The SmarK DVD Rant for Arrested Development - The Second and Third Seasons
It’s a two-fer this time around, as I was ready to do the third season of the show, but then realized that I hadn’t done the second one yet, which triggered a huge AD marathon reviewing session for me over the past couple of weeks. That’s a lot of Mitch Hurwitz, man.
Now, I’m sure by now you know the story. AD bursts onto the Fox schedule, immediately wins the Best Comedy Emmy in its first year, and subsequently gets ignored and buried by the network, as they reduce the order, move it around the schedule, and do everything but cancel it to make sure it gets canceled. And yet through it all, Hurwitz and the writers maintain a brilliant vision of what a sitcom should be, redefining the genre and basically rendering the traditional “four camera” sitcom form a dead issue in many people’s minds.
The show’s true brilliance came in the form of the endless running jokes and callbacks it presented, however. Whereas most shows would do a running gag that lasted for one show, AD would present a gag that lasted for a whole SERIES. And much of the humor was derived from fans paying attention to stuff that happened in previous episodes, which would then come back to be paid off in later episodes.
There were two distinct types of running jokes featured, as well — individual and universal. The individual jokes were things like Gob’s endless parade of failed magic tricks, or Michael’s inability to formulate a plan that works, or George-Michael’s crush on his cousin Maeby. The universal jokes were lines like “I’ve made a huge mistake!” or “Well, that one was a freebie,” which could be said by different characters, in totally different contexts, on any show.
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