The first time I watched Arrested Development was sometime during high school. I think it was on Netflix and had started to enjoy a resurgence in popularity. It was critically acclaimed when it ran, but struggled to garner viewership. In the streaming era, though, people rediscovered it.
More than any other show, I come back to Arrested Development. Its hundreds of little jokes are seared into my memory. I mostly mean the first three seasons—the newer ones produced by Netflix are still pretty good, but didn’t fully recreate the magic of the original.
There are lots of candidates for best sitcom. On my personal list I’d put Seinfeld, Peep Show, It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, and Psych.
For the uninitiated, it follows Michael Bluth as he struggles to hold his family together through a series of crises, beginning with his father going to prison. It’s a comedy of errors through and through. In an early iconic moment, Michael’s father says, “They can’t charge a husband and wife for the same crime,” and after Michael lets him know this isn’t true, “I have the worst fucking attorneys.”
But I think there’s something special about Arrested Development. The show works on multiple levels, in a way few other pieces of entertainment do. In this short piece I’ll try to explain a couple distinct ways the show excels, starting from the very short-term (i.e., the quality and quantity of gags and jokes it fits into its limited runtime) and zooming out to the level of the whole show, the way themes and jokes are tied together across seasons.
First, the show is just crammed with jokes. Explaining jokes in an essay really doesn’t work, so instead I’ll just point out the number of memes that have emerged out of the three seasons of the show.
Staying pretty zoomed in, the show stands out for is its attention to detail; the way minute details in the show tie into the broader universe. A classic example of this is when blue marks start to appear in the house when Tobias starts to audition for the Blue Man Group, or the subtle way every time a character curses, their mouth is obscured by something.
Jokes are often reincorporated and reworked. “I’ve made a huge mistake” is a good example of this. In “Marta Complex,” Gob first breaks up, then gets back together, with his girlfriend Marta using the line. Later in the episode, Marta realizes she loves Michael, not Gob, and uses the same line. Finally, Michael uses the line when he reveals the central error of the episode (not knowing what the Spanish word hermano means).
The throughline of “I’ve made a huge mistake” goes well past this episode. The joke is made in different ways eighteen different times, and is one of many jokes used in this way, including “Marry Me,” the chicken dance, “and THAT’S why…” and “Her?” These recurring jokes and gags comprise a language for the show. They stand alone as funny moments, but reward the viewer by giving them a richer context.
The way these jokes get reincorporated feed into the way we understand the characters, the flaws and quirks that make us root for them but also pity them. Take, “Her?” for example. The line is used most often by Michael referring to his son George Michael’s girlfriend, Ann.
Michael pushes his son away from Ann as much as he can; this is part of an overbearing approach he has. He resents his own father for not giving him authority and trust at their company, but finds himself on the other side of that relationship with his own son. When he realizes it, he tries to be a good guy and fights these instincts, which often backfires. For instance, George Michael works at the family’s banana stand, as his dad did when he was younger. But when Michael remembers how much control his own dad kept while he was working at the banana stand, he makes his son “manager” of the banana stand, which ends with the banana stand being burned down.
Finally, the show is full of self-awareness; of moments where it breaks the fourth wall and acknowledges that it is a show, the limitations of its own format, and the realities of producing a show. This becomes more important and obvious toward the end of the show as it became apparent it wouldn’t be renewed. But it is also present throughout, in small gags like Tobias commenting on how “Hollywood sets are incredibly detailed” as he looks through empty kitchen cabinets, or in the way the “on the next episode” bits are tied into the end of each episode.
All in all, what I love most about Arrested Development is how much it rewards the viewer for repeated, close viewing. The ways in which minute details tie into larger themes and gags.12 How some jokes only make sense with the context of later episodes.34