Last week at this time, everyone on the internet was freaking out about Arrested Development. We over here at KQED Pop were freaking out about Arrested Development (when they tweeted us our heads almost exploded). It seemed magical that this thing we had all loved so long ago, in the early 2000s, in our youth-- this thing that we had mourned for dead-- could come back to life. It was like your lost dog returning after you had moved to a different state or finding your keys in the sand at the beach. These things don’t happen and when they do, you kinda believe in miracles. However, by Sunday afternoon, you could hear the sighs throughout the land. “It’s just not that funny,” people were saying to each other on the phone. “I haven’t laughed once,” read the text messages.
Yesterday at lunch a bunch of my coworkers brought it up. Out of the five of us who were watching the show, all of whom purported to be True Arrested Development Fans, only two of us had gotten past Episode Three. I realized right then and there that I had to do something. What follows is a message to all Arrested Development Fans who haven’t gotten past Episode Three of Season Four of Arrested Development:
Stop whining. Do you remember when the show first came out? You probably don’t. Everyone was confused because the title made it sound like it was about that band that sang "Mr. Wendal" and the camera work was weird, not to mention that when you just tuned in and hadn’t seen every other episode, you had no clue what was happening. You probably don’t remember because when the show first came out, nobody watched it.
It took three seasons for this show you’ve been calling your “favorite show of all time” since college to gain any momentum with viewers and then it wasn’t enough and the show got canceled. For seven years you’ve been using that cancellation as an example of what’s wrong with television and by extension, what’s wrong with the world. And now, in a truly unprecedented gift from the gods of entertainment and Netflix, the whole cast, the writers and the creator have been reunited FOR YOU, and they have created a fourth season that stays true to the tone, the spirit and the world of the show while acknowledging the passage of time and what that would mean for the characters lives. This is an amazing gift. And you’re going to stop watching because you didn’t LAUGH ENOUGH IN THE FIRST THREE EPISODES?
This is like if your mom got lost at sea and then seven years later returned to you unharmed but tired and you were like, “Um, she didn’t make me a grilled cheese sandwich right away so, whatever, I’m over it.”
