In this series, I’m going to take a look across the past few decades of television and focus on the greatest shows to have ever graced our small screens.
In this weekly/fortnightly column series I’m going to take a look across the past few decades of television and focus on the greatest shows to have ever graced our small screens. Shows that have paved new ground in the world of television by challenging convention and opened up new areas for other shows to follow — trailblazers if you will, shows that have raised the bar for their respective genre and shows that are just immensely enjoyable to watch for the first time and on repeat viewings.
The TVGA Masterworks series will be looking at the top ten percent of television if you will, the shows that are the greatest in each of their respective categories. This isn’t a top 100 list of the greatest shows of all time as such, but many of the shows that appear in this series will have graced those lists.
We start with one of the greatest situation comedy shows of all time, one that is debatably the greatest serialized situation comedy in the history of television. It is a story of a wealthy family who lost everything and the one son who had no choice but to keep them altogether.
It’s Arrested Development.
Arrested Development is a three-season (Editor’s note: originally) series that aired on Fox between November 2, 2003 and February10,2006. The show is a half-hour situation comedy with a subtle “mockumentary” style; it’s presented as a look into the lives of the Bluth family, a family of excessive personalities who built their wealth from property development. The series opens with the head of the family, George Bluth Sr. (Jeffery Tambor) being arrested for fraudulent activities and maybe a little ‘light treason’. The rest of his family are left in a dire situation as they are unable to adjust to any lower quality of life.
George Bluth Sr. is an oppressive, controlling figurehead both in business and in his home life. His arrest at the start of the series is not enough to diminish the influence he has on the rest of his family as he continues to control everything from behind bars. His wife, Lucile Bluth (Jessica Walters), is an equally degenerate matriarch. She constantly degrades her children, insulting them and setting them against each other in between her drinking binges.
The second generation of the Bluth family consists of four children and one spouse. The eldest son is George Oscar Bluth — Will Arnett (commonly known as GOB, which is pronounced Jobe by the family and Gob by the media). He’s a vain narcissist who makes a living mooching off the family business in order to fuel his desire to make it as a magician. He has a hyper competitive streak which manifests itself as a sibling rivalry with the child he feels is the favorite son, Michael Bluth (Jason Bateman) is the good son of the family and the “one son” referred to in the show’s opener. Michael is the main character of the series and the most sympathetic member of the Bluth family as he is the one who normally tries to do what is right.
Michael has a twin sister, Lindsay (Portia De Rossi), is another narcissistic personality who runs many charity fundraisers but the vast majority of them tend to be for inappropriate causes (like her campaign against circumcision titled H.O.O.P — Hands Off Our Penises). Linsday is married to Doctor Tobias Funke (David Cross), a deeply troubled man who is so far in the closet he’s past the lamppost and spending time with Aslan. At the start of the series he is recently disbarred for breaking a sleeping man’s ribs (he mistakenly assumed the man had stopped breathing).
The final member of the middle generation of Bluths is Byron ‘Buster’ Bluth (Tony Hale), a complete momma’s boy who is assailed by a variety of crippling mental anxieties. The root of Buster’s issues lays with his mother Lucile who alternately coddles and degrades him, leaving the man a bundle of insecurities with a major Oedipus complex.
The third generation of the Bluth family consists of two young teens. Michael’s son is George Michael Bluth (Michael Cera), a suppressed but likable young lad with an incestuous crush on his cousin Mae “Maeby” Funke (Alia Shawkat), a sweet girl who’s attention-starved nature causes her to act out in a variety of anti-social ways in an attempt to garner some attention from her parents, Lindsay and Tobias.
The final core cast member is Ron Howard as The Narrator.
As the series progresses this family of rather despicable individuals faces a wide range of challenges and issues, most of which are actually created by their own character flaws and their inability to acknowledge their hubris. There is no doubt that the show has very few sympathetic personalities, as every single one of the main characters lies, cheats, and attempts to screw each other over at one point or another, and outsiders tend to get chewed up and spat out very rapidly.
So, given that this is a show about an exceptionally unpleasant group of people with few redeeming characters why is it a masterwork? Why should you watch it?
The intelligence of the show is phenomenal; this is a show that doesn’t spell things out for you in simple terms (except when it’s part of a joke), it’s a multi-layered serial sitcom that has an intelligent plot at its core. This plot is structured with many call backs and plenty of foreshadowing that is in play from the very first episode to the last one. The intelligence of the plotting is on par with many heavy dramas and the subtle nature of many foreshadowed jokes are so well worked that you’ll often find yourself spotting a new joke on the third, fourth, and even fifth viewing.
The serialised nature of the show did actually work against it when it was aired, as serialised plots tend to struggle in modern television. It seems that the average attention span of a television viewer isn’t enough to keep up with a constant storyline that runs from one episode to the next when the show is broadcast on a weekly showing (HBO, Showtime, and FX Viewers excepted). But now you can source Arrested Development on DVD and watch it in batches — enjoying hours of the show at a time is a great way to experience it and the fact that Arrested Development is a different experience when you watch it the second (and third time) means there is plenty of replay value in the show.
This isn’t to say that AD is inaccessible to new viewers, but if you were just dipping in and out occasionally there were huge sections of the characterization, plot, and especially the jokes that you would simply not get. I think this constant building on previous episodes, in addition to the unpleasant nature of the characters, the black cynical humor and the sharp, well observed, shrewd digs at the American upper-middle class made the show inaccessible — or just too close to home — for many people.
The greatest thing about Arrested Development is in its characterization. The Bluth family are on the whole thoroughly reprehensible and unpleasant; but they are most certainly likeable characters. This is because the wonderful writing and acting from the cast gives each character vulnerabilities and human weaknesses, and they can’t help being who they are and once you accept them with all their foibles (Michael included) then you can really kick back and enjoy the comedy, the pop culture references, and the superb guest stars the series boasts.
The performances, foreshadowing, callbacks and plot are all well and good, but the most important thing for any sitcom is the simple question: is it funny? The answer here is pretty simple: it’s side splittingly hilarious that runs the whole gamut of comedy. From the low brow to the physical, the subtle to the bawdy, word play to shrewd characterization, Arrested Development has it all. It’s able to be both black and light hearted in its humor and can switch types on the turn of a button — there is quite literally something to tickle every funny bone.
So there you have it; three seasons containing a total of fifty-three episodes of a show that everyone should at least try out once before they die. It’s a delightful experience with a bunch of awful people who you’ll just fall in love with and want to return to again and again.
And that is a mark of a TV masterwork.
This review originally appeared on TV Geek Army.
Editor’s note: See where Arrested Development landed on Pop Thruster’s Best 100 TV Shows Ever list.