Just watched it again and it’s such a fun little show.
Most of it was filmed in Marina Del Rey and not Newport. It was fun spotting all the Marina Del Rey landmarks.
One thing that struck me as a little weird though was hiding money in the banana shack, when it was widely known that the local teenagers destroy it every year.
"Sometimes, she puts mayonnaise in her mouth, then she puts the egg in there and does this [imitates pushing an egg around in his mouth] She calls it a “mayonegg!”
It was an awesome show. Extremely dynamic, and with a lot of jokes per minute.
Tobias - Perfect in season 2, tape-recorder-needing Tobias. Sick hair Tobias was disgusting.
Gob - Perfect. Except a little over the top with the father issues.
Maeby - Doesn’t really find her right element until season 3, with the movie executive thing.
Michael - A little too odd sometimes. For example, sleeping at 9 o clock before the fishing trip, or buying the Corvette. Wasn’t he meant to be the one we could identify with?
Jeffrey Tambor - Great characters. Added a lot of dynamic to the show, with the constant schemes and confusion. The lessons, for example.
Buster - Too weird.
Lucille - Great character. Believable as a type.
George Michael - Perfect square. The only major character with good ethics.
Rita - Didn’t work for me.
Narrator - Probably necessary. But sometimes feel forced. Especially in season 3 he often spells out the joke, and that doesn’t really work.
I really like that, when this show was on the air, we were all having serious discussions on whether Michael’s girlfriend was an international spy or mentally retarded because it was written in such a way that no one could really quite figure it out.
By the end of the series, I got the impression that one of jokes was that although he was presented as “the normal one,” he was clearly as fucked up as the rest of his family.