Arrested Development may be returning, but does anyone care?

Mike P Williams

·Contributor

22 January 2017 at 6:58 pm

If you can, for a moment, overlook the inflammatory headline it’s worth noting that Arrested Development fans tend to fall into one of two categories: on one side we have the fans that’ve stuck with it through thick and thin, garnering the same enthusiasm for new episodes as they did a decade ago. Then there are the others: the sceptics of the fan base who, over the years, have fallen out of love with the show and have never quite forgiven it for the lacklustre third season.

As you may be able to tell, I fall into the latter category. I’m something of a naysayer, I’m happy to admit that. It’s all good and well with the announcement that the entire original cast are reforming – or that producers are frantically trying to bring back the gang – for season five, but for me Arrested Development is way past its sell-by-date.

The issues I have are varied, but cracks started way back when season three, after having made its comeback from the grave of cancellation, and made a glorious return after a short absence. A new season after being canned seemed to mean that, from my view point at least, AD was back with a vengeance – but the show had been morphed into a more mainstream brand of comedy. This was its first mistake, because AD was a glorious and uniquely odd style of comedy for its first two seasons. This gave it the freedom to be a quirky and utterly irreverent show that didn’t care how deplorable it made its characters (and boy, did they) while maintained some of the most random in-jokes for entire seasons (and beyond) at a time.

At the time of AD’s conception and then its pilot way back in 2003, none of the cast were known. Aside from a couple of familiar faces, the likes of Michael Cera, Jason Bateman, and Will Arnett weren’t Hollywood stars like they are today. It’s this anonymity that drew me to the characters. Bateman’s Michael was an intelligent, sarcastic father with a really dry sense of humour, but having been exposed to the actor in various (often middling) comedy roles on the big screen since, that fresh spark has gone. The same goes for Cera, who’s made a name for himself as Hollywood’s awkward go-to dork, when his baby-faced part as George Michael came off as particularly kooky.

The fact that the originality and uniqueness of the show has since dissipated is maybe something of an inevitability. It’s hard to argue that a successful comedy show with great, talented actors wouldn’t 1) become more popular over the years, or 2) spawn Hollywood careers for its gifted stars. In this instance both occurred.

But what really bugged me was the writers that chose to evolve the style of comedy AD had so brilliantly served up. Season three seemed to be that transitional stage from something great to something altogether samey and more generic as a brand of TV comedy. By season four the genius of the show has completely vanished. In fact, I distinctly recall not finding the fourth series on Netflix very funny at all, which obviously had been the essence of AD and why I found it so funny to begin with.

But with its new lease of life the magic that once sparkled through the core of the show disappeared. Characters had changed too much – as a means to appease more mainstream viewers, I suspect – but that oddball sense of humour seemed to be lacking, as if with a now a popular, wide appeal, people wouldn’t ‘get’ what it was conveying or follow the series-long in-jokes.

So it’s with a heavy heart that, having once declared Arrested Development one of the greatest, I can muster no enthusiasm for the upcoming season or anything beyond it. We had some wonderful times, the show and I, and shall always fondly cling on to those memories we made in the early 2000s; at a time when I was contently belly-laughing away to my favourite comedy show on the box. How times change.

Do you agree that Arrested Development has run its course or is a fifth season going to be the greatest thing ever? Comment below…

Mike is a freelance TV, film, music and entertainment writer, with an unhealthy obsession for Game of Thrones. He’s written for Shortlist, MTV, GamesRadar+, Total Film, GoThinkBig, Loaded, and regularly scribbles for Yahoo Movies, BBC Radio 1, BuzzFeed, VODzilla, and Metro.