Sunday, November 22, 2015

Is Arrested Development a Show Where the Chracters are Meant to Grow

This article now appears at ScreenPrism. 

The fact that "Arrested Development" is still on the air at all is a gift so I'd have trouble complaining about the fourth season whether it fell below my expectations or not but there was plenty to like about it.

What was generally lacking in the humor department was what I call the medium range jokes. The long-term jokes-- running gags, jokes emanating from serial arcs (generally called brick jokes), and character beats-- short-range jokes (witty lines of dialogue) were both there in fine form, but "Arrested Development" had little interest in form-fitting any of its Season 4 episodes into a Seinfeldesque plot.

The show chose instead to tell one large arc and while the payoffs were satisfying throughout, the anticlimactic nature of the season finale felt a little disappointing and brings me to two big questions: Is the Bluth clan going to move in any direction along the success-failure dichotomy? Does the show need its characters to grow or does it work best when they're in purgatory?

See the rest of the article at Screen Prism

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