fears never proved to be justified. As I mentioned earlier in this post, most fictional universes are almost impossible to authentically recreate. To this show’s credit, they do a reasonably good job of it, and rarely does it come across as the creators attempting to do a “best-of” collection. That was what I was afraid of, and a trailer that came out in the week before release didn’t do much to help. Instead, as I said before, Hurwitz seemed committed to making new gags and coming up with new stories that used a lot of the same characters and situations but in interesting ways.

Unfortunately, due to various reasons, this fourth season of Arrested Development was forced to take away one of the things that made the original show great: the ensemble. Each episode of this fourth season is essentially an exposition dump, as we are shown how the lives of each major character have progressed since the initial series finale. That doesn’t always make for thrilling storytelling, and as a result Ron Howard’s narrator has to do a lot of heavy lifting plot-wise, but very quickly into the first season four episode “Flight of the Phoenix” I knew I had returned to a place I wanted to be. There’s something inherently fun about watching these characters go about their business once more, and even when things weren’t all that hilarious I was always enjoying just hanging out in this world.

The biggest problem with this season, in my mind, is that is lacks the nonstop energy and focused pandemonium of the seasons that came before it. Episodes here can vary from 28 minutes to almost 40 minutes, which is much longer in the tooth than the typical 22 minutes spurts of seasons 1-3. And boy, can you sometimes tell. An ideal episode of Arrested Development is supposed to go by like a shot and leave you wondering if you missed anything. That doesn’t happen here. At its worst, this season lumbers on and occasionally loses its forward momentum. Some good jokes go on for quite some time, like an early bit in which Michael talks to his son about how they’ll go about their upcoming roommate vote. I was laughing at it for the first 25 seconds. Then it kept going and going. It’s a good gag that loses steam by the end, and that was never a problem with the show before this season. Perhaps they feel obligated to make them longer because Netflix has given them the freedom. Who knows?

I have fixated a lot on the negative here, and that is obviously because I am a hater. In reality, it’s just a whole lot easier to write about things I didn’t like than it is to say “this was funny!” about a lot of things. As such, I need to stress that I really enjoyed these 15 episodes as far as they went. They definitely never capture the same magic that was seen back in the early 2000s, but they didn’t need to. Hurwitz still has a knack for putting the Bluths in joyously zany situations, and the general environment he creates is something I could hang out in for hours. I mean, just look at the picture I used for this post. Any show that features Jason Bateman, Carl Weathers, Andy Richter and James Lipton walking toward the camera in slow motion is a show I will watch until the end of time.

We even got the pleasure of seeing some new performers be added to the Arrested Development Players. Isla Fisher pretty much nails what she is asked to do, Chris Diamantopoulos gets some great moments as Marky Bark even if he disappears by the end, and in particular Maria Bamford kills it as drugged-out actress DeBrie Bardeaux. However, I would be remiss if I did not mention that one of the characters that most consistently had me laughing like an idiot was Ron Howard’s “Ron Howard.” He’s always been a character in the Arrested Development universe without ever really appearing on camera, but the scenes in his Imagine Entertainment office just about always did it for me. It also inspires one of my favorite cutaway gags of the season, in which we get a brief glimpse into the office of Jerry Bruckheimer.

There are also some strange technical things about this season that distracted me. The entire behemoth was directed by both Hurwitz and veteran TV director Troy Miller, and you can sometimes tell there are different sensibilities at play. Like the earlier seasons of the show, much of this is filmed quick and dirty using handheld digital cameras. That’s usually the case here, but not always. This show has never been about the cinematography, but too much of this season just looks… ugly. It doesn’t help that some of the digital effects/green screen work here is shoddy at best. It’s occasionally distractingly bad. Again, Arrested Development has always had lousy special effects. But in season four they show up early and often.

Maybe we will get more Arrested Development. Considering the puzzling note they leave us on here, I hope so. It’s not a bad way to end a season so long as you think you’re coming back. When it’s far more likely that you’re not coming back, going the route they did may not be the world’s greatest decision. Either way, it was fun to return to Bluthland, and even though I could go on about all that bothered me about this season I would be lying if I denied all the minor triumphs within. There will undoubtedly be Arrested Development folks crying “Phantom Menace” out there, but it’s up to us fans to keep them from controlling the conversation. This is easily the weakest season of the show, but that means it’s the weakest season of a show that’s been near and dear to my heart for several years. I love Arrested Development. I like and appreciate the fourth season of Arrested Development, even if it is a big, problematic, lumbering beast of a thing, but it’s a beast I’m happy to stand behind.