It took seven years for there to finally be a 4th season of Arrested Development. It took about two weeks for me to finish the 15 episodes of that 4th season. It took me four more weeks to finally gather myself and write this. Arrested Development, during its FOX run, was one of the best TV comedies ever (I had it ranked #1 out of the comedies I have seen). It combined every type of modern comedy, did all aspects well and had an incredible cast that perfectly meshed ridiculous antics and surreal dialogue. The first three seasons of Arrested Development were basically perfect.
The fourth season is not. Luckily, I think most people held seasons 1-3 in such high regard and could see how tough it would be to recapture that magic seven years later that the fact that Season 4 is quite decidedly the worst 'season' the show ever did wasn't even all that disappointing. Season 4 doesn't change my opinion of Seasons 1-3. Honestly, Season 4 was like a new show. Other than the characters and the tone, there isn't much similar between the two. Some of this was by design, some of it was by necessity. It combined into something I wish could have been better, but was still more or less acceptable
Creator Mitch Hurwitz didn't have access to each of the characters at the same time, so there wasn't a single episode where all nine main characters (10 with Oscar) appeared. That is a problem. One of the greatest strengths of Arrested Development was its incredible deep cast. They had nine main actors playing 9/10 characters, each of which would more or less appear in each episode, each of which had good chemistry with each other, each with a distinctive voice and style. They took ensemble comedy to a whole new level. That was partially lost. The actors appeared basically in relation to how much success they've had outside the show, so we got to spend a ton of time with George, Lucille, Oscar, Lindsay and Tobias, and way too few time with George Michael, Maebe and Buster. For whatever reason, Jason Bateman is the exception, but he was turned into more of a 'main character' in this season than in the shows original run.
In the end, the way the characters were meshed really wasn't truly in Mitch Hurwitz's control. It would have been great if the nine main actors dropped whatever they were doing and did a season in the same way they did the first three. But that isn't how the industry works. Instead, Hurwitz was left with half rosters for most of the episodes, which made the show never really feel like classic Arrested Development. Still, the competing work schedules wasn't all of what was wrong with the first season, nor did it stop there from being some excellent moments. That variation was purely about plot and the show itself.
I'll start with my plot related problems first. The main issue for me was the plot was confusing in a boring way. In fairness, the overarching plot of the original show (the SEC arrests George Sr. and freezes the Bluth family because George has committed fraud and possibly treason) was always complicated. It helped that the plot wasn't what drove Arrested Development, the week to week banter and interaction did. Well, when the amount and combinations of interactions are limited, then plot becomes more important, and with that more glaring.
The long winding, connected plot was a slow build that worked in a storytelling sense (all the main storylines colliding towards the party on Cinco), but with the lengthy episodes (I'll get to this in a bit) and the relative isolation of the characters, it was damn hard to keep track. It was hard to really see how George's long con with the stimulus money (the 'stimmy' was seemingly the only connecting link between all the plots) connected to Lindsay's infatution with Herbert Love. Michael's role as an executive either pleading for or withholding movie rights was funny but strange. The show just never found its ground plot wise, and it wasn't funny enough to make the plot issues disappear, which is what the original run used to do.
The biggest issue, though, was the length of the episodes. One of my favorite part of owning the Arrested Development DVDs were the lengthy, hilarious deleted and extended scenes of each one. Mitch Hurwitz often commented on how much extra stuff they had for each of the 21-minute FOX episodes. Well, here Hurwitz got no time restraint (although if he tried a 40+ minute one Netflix may have said no), leading to a ton of episodes in the 30-34 minute range and one 37-minute monster. If they were of the caliber of the old AD, I would have loved the longer times, but they weren't.
It made it worse that some of the season's worst episodes were the lengthiest. They just dragged at times. And with the idea of each episodes starring one character, it made the character seem way too large. Tobias just isn't a main character the way Michael is, and having him be the central figure of a longer episode just hurt.
There are a few characters I wasn't a fan of either. The largest was Marky Bark, Lindsay's love interest, which was never as funny as the far more brief time I spent with Barky back in Season 1. Also Tobias' love interest, whatever that dull woman's name was, was about as bad. In fact, almost everything with those two characters worked far less than the original run. I wish Hurwitz just kept them perpetually unhappy in that marraige instead of finding love in hopeless places.
I've wrote a lot about what I didn't really like in the show, but that doesn't mean I'm upset or regretful it was made. I still think it was better than most comedies on TV, and still had enough of the old Arrested Development tone that it worked. The characters were more isolated, and more focused in their individual episodes, but they were still the same. The show didn't really change any character from the original run. They all had their same foibles, same weaknesses and same comedic strengths.
Certain episodes were excellent, like the episode where Michael first meets Ron Howard, or most of the shows final seven or so episodes. It came on strong when the plotlines started to get more intertwined. I liked the kids even more than before, especially Maebe's who's smaller role fit really well. I liked how many guesstars they could get, and while they didn't bring back many of my favorites (not bringing back Maggie Lizer was painful), the new ones like Herbert Love, Rebel Ally (great joke in her name) and Ron Howard himself worked well.
In the end, it simply isn't interesting to write a litany of all the things I found positive in the new season of Arrested Development. I grade it a solid B, which while lower than any of the previous seasons (which went 'A', 'A', 'A-' for me), is still damn good. It was just so much fun to see those characters interacting again. Arrested Development, much like one of my favorite recent sitcoms, the now-cancelled Happy Endings, used its actors better than anyone else has ever used those same actors. All the actors seemed born for the roles on Arrested, and they still were.
It is hard to say what my judgement of Arrested Development on totality will be from now on. If I consider Arrested Development to be a four-season show when comparing it on my list of favorite comedy programs of all time, it definitely drops below Seinfeld, and maybe even Chappelle Show, but how can I really consider something that came out seven years after the most recent episode to be the same show. If Everybody Loves Raymond does another season, or The Wire, say, will anyone place those with the rest of those show's run when comparing it longterm. Maybe? But I don't. Arrested Development Season 4 to me was its own entity. It had no plot connection to the previous seasons. You don't need to have watched Seasons 1-3 to really understand what the show in Season 4 is all about. It is its standalone entity, and that is how I will remember it. A fine standalone entity that couldn't capture the same magic of its namesake, but good enough to want another season. If it does happen (and word is it could) I just hope they have at least one episode where every character appears.
