Arrested Development

I want to comment a little about Arrested Development, a show I accidentally discovered a year ago around this time.

Jason Bateman stars as Michael Bluth, the level headed/ground to Earth son of George Bluth Sr. who is arrested and jailed for defrauding investors with his company, a major home builder in southern California. So Michael takes over the business affairs, as the other members of his spoiled family are absolutely clueless and obnoxious on how life is without patronage of the Bluth Company.

Michael's mother Lucille is somewhat of a socialite, who only cares about maintaining her appearance and high life standards. Although she denies it, she cares about and shows a lot of respect towards Michael. However the story is different with the rest of her children:

Lindsey -portrayed by a great performance from Portia de Rossi-, is Michael's twin sister; spoiled, selfish and materialistic, one can tell she is her mother's younger image. Byron "Buster" is the younger of the Bluth's. He is a nerd who has majored in almost every science a college has to offer, however his social skills are terrible, perhaps because at 32 he still lives under his mother's roof. He also thinks you can ride a bus and pay with a $100 bill.

At one point in the series and in a very freaky accident, Buster Buth loses one of his hands.
It is then replaced by a hook, which prevents him from poking his nose.

However my two (and I think everyone's) preferred characters who steal the show every time they are on screen are George Oscar "GOB" Bluth and Dr. Tobias Funke. GOB is Michael's older brother and a frustrated amateur magician. He is named President of the Bluth company, but he gets extremely pretentious and irresponsible with anything that surrounds him, including firing all the Bluth company employees at the annual Bluth Company Christmas party. GOB's best friends are Michael and an african-american puppet called Franklin, who works as a pimp and a part-time singer.

GOB poses as President, running the Bluth company with Franklin by his side. GOB convinced the Board of Directors of hring him by telling them that a hundred Dollar bill is no more than a hundred pennies.

Tobias is Lindsey's husband, a psychiatrist who lost his medical license for administrating CPR to a man who was in fact just sleeping. Seeking for a new career as an actor, Tobias turns to Carl Weathers (yes, THE Apollo Creed from Rocky), to help him as his new "acting teacher". While struggling through many parts in various television shows, Lindsey kicks him out, so he decides to disguise himself as a British nanny and gets a job as a housekeeper at the Bluth home, primarly to stay in touch with his daugher Maebe. Needless to say, the family figures this out immediately, though he is completely unaware that they know about his plot.

Tobias as a British nanny offers Michael and Lindsey to have
"a banger in the mouth... oh wait...a sausage in the mouth" for breakfast

Other regular cast members include Michael's son, George Michael (not to be confused with the singer/songwriter), the already mentioned George Sr, Maebe, and Barry Zuckercorn, the Bluth's company inept lawyer, portrayed by the great "Fonz" Henry Wrinkler. Notable guest appearances apart from Carl Weathers himself, include Julia Louis Dreyfus, Ben Stiller, Martin Short and Oscar winner Charlize Theron, all in stellar performances. Even Jason's sister, Justine Bateman makes an appearance, in a great episode ironically called "Family Ties" (the joke being for those who don't get it, that Justine starred in Family Ties, a great sitcom from the 80s).

Against his better judgement after scoring a one-night stand, Michael Bluth ends up dating Maggie Lizer (Dreyfus), who happens to be blind and also, the prosecutor of George Sr Bluth's case. Btw, Michael himself fantasizes of being a lawyer.

The strengths of this show include a supreme script with unique and creative pieces of dialog; extreme attention to detail and of course wonderful chemistry of all cast members. To be fair and honest, the pace starts a bit slow during the first four episodes; I guess it's because there are so many characters -all of them interesting in their own way- it is hard to favor the story of the show on a particular one. After episode four, five, six at most, you should be already cruising and enjoying the non-sense situations that happen within the Bluth family, including Michael staging a fake drug deal to teach his son a lesson about taking drugs in order to improve his grades in school, and GOB taking the family yacht to escape to Portugal, South America, and then purposely sinking it to claim the insurance money.

From riches to rags. How did the wealthy Bluth family end up driving this stairway car?
Watch the show and you'll find out!

Arrested Development won several awards, from Emmys, to Critics choice and on and on,. However it was cancelled after three seasons due to questionable ratings. Many blame it on poor marketing, which may be once again a reminder that no matter how good quality your product is, your promotional mix always has to be better than what the product is.

In a nutshell, if you want to have a great time and see one of the most unusual TV series ever, get yourself all seasons of Arrested Development, and then come back to thank me for the advise.