MagneticMediaFed

Every six months or so I try to watch Arrested Development — a lot of Arrested Development. When you live through something incredibly brilliant, it’s nice to revisit the material just to remind yourself that it was as good as you remembered. Sometimes you realize the show was more flawed than you once thought it was. In the case of this series it holds up with just as many laugh-out-loud moments as the first viewing. This is not news. Anyone who is a fan of the show knows this.

Last week myself and fellow hardcore Arrested Development fan (and former MagneticMediaFed Podcaster) Matt approached a friend at work about having a season one marathon. Having seen little of the show, she agreed to the proposal (22 episodes over 8 hours, with Bluth Bananas and candy-beans to fuel the entertainment). If you’re going to re-watch an entire season of television, I find it’s best to do so with someone who is new to the material. You get a fresh take on the episodes and get to know if your own laughter is sparked from the actual material or simply a byproduct of knowing what’s coming next. I was pleased to hear as much laughter coming from her as from myself. More on Arrested Development after the jump…

We started the marathon around 3pm and made it to about 9pm before feeling a little TV-fried and taking a hiatus. We made it through 15 of the season’s 22 episodes. Here are a few thoughts on the first two-thirds of the season (some new, some previously stated):

• Those first three episodes combine for one of the strongest series openings ever. The pilot is incredibly tight (and incredibly funny) and was immediately followed by “Top Banana” and “Bringing Up Buster” two episodes that could very well make my top five for the entire series.
• The style of comedy that we usually associate with Arrested Development (self-referential, meta-comedy) is completely absent from these first fifteen episodes with the exception of “Shock and Aww” where we catch our first allusions to the Iraq storyline that develops at the end of the season and then for much of the rest of the series’ run (the “no touching” runner would be the other notable recurring gag). This of course makes perfect sense as a foundation had to be laid before the series could start exploiting audiences’ familiarities. So in a way, the humor of the first season is more impressive because it had to be funny now as much as it wanted to be funny later.
• Buster is at his best in season one because he still seems like a human being and can actually carry on a conversation (albeit awkwardly — like in “Pier Pressure” when he convinces George Michael to buy pot from G.O.B.). In season two, but especially in season three Tony Hale’s portrayal of Buster got far weirder and by the end seemed like a completely different character than the one that he started as (like Buster’s extensive collegiate studies that just kind of disappeared).
• You don’t usually think of David Cross as a physical comedian, but the way Tobias moves through space is nothing shy of brilliant. I’m thinking specifically of the way he climbed onto the stage in Bringing Up Buster (it’s kind of a climb/roll that is both physically logical and visually insane. He of course would climax in season two’s “Ready Aim Marry Me” when the man performs the single greatest prat fall in the history of comedy [FF to 4:08]. Yeah, hyperbole!
• We don’t see G.O.B. actually perform his magic (to The Final Countdown) until episode nine. That seemed late for something that is now thought of as being so central to the characters persona.
• By the time Annyong appears at the episode 14 or 15 mark you get one of those “Oh my god, I completely forgot about this entire sub-plot” moments and then realize that there are still several key moments from the season left for the back seven: Spring Break, Maggie Lizer, H. Maddas, Oscar Bluth, Gobias Industries, Kitty’s disappearance, etc. Love it.

I typically say the British Office is the greatest piece of contemporary television comedy, but as the years pass I’m starting to think that might be more a result of the series’ brutal depictions of real-life-comedy and the tragic decent of a man (which sounds, hilarious, right?!) than being all that funny. Arrested Development never really says anything about the human condition, but why should it? The writers were far too busy cramming in more jokes (and good, laugh-inducing jokes at that) into 22 minutes than what most would consider humanly possible.

I’m dying to get to episodes 16-22 (and then 23-53).

This entry was posted on Monday, July 16th, 2007 at 1:25 am and is filed under Arrested Development. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.