I know this news will be important to a number of my readers: the fourth season of Arrested Development is coming out next month. Netflix announced that they will be releasing 15 new episodes that will constitute a fourth season. All of the episodes will be released at once at 12:01 am Pacific time on 26 May.
The weird thing about this is that I’ve been checking Wikipedia often to see if anything had been announced. There hasn’t been a thing. I had begun to give up hope. One problem is that everyone (especially the kids) are getting older. But more important, many of the stars have become much bigger and thus, much more expensive. Now, it seems quite suddenly, Wikipedia reports that on 7 August of last year, the gang began shooting the new episodes.
Because I’m a pessimist at heart, I’ve suddenly become very worried. I was looking forward to the fifth season of Breaking Bad, as well, and it turned out to be a total disaster. I’m more hopeful for Arrested Development. It can take off in any direction. That wasn’t true of Breaking Bad. The problem with it is that the producers decided to turn the protagonist into an antagonist; it isn’t just that I don’t like that; the show is supposed to be believable and that change just isn’t. Arrested Development is a series about a bunch of really narcissistic characters. I’m sure they won’t change that and so there should be no fundamental problem plaguing the show as there has been for Breaking Bad.
So set your calendars and watches. I know I’m going to be there at one minute past midnight to watch one or more episodes. I’m sure I will have much to say here in the afternoon of 26 May.
Afterword
If you don’t have a Netflix subscription, I’m sure you can get one of those one month trials and start some time in May. Provide a little time before, so you can catch up on the show. They currently have the first three seasons on Instant Watch. But be sure to leave enough time afterwards to watch all 15 episodes. In my case, that would be about half a day.
I haven’t seen the fifth season of "BB" yet. But it always was a show that tiptoed rather precariously between "compelling" and "ridiculous." Walt stopping at a bar and running into the dad of Jesse’s girlfriend, the two of them talking about how kids drive you nuts and neither doing so truthfully? Very compelling. The other dad losing his shit as an air-traffic controller after his daughter’s OD, with a mid-air collision dropping a mangled teddy bear into Walt’s pool? Pretty ridiculous.
Or consider the finish of Gus. I’m sorry, but if half your face is missing, you’re dead. It worked, because Giancarlo Esposito was so compellingly reserved, you’d completely expect him to try and maintain his composure after being blown to smithereens. It did push the boundaries of believable, though.
Of course, that tension between cheesy and realistic, with the star of "Malcolm In The Middle" playing a suburban meth kingpin, was always the show’s appeal. I think my favorite moment in the series was where one of Jesse’s slacker friends gets killed. It’s set up so that you know the local dealers are going to kill him for stepping on their territory; we’ve seen enough crime shows to figure this out. And the cutaways of a kid riding his bike foreshadow a cheesy collateral-damage kid shooting, because that’s a staple of crime shows. Turns out the kid is the shooter. Brilliant.
All credit to the show for staying interesting through at least four seasons, though. Despite the female characters being woefully underwritten. It’s a bit like "The Sopranos" in that way, whose most forceful female character (Tony’s mom) unfortunately was played by an actress who died too soon, and where the other female characters were all enablers. Can’t a woman be a cool bad guy? Do they always have to be depicted as examples of cliched female empathy and morality gone wrong? Hell, Enron had a girl who broke every law on the books. There was Condoleeza. Michelle Bachmann is corrupt as winter nights are long. My SO positively giggled with glee watching Julianne Moore portray the amoral ignoramus Palin in HBO’s "Game Change." Women can be crime lords too, TV writers!
@JMF – Speaking of the dealer getting killed: the aftermath of that is one thing that bugged me. Gus would not even know the street level thugs. He’s much too careful for that.
The show clearly evolved over time and that really hurt the female characters. I think that TV writers tend to have little or bad experiences with women. But as I recall, there is one primary female writer on the series. It all worked to the advantage of Hank–a character I hate.
I liked the end of "Face Off." It wasn’t realistic but it was great film making. And as far as I’m concerned, the series ended there.
Should have been the end. I actually screamed at my TV, out loud, "no fucking way oh my goddamn Christ" or some equivalent. And I don’t do that, ever. What a terrific way to end the participation of of a terrific actor.
A friend of mine recently wrote me that "Mad Men" is his favorite TV series of all time. I’m not a huge fan, although I think it’s very well-acted,
To dance with danger, here, I believe the best TV shows I’ve ever seen are "Northern Exposure" and "Buffy The Vampire Slayer." "Buffy" is endearing, but "Nothern Exposure" is something else entirely. Most of the first season sucks, and all of the last one does. When it gets going, however, it’s pretty special.
@JMF – I’ve never seen Buffy. I saw the original movie. It had many problem that I could well imagine would be fixed in the series. It is a better idea for a series anyway.
As for [i]Northern Exposure[/i]: I’ve written about it. I was a huge fan at the time, but I think the form has been perfected since then. In particular, [i]Ballykissangel[/i] is really great. Although, tellingly, I have never watched past the third season because I cannot get over Assumpta’s death.
Check out my [i]Northern Exposure[/i] (kind of) article:
http://franklycurious.com/index.php?itemid=3387