Arrested Development never found the audience it deserved during its tenure on Fox’s airwaves because its abundance of running gags and densely crafted storylines made it more suited to binge-watching, which hadn’t been invented yet. It was before its time. After Fox canceled the show just three seasons in, it was included on countless lists of shows that were canceled too soon and should’ve been given more chance to grow by their respective networks. Ironically, when fans got what they wanted and binge-watching pioneers Netflix picked up the show for a fourth (and then a fifth) season, they were crushingly disappointed by how far from its former glory the show had fallen.
Let’s look at 10 ways that Arrested Development’s Neflix seasons let the show down.
The cast was never together
Arrested Development has a huge ensemble cast, and seeing all of those characters interact with one another – especially the ones that had nothing in common and didn’t get along, like Tobias and Lucille, or Gob and George Michael – was part of the fun. The characters would often get up to wacky antics separate from one another, like Maeby’s secret job as a film executive or Michael’s adventures in Wee Britain, but they always reconvened in the kitchen or at Lucille’s apartment to weigh in on each other’s problems.
In the Netflix seasons, the cast hardly shared any scenes. This is probably due to personal disputes among the actors, but if that was the case, then why bother with more seasons at all?
The Netflix seasons ruined season 3’s perfect ending
Although the end was imposed on the writers and producers of Arrested Development when Fox canned the show after its third season and not when they decided the story reached its natural conclusion, the team did a great job of wrapping up the series with a finale episode, “Development Arrested.” It began with a parallel to the pilot episode, with the family throwing a party on a boat and Michael giving a speech.
This time, they were celebrating the fact that George, Sr.’s charges had been dropped. Every character reached an organic ending to their journeys, all of the recurring plotlines and loose ends were tied up, and Michael and George Michael departed for a brighter future.
There’s far too much plot
The complex plotting has always been a part of Arrested Development’s appeal. Not only is each character’s storyline well-crafted; they all dovetail with one another, too. However, the plotting in the Netflix seasons went way overboard with the complexity.
It’s far too dense and convoluted, with the writers throwing any random idea they came up with – Michael becoming a movie producer, Tobias going on an Eat, Pray, Love excursion to India, George Michael becoming a tech mogul etc. – and forced all the threads together with more and more plot. Then, they presented it all out of order, just to double down on the confusion.
Tobias is really poorly written
Tobias is a fan-favorite Arrested Development character, and David Cross continues to nail the character’s mannerisms in seasons 4 and 5. The problem is that the character was terribly written in those seasons. It was like the writers forgot what made the character great, or even what made him Tobias. Canonically, Tobias has a medical degree, so he’s not an idiot. He’s just oblivious to his double-entendres, desperately pursuing his pipe dream of acting, and constantly hinting that he’s gay.
The new seasons didn’t know what to do with him, so they just made him a moron. They gave him an illegitimate son and a stage musical about the Fantastic Four. Apart from the season 5 storyline in which he attempts to play Michael for the press, Tobias is written totally out of character in the Netflix seasons.
The season 5 finale made Buster a murderer
Arrested Development has always been a dark show, but it was never so dark that it wasn’t always funny. The darkness was shocking in an amusing way. However, in the season 5 finale, as it was revealed that Buster had murdered Lucille Austero and didn’t seem to have any guilt or remorse about it, the show crossed that line. The fun of Buster’s character has always been that he has a childlike innocence.
He always had psychological issues, owing to his unhealthy attachment to his mother and his refusal to grow up, but he always just acted like a kid. Now that we know he’s a murderer, that innocence is tarnished.
The pace is much slower
The first three seasons of Arrested Development are some of the fastest-paced television ever put on the air. It’s part of what makes revisiting the show such a blast. The exposition never takes more than a few seconds in between sight gags and character moments, and even then, there are jokes crammed into it.
The pacing of the Netflix seasons, on the other hand, is painfully slow. The exposition is long and drawn-out and takes longer to get to the point than the early seasons would take to get to the next scene, having set up several major plot points.
Portia de Rossi retired from acting before the end
Last year, Portia de Rossi appeared on her wife Ellen DeGeneres’ talk show to announce that she would be retiring from acting. She clarified that she’d be making an exception to that retirement for future seasons of Arrested Development, but it was clear that her commitment to the show was spotty at best.
The storyline of Lindsay running for public office was an interesting development for her character, but with de Rossi only appearing in a handful of scenes – and hardly ever with any of her co-stars – the writers didn’t have enough room to really explore the idea in any satirical depth.
They’re not rewatchable
The first three seasons of Arrested Development are among the rewatchable TV episodes ever made. No matter how many times you’ve seen those early seasons, they never get old, because you’re always picking up on jokes that you missed the first time, and the jokes that you did catch still elicit laughs all these years later.
However, the fourth and fifth seasons, although their M.O. was to be rewatched on a streaming service as opposed to just viewed once on a broadcast network, were a task to sit through the first time, let alone over and over again like the early episodes.
Michael and George Michael’s relationship was destroyed
Despite all the terrible things that the characters of Arrested Development do, there are a couple of earnest elements that keep the show endearing with an uncharacteristic sweetness. One of those things was always Michael and George Michael’s relationship. George Michael was desperate to make his dad proud by working on his weekends and getting straight-As, while Michael was struggling to do right by his son as a widowed single father.
They were hardly ever on the same page, but they were always trying to connect with each other. In the Netflix seasons, their relationship devolved. George Michael took on a Maeby-esque double life, Michael slept with his son’s girlfriend, George Michael literally punched Michael in the face – it just didn’t sit right (or, pardon the pun, sit well).
Season 4 was such a mess that it could be completely re-edited
After Arrested Development’s fourth season was criticized for being disjointed, the producers responded by re-cutting it to visually resemble earlier episodes, while lacking their coherence. There aren’t many seasons of television that could be completely re-edited like that. The early seasons of Arrested Development were plotted very deliberately. You couldn’t budge an inch of film in any of those episodes, because their scripts were so tight.
Every line of dialogue included some kind of callback or pun or reference that only make sense in that sequence. But season 4 was such a mess that Mitchell Hurwitz was able to go back into the cutting room, re-edit the entire thing, and re-release it as “Fateful Consequences.”
