Arrested Development: Questioning it's Merit

Cafe Society
61

Can you give some specific examples?

I’m not quite getting the distinction you’re making, here. Most shows need to explain why a character is doing something. Usually it’s revealed by showing previous events in that character’s life, or dialogue with another character. Sometimes it’s through soliloquy. In this case, it’s narration. Very, very few shows will make any sense at all without doing this. AD does not seem remarkable in this regard.

Hey, you started it. Twice.

If The Office has genuine character growth and development, I’ll have to go back and check it out again, because that would make it almost unique in the history of sitcoms.

62

I don’t understand what you mean that they do things without consequences. During the whole run of the show, the stupid shit they do means their lives are shitty, and continuously get shittier-- George Sr. is in prison, they lose their company salaries and credit line, Buster loses a hand, Lucille gets downgraded at the country club, GOB gets kicked out of the Alliance, Tobias is a deluded deadbeat loser who never lands any serious acting parts despite his insistence on becoming an actor, Tobias and Lindsay are failures as parents and partners, relationships crumble, public relations are in shambles.

Everything they do turns to shit, and it’s because of their own dumbassery! Michael has to stick around just to keep them from completely melting down and/or dying. And even he’s not exempt from his own dumbassery at times.

No consequences, my Aunt Fanny.

63

See, I would prefer it if there WASN’T a narrator! He ruins this show. I am firmly in the “AD is the most overrated show I’ve ever seen” camp, and the narrator is probably the biggest reason why.

Those absurd moments you mention would be funny to me…WITHOUT the narrator.

When I watch this show, a character will occasionally do something absurd and funny, and then the narrator chimes in, which will illicit one of the following emotions from me:

  1. I am on the verge of laughing because of the gag, but the narrator pipes in before I have a chance to laugh. The laugh is then stifled, and I am left irritated.

  2. I am laughing at the gag, and then the narrator explains to me why it was funny. My laughing ceases, and I get ANGRY.

Thus, AD most often leaves me irritated and angry. And yet I keep hearing people talk about how it’s so smart because “the writers don’t assume that the audience is stupid”. Umm…that’s exactly what they do!

Every moment in this show that is supposed to be funny is so thoroughly explained to the audience through the narrator and with mind numbingly repetitive call backs (Look! A blue handprint on the fridge! LOL!), that any semblance of humor is beaten beyond recognition.

64

No, they don’t. They use the narrator to set up scenes and jokes more quickly than they could with dialogue. It has nothing to do with intelligence. And while I like the callbacks, I agree they were going overboard with them by the end of the series.

65

Complaining that the characters never develop is missing at least part of the point - and one of the meanings of the show’s title.

I would like an example of the narrator explaining the joke (other than in an ironic meta way) - I do feel like sometimes they were over-reliant on Howard for joke’s paying off, but I don’t really remember him ruining a joke that would otherwise be funny.

I do agree that fans sometimes do the show a disservice by calling it “smart”. That is too vague a term to use for comedy, particularly one heavily invested in crude humor, sight gags, repetition, pop culture references, and puns.

66

Stupid, stupid, stupid me. This is where I should have stopped reading this thread, because this is were I should have realized this OP could never lead to a decent discussion about AD, questioning it is merit. There’s several minutes of my life I’ll never get back.

67

I have to disagree with you on this point. I know it’s not really strictly on topic, but you are misunderstanding my idea. When I say that everything has a basis in reality, I mean that everything must fundamentally come down to our perception of the world which is from the point of view of a human being living on earth. For example, the elemental concept of the passage of time is part of reality and thus if the continuous passage of time is part of anything on TV or in the movies, then already whatever that media is has an element of reality in it. If the laws of physics happen, we understand that things fall. If there is light and darkness. Layer upon layer of reality is added. Those are humans, those are houses, this is how a corporation should work, this is what the relationship between mother and son should be. Are you getting where I am going?

I would argue completely opposite to what you said - that everything on TV or in the movies is way more realistic than not and they all have a basis in reality (A set of rules that govern how the world works such that there is cause and effect.) The slight or huge deviations in that reality make the show interesting because we understand what is going on based on the reality and we think we know how things will be effected by events that take place. We know that the book will fall if dropped because we know how gravity works. We know that the mum will be upset if the son doesn’t call because we know how a mother son relationship works. Media can shock and surprise us by doing what we don’t expect, but ONLY because we expected it in the first place.

