When Mitch Hurwitz and his collaborators began making the Fox sitcom Arrested Development 10 years ago, it was loaded with jokes — in-jokes, recurring jokes and just plain bizarre jokes — that rewarded viewers who watched more than once. But even though it won the Emmy for best comedy series one year, not enough viewers bothered to watch it even once, so the show was canceled in 2006 after three seasons. And that would have been it, except for a loyal cult following that built up once the show was released on DVD and the Internet. So finally, on Memorial Day weekend, Arrested Development was reborn with 15 new episodes released all at once through Netflix. I binge-viewed them all immediately, and loved watching them that way.
It's the structure of this new season of Arrested Development that impresses me the most. Like Larry David's Curb Your Enthusiasm, it's got a season-long story arc, as well as tightly sculpted plot twists within each installment. And the new season tries something daring by focusing each episode primarily on a specific character from the large and talented ensemble. This allows the show to revisit the same moments from various points of view, in a way that becomes its own running gag. Those legs you see in one episode? You'll find out who they belong to many, many episodes later. Hidden identities, sudden surprises, perplexing mysteries — they're all unfolded slowly, in intertwined fashion, like some sort of comedy double helix. And watching everything in one sitting helps to make those connections even clearer.
“ [I]t seems almost unfair to single out any of them — except for Bateman, whose dry delivery is the gravity that keeps this whole enterprise from spinning off into space.