Hello, dear readers. Michael C here to take a detour into TV blogging.
Is season four picking at the carcass of a once great show or just more greatness?
It has now been a full week since Netflix returned the Bluth family to us, which in Internet time means by this point I may as well writing about the final episode of MASH. By midweek the long awaited return of Arrested Development had already been watched, analyzed, celebrated, backlashed, and defended a few times over. [more...]
I told myself I was going to savor these fifteen episodes and not gorge myself on the whole season in one sitting. I am proud to say I actually stuck to my promise. I did it in two sittings. And, in total honesty, this was mostly because I had another urgent reunion with beloved characters from the mid-00’s I needed to attend.
Jeffrey Tambor & Jessica Walter reprise their Emmy-nominated roles as the Bluth parents
During my Bluth binge I couldn’t deny I heard that alarm going off in the back of my head. You know, the one that’s starts sounding quietly when you begin to suspect something you’ve greatly anticipated is failing to live up to expectations. The one which gradually increases in volume depending on how far short the thing your watching is falling, ranging in volume from, say, morning alarm clock (The Hobbit) to full-on submerging nuclear submarine alarm blasts (Matrix Revolutions).
For me, the volume of this particular alarm never rose above “distant car alarm in the night” and had mostly quieted down altogether by the last episodes of the season. But a funny thing happened over the course of the week. My opinion of the fourth season improved, and not by a small margin either. When I rewatched the first two episodes as my roommate began the season, I found the nagging disappointment was all but absent.
This could simply be attributed to the fact that, more than almost any other show, Arrested Development benefits from repeat viewings. But it left me wondering if there was more to it.
Did binge-watching hurt the response to Arrested Development?
This is not to dismiss the criticism that has been leveled at the new season of Arrested Development. A lot of it is spot on, especially the point that the one-character-per-episode focus is unforgiving to the occasional dud storyline since the show can't cut away to a stronger plot thread.
That said, I think show runner Mitchell Hurwitz was onto something with his last minute warning that an AD marathon would be detrimental to the viewing experience. Reflecting on my own reaction I picked up on five drawbacks:
1. Binge watching makes you impatient
This isn’t such a big problem in shows like Breaking Bad that are about the headlong rush of the story. But when applied to a dense structure like the circuitous, overlapping plot lines of AD it makes the viewer antsy for the show to get to the point, when in fact the show had already arrived there.
Add to this the facts that season four’s structure makes you wait a long while for quality time with beloved characters like Maeby and Buster, and that the new season short-circuits the network tradition of paying everything off with a big finale, and you have a recipe for guaranteed frustration.
2. It makes you greedy
I noticed that good jokes were having less of an impact because I was getting so many of them. Despite quality zingers I felt myself urging the show to be funnier, when really I was just becoming numb to the laughs.
3. It emphasizes flaws
If binging can dull the pleasures it does not have the reverse effect on a show’s flaws. Seeing the same weaknesses several episodes in a row exaggerates the harm they are causing. In addition, the annoyance of waiting through a rough patch is increased because you have so much more to get through. It makes work out of what should be fun.
4. Comedy benefits from brevity
There’s a reason you don’t see a lot of (any?) comedies over two hours on the AFI list of the 100 funniest movies. Dramas often benefit from extended running times. Comedies mostly need to keep it snappy and drop the curtains while the laughs are still flowing. A chunk of comedy the length of Arrested Development’s new season is going to exhaust your funny bone.
5. Challenging TV takes time
Countless times I have been unsure of the quality of a structurally daring episode of Mad Men or The Sopranos only to find that a year or two down the road it fits so perfectly into a given season that I couldn’t imagine it any other way. Season four of Arrested Development is as stylistically daring as any of those shows with its fractured chronology, its story lines that repeat from different angles, and its delight in putting in jokes that require multiple viewings to pay off. An initial, rushed viewing is only going to reveal a fraction of the overall effect.
As I said, I’m not trying to paper over the many valid criticisms to be made. But I feel that the wave of dissatisfaction that greeted the premiere missed the biggest headline, which was that the spark was still there. How often do shows and films try to go one more lap only to find that things just aren’t the same? Arrested Development may have evolved into something new but the Bluths are still the Bluths in all their never-nude, chicken-dancing, Segway-riding glory.
Besides, any show that can land a solid Terrence Malick joke deserves special consideration.
So that’s my experience with the return of Arrested Developmpent. What’s yours? I should add that it took real effort to stop this post from turning into a list of favorite jokes and lines from the new season but there’s nothing to stop you doing that in the comments (Maeby’s award acceptance speech!)
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You can follow Michael C. on Twitter at @SeriousFilm. Or read his blog Serious Film