68

I think so. It seems like you’re saying the same thing I am, but you’ve picked a way that’s much more complicated for no reason. :wink: Anyway none of this has to do with your issues with this show, which are much more specific. Your view is basically “these people shouldn’t act so crazy and nothing happens to them when they do dangerous stuff.” That’s not a law of physics, it’s just an expectation - one that’s based largely on other TV shows, I might add.

69

People doing dangerous things and not being hurt is a staple of comedy. But I’ll add slapstick (which AD has a fair amount of) to my list of things that probably shouldn’t be called “smart”.

70

“And I suppose YOU think the coyote is the Antichrist!”

71

well if you keep reading you’ll find that I do reference many things and make my point clearer.

72

Based on other TV shows… and the real world! One last time I will try to connect it back to the show. (I was going to do it in the last post but I thought it was too much) Sorry if this is too much, I think Im done after this.

We all know if I do something like hit someone with a car something bad will happen right? In the show if someone does that it also gets that connotation of being ‘bad’ because we all know what would happen in reality. The humor of the show is based off these actions. (Right? Michael is pissed when a family member does something dumb and he or Job says something funny.) So I guess what just happens when I watch AD is when the consequences stop happening, and no one has do deal with them, I realize that, well, nothing is really ‘bad’ anymore! Why is Michael mad? Nothing is going to happen! Thus all the jokes, the situational irony, the slapstick humor, and word gags just seem like a farse because everything is fake. I realize the whole plot is constructed to make wordplays not the wordplays being a part of the plot.

THUS this is also the reason I can not call this ‘smart.’ How hard can it be to make situational irony when the characters you have to work with are the most maleable, stupidest people whom you can basically make do anything self centered. And there are like 5 of them!

I guess in summary - Too much of reality is given up in the pursuit of these clever quips, which while funny at the start, loose their punch once your realize actions that allow the quips to be funny aren’t actually ‘real’ because nothing happens. Thus the quips aren’t as funny. Nobody changes, nothing. Just more quips. Yes, alone they are funny. Wordplay is funny. Stupid people doing stupid things is funny. But together as a whole however is just so unbelievable, the show to me is dumb. Thats all Im going to say I think. We just have different tastes.

73

It is not that the narrator is explaining jokes, he is explaining why irrational people are doing what they are doing in the show. I would give you a specific but basically every time he talks this is what he is doing,so just watch the show. Its like, “And then Job, because he was mad a Michael, decided he need to get back at his brother because something something something.”

(I can actually hear his voice in my head.) Many of you guys might be wondering why I watch this show if I dislike it so much. My girlfriend is an ardent lover and we just watched seasons 1-3 so far in preparation for the revival. Thank you for debating with me.

74

Well I am happy to keep going until I have to eat diner and study, but I’ll keep responding if you do or until we agree to disagree.

There is a huge distinction between a backstory, soliloquy, flashback, or dialogue showing motivation compared to what happens in AD. In most shows there isn’t a narrator explaining what’s happening because when you see the character doing something you already kinda of understand why they are doing. You understand based on the story line, who that character is (based on his background/dialogue), how he/she normally acts, and basic expectation that he/her will act rationally like a normal person.

In AD the characters are not rational, and even though you expect them to be selfish much of what they do is contrary or deviant from the story line. The audience wouldn’t understand with out a narrator telling us exactly what this character is doing now and why. Basically every narration sound something like, “And Job, after feeling like Michael was angry at him decided to something something…” With out a narrator, AD could function fine for a while having the characters act irrationally and the audience eventually understanding why, but the more they do it, the more strange it gets without having someone explain it to you. Does this make sense? Idk, maybe I’m just rambling now.

75

Actually, you know, if I think about it, yes I do think the show would be better if they were cartoons. However I still would dislike some of the characters for being so damn selfish and never having to face the consequences. A character I think is 5% how they look, 95% their words and actions.

Perhaps that is why I dislike the show, because I can’t really turn of my empathy for Michael and thus my disgust for everyone acting so stupidly and self centered is extraordinarily strong, especially when the cause and effect rules of reality are also turned off.

Thudlow Boink I think you understand my argument better than anyone else here.

76

The narrator is a character in Arrested Development, just as the narrator is a character in Our Town and Into the Woods, and to a degree in Pippin, yet in those shows (like AD) the role is not an official part of the fiction. In other words, he’s not an “in-story” character, such as the narrators in classic films To Kill a Mockingbird, All About Eve, A Letter to Three Wives, The Shawshank Redemption, Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House, I Remember Mama, and so on.

