I’m 8 episodes in and the way it’s starting to loop together is just starting to show. The ostrich that showed up in the earlier episode makes sense now. George and Lucille 2. George showing up to talk to Michael at his office.
I still haven’t figure out the joke about, get this, Beverly Hills.
Just blew through the entire season over the course of the day. Not as great as the peak episodes of the first two seasons, but very good regardless.
I laughed harder at Buster’s episode than anything in recent memory, and at the same time, thought it was the dumbest, most absurd thing ever.
I watched it up until Gob’s hella blasphemous performance
I couldn’t stand any more after that
“I thought that was a real guy for a second.”
I also like the way he pronounces “God”.
1978 called. They want Alia Shawkat’s hairstyle back.
I love how they don’t say “Google”, but “Somethingsearch”.
And Google is blurred out on the website.
I’m on episode 4, and that’s where I really started to see some of the old magic. Ron Howard taking a meeting with Michael in a lunar module made me laugh.
Ha - just started Episode 10. It’s great to see Suzanne Whang again. Even if she basically has one schtick.
Done.
FWIW, It looks like you kinda have to watch it sequentially, at least for the first viewing. There are definitely things they recall from previous episodes of this season, and watching the other episode first would ruin the surprise.
I didn’t like it. I so much didn’t like it that I couldn’t watch more than the first three episodes-- we threw an Arrested Development party and were all such nerds about the show that we had frozen bananas, cornballs, candy beans, mayoneggs, sushi with “spicy club sauce,” and a giant juice box. We were cringing by the middle of the first episode, and by the third episode, we just had to stop.
What was wrong? Honestly, what wasn’t wrong?
There were enormous amounts of character development, this from characters the show had demonstrated time and time again were too arrogant, callous, or oblivious to change for the better, even when the need to do so was staring them in the face. It felt forced and unwarranted, and completely counter to the character of the show.
The episodes in the previous seasons had been based around individual characters following individual plotlines that converged at the end in hilarious disasters. This was done away with in favor of focusing deeply on a single character. They lost that sense of madcap adventure that I always found so great.
Then there are the more minor quibbles. For the most part, it really wasn’t funny. I found Michael’s fall deeply uncomfortable to watch. The production values weren’t as high as in the earlier show-- the green screening was obvious in places and distracting (like the smoke hut), and Lucille didn’t have that varied and so exceedingly expensive hair-makeup-clothing getup that so helped to characterize her in previous seasons. I could go on, but I won’t.
All in all, I was really disappointed.
I felt exactly the same way after the first three but kept watching and it got better. (Or I may have just got used to how fast the pace was as they tried to cram everything in)
It wasn’t as good as the original, which I consider one of the best shows of all time, but the way it was all tied in later on was very clever.
And the very last scene was a shocker. You should finish watching it,
It’s the funeral procession for Pete the Mailman, Michael’s only link to the outside world who dies in Episode 1 of the new season.
I watched five episodes last night. Actually for the first three episodes I wasn’t finding it as funny as S1-3. But by episode 5 I had some episodes of uncontrollable laughter. So I guess it gets better! But I didn’t have any of the objections you did. Character development happened on the first seasons as well, think especially of Buster, and moreover, I am not really sure what you mean by saying there was more character development in the early S4 episodes. Everybody seems to be pretty much exactly the same kind of person that they were before.
I found Michael’s fall uncomfortable too, and I found this to be awesome. Everything that happened was perfectly in keeping with what we already knew about Michael, but we still probably wouldn’t have seen it coming. This is a sign of good writing. It makes me trust that the writers are going to be doing interesting things, in keeping with what’s gone on before, but not just more of the same compared to what’s gone on before.
Something I had to get used to was, it seemed to me the sound levels were very different from the first three seasons. It was a little harder for me to hear people over the background music that occasionally played, and when the narrator spoke while others were also talking, it was more difficult for me to make out what he was saying.
Also I wish they hadn’t changed the theme song.
Wow, all of that effort only to wind up hating the show. Man, that’s kinda sad.
And really funny.
It is funny, and actually totally in keeping with the theme of the show to go to all this work and have it come to nothing, but it’s not like we sat there sobbing into our corn balls all night. Instead, we had a great time watching Star Trek TNG episodes, eating delicious food, and drinking out of the giant juice box.
I have watched the first 5 episodes and am loving it. It is interesting that Ron Howard is now a regular character as well as the narrator. They show his offices at his company, Imagine Entertainment, and I assume those are all sets. Does anyone know if the real company is anywhere as elaborate? I would not think they would need huge offices to run a production company. Do they have a huge staff with a giant office building?
I loved it. It definitely starts slow, but it ramps up brilliantly. The Maeby episode and GOB’s second episode are some of the best of the entire series run.
And IMO, Michael’s fall was fantastic. He’s always been the likeable one, but fundamentally he’s always been as flawed as the rest of his family. He’s just more subtle/ insidious about it, and has up until this point never really had to account for it because he was the long-suffering “good” son. Michael getting punched in the face by George Maharis (nee Michael) really felt like the deserved payoff to something that had been brewing for ten years.
Like others have said, the first three episodes didn’t connect, I wasn’t laughing a lot, and was very worried. But once I got over the “they changed the show! it’s not exactly like the first three seasons!” knee-jerk reaction, I started to enjoy it more.
If we stop comparing it to the previous seasons, and start comparing it to other contemporary comedies on television, it’s pretty easy to see that’s it’s at the top of the heap. There’s just SO MUCH FUNNY, crammed together so densely, that it’s hard to keep up with during the first viewing, but will payoff in the long run.
Rewatching the series, I noticed that Dan Harmon has a five-second cameo in one of the episodes. Really easy to miss.