Arrested Development
by Rob - March 2nd, 2008.Filed under: Uncategorized.
I start most mornings by treadmilling for half an hour. I’ve got a portable DVD player with a 10-inch screen mounted on my treadmill’s control panel, and I watch sitcoms to pass the time.
And I’ve just recently finished watching the third and final season of Arrested Development, a wonderful series about a rich family that loses everything because of shady business dealings on the part of the patriarch (the fabulous Jeffrey Tambor). The series stars Jason Bateman as Tambor’s son, trying to keep the dysfunctional family together. Jessica Walter is perfect as the scheming mother; Michael Cera — who lives not far from me, actually — is incredibly natural in his performance as Bateman’s son; the stunningly beautiful Portia di Rossi is excellent as Bateman’s shallow sister.
In fact, the whole cast is fabulous, and the dialog is absolutely first-rate. Arrested Development is one of the new breed of sitcoms without a laugh track; it trusts the audience to know what’s funny, and I frequently found myself in hysterics over the three seasons.
The narrator is Ron Howard (yes, from Happy Days) and his delivery is perfect. And his old Happy Days buddy Henry Winkler frequently guest stars as the family’s lawyer, Barry Zuckercorn — showing just how wonderfully talented Winkler is. Other guest stars: Charlize Theron, Dave Thomas, Justine Bateman, Scott Baio, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Liza Minnelli, Jeff Garlin, Amy Poehler, Ed Begley Jr., Carl Weathers, and James Lipton (from Inside the Actor’s Studio, as a prison warden).
The show is surreal in a lot of ways (one of the family’s few remaing vehicles is a stair car, of the kind used to disembark from airplanes), and it’s full of meta humor (jokes that acknowledge slyly that this is a TV show).
How good is this show? Well, after I finished the third and final season of Arrested Development, I started in on season six of Curb Your Enthusiasm, the brilliant Larry David sitcom … and Curb seems lame in comparison.
Check it out. The DVDs are quite cheap most of the time (Amazon.com has all three seasons in a combined set for $45 right now).
The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site