What the narrative in all these examples has in common is that it is vital to the storytelling, and the tales would be diminished without them. Indeed, just about every single novel has a narrator who tells you motivations and what characters are thinking, and we accept that because that’s what books are like. Why shouldn’t a TV series play with conventions and use the same formula? The Wonder Years had narration too, now that I recall; and though I’m not a viewer, I’m pretty sure Desperate Housewives used it too.

So let’s discard the idea that the use of a narrator is somehow inherently bad for storytelling. It’s ludicrous. You may not like the innovation of having such a narrator become integral to the comedy, but quite clearly many people do, and part of it is the innovation of such a nudgy, omniscient and sometimes even petulant (“she’d best watch her mouth!”) narrator. Plus, Ron Howard does a great job. I can think of precisely one instance where the narration ruined or overplayed a joke, and that’s the “Hey! That’s the name of the show!” line in the third season.

Gosh one might as well deride Peep Show for relying too much on internal monologuing. It’s the show’s gimmick! Enjoy it or not, that’s fine, but it’s not an automatic negative.

Others have already described the multitudinous consequences for the characters. Some that haven’t been mentioned include Buster–who was perfectly allowed to wear camouflage, just as everyday people can still wear it (and many do), actually is in “Army” (as he calls it), he signs up for a second tour of duty as a consequence of not paying attention to his so-called award ceremony. G.O.B. (not “Job”) is constantly fucking up his life – he’s tossed into prison when his escape act goes awry, gets stabbed, loses his girlfriend to his brother Michael (who then loses the same girlfriend because he can’t control his anger at G.O.B.). Lindsay suffers plenty of indignities as a result of the family’s money troubles and her constant fights with her mother, and her half-hearted attempts to cheat on Tobias aren’t successful (actually, if I were to complain about anything unrealistic, it’s the idea that someone who looks like Portia de Rossi couldn’t attract a lover!). No, there’s no major growth (though Buster had some moments of maturity and standing up for himself, and Maeby changed from not caring about her family to obviously feeling connected to them, and I don’t just mean George Michael. But show me the growth in Seinfeld? Good God, the characters there devolved if anything!

AD is much-loved by me, at any rate, because it rewards multiple viewing and careful viewership. I love continuity, I’m a whore for it, and the writers who put so much dense material into both the script and even the props that we see for a half-second on screen earn my true admiration, because that’s exactly the sort of thing that tickles me pink.

Some people don’t enjoy meta jokes, call-backs, longform jokes (the build-up to Buster’s losing his hand encompassed an entire season of foreshadowing), and so on, and that’s okay. No one has to like every form of humor. And yet somehow one can be surprised by stuff you end up liking; for example, I hate scatalogical humor and usually dislike raunchy jokes, and yet I’m a big fan of the aforementioned Peep Show and Archer (perhaps not coincidentally, the latter featuring several AD cast members), so go figure.

In the end, just accept that humor is subjective. The sooner people get that, the sooner we’ll stop having these unbelievably tedious “I DON’T FIND IT FUNNY SO PEOPLE WHO LIKE IT ARE JUST FOLLOWING THE HERD AND PATTING THEMSELVES ON THE BACK!” or, conversely, “THIS SHOW IS GENIUS AND HILARIOUS AND ANYONE WHO DOESN’T LIKE IT IS OBVIOUSLY AN IMBECILE” back-and-forth arguments.

Trust me, no one ever, in the history of entertainment discussions, has won one of these debates with such comments.

77

I don’t think there is any distinction there. Most other shows would have GOB say, “I’m mad at Michael, so I’m going to do X.” AD just puts that dialogue in the mouth of another character - the narrator. It’s not a functional difference, it’s purely stylistic. The end result is the same in either case.

I do get where your coming from in the “no consequences” thing to a degree. There are a lot of shows i can’t get into because the characters are so awful, the only thing that could keep me watching is to see something horrible happen to them. Which is actually one of the things I like about AD, because the characters stupid actions routinely cause them to suffer greatly. Contrast that with Seinfeld, where each episode inexplicably did not end with the entire cast being hacked to death with fire axes, as would happen to them in any rational universe.

78

Airplane! ? What is it?

79

I think the OP is trying too hard not to like AD. I’m wondering if maybe it’s one of those “everybody loves it and I hate things that ‘everybody’ loves” thing.

Whatever it is, the OP’s reasoning doesn’t make sense to me.

80

It’s a big people tube that flys… but that’s not important.