In November of 2003, I
was a college junior living in Themiddleofnowhere, Arkansas. I watched exactly
three TV shows that did not involve sports:
1. Friends - Nearing its end, Friends was still
must-see-TV for about 100 billion people;
2. Late Night with Conan O'Brien -
Conan was the only talk show host that I or any of my friends watched (a fact
that still holds true);
3. Reruns of The Simpsons - I can't
tell you when the last time was that I watched a new episode of The Simpsons but from
2001-2005, I watched at least one rerun every weekday.
Within the next year,
I would add shows like Lost, 24, and Scrubs to my viewing schedule but in 2003,
that was the extent of it. And really, what else would you expect? I had
classes, friends, social activities, and a list of other things to get to each
week; I was never in my apartment during primetime hours, there was no such
thing as a DVR (top five invention ever, by the way) and besides that, there
was nothing on network television that appealed to me. The truth is, in 2003
there was very little that television had to offer that was aimed at me, the
20-25 year old, white, educated, male. I was too old for teen dramas (though I
would have totally watched Boy
Meets World if it was still on the air at the time) and too young for
the various C.S.I. and Law and Order-type shows.
Sitcoms were in bad shape, not so much dying as simply stale. Sure, people watched
shows like 8 Simple Rules, Yes Dear, and According to Jim but no
one really cared and young viewers were almost non-existent. Friends, Frasier, and Everybody Loves Raymond had
all long-since peaked and would all finish their runs within the next two
seasons. Reality TV had taken over and whereas these days, most of the really
awful reality shows are relegated to vh1 and Bravo, 2003 was a different story.
(Seriously, go look at the lineup from that year. DISGUSTING.) I wanted nothing
to do with network television and sitcoms in particular and that was the
general consensus among almost everyone I knew.
At some point that
year, I started seeing advertisements for a new comedy called Arrested Development. Even in
the ads, you could tell that something was different here. I can't remember if
they ran trailer-like ads for the show or just the typical, "Watch
Arrested Development" blurbs but whatever Fox did, it worked on me. As its
debut date neared, I found myself becoming genuinely excited for the premiere
though I was completely unsure of what to expect. That was part of the allure
then and it's a component of what would make the show so great: you never knew what to
expect. For perhaps the first time ever, I made a personal appointment to
sit and watch the show's pilot.
Very few TV shows have
the ability to suck you in from the first episode. I generally make a point to
not judge a show based on the pilot because pilots are inherently flawed and
often terrible. Arrested
Development, however, was the exception. The pilot is a perfect introduction
to the world of the Bluths, the large family at the center of the show, and by
the end of the episode, I was completely hooked. It was funny, witty, and above
all, exceptionally smart. The characters were well-defined, each of them
complex in their own right yet resolute in their various absurdities. I'm not
sure I've ever seen a sitcom that didn't have at least one character that
wasn't quite as likeable or that got on my nerves. Arrested Development was
that show. If you put a gun to my head and forced me to choose my least
favorite character from the show, I'd probably just end up breaking down and
weeping because they're all INCREDIBLE. It would be a Sophie's Choice for me and I'm only half kidding.
The writing was even
better than the characters and the amazing actors who played them. The jokes
flew left and right but unlike any other sitcom I'd ever seen, they weren't
left sitting out there for the studio audience to pick like so much low hanging
fruit. Rather, they were thrown out at a rapid pace, layered one over the other
so that it was very possible to miss them if you weren't paying close
attention. There were plenty of jokes that anyone could get but the best ones,
the ones that really stuck with you, forced you to think for a second before
laughing. Arrested Development was the first show that
actually respected me,
that treated me like I was smart. Whereas Friends took each joke 95 percent of the
way toward the audience (not to bash on Friends;
best sitcom of its type in my opinion), Arrested
Development only went half-way, beckoning the audience to jump in and
make the rest of the trip on their own. I felt smarter when I caught a tiny
joke that CLEARLY the censors hadn't understood and it was if the show's
creators and cast gave me a tiny wink each time, a "knowing nod" or a
kudos for catching on.
Somehow, though, the
show never became pretentious or so cool that it was no longer cool. That's a
vital and often overlooked part of what makes Arrested
Development so special. We live in a society that makes a routine out
of propping up something that we consider to be "underrated" so much
that we eventually get sick of it and turn, calling it "overrated."
It happened with The Office,
not to mention almost every band that has ever had a crossover hit. Something
is cool until it realizes that it is cool and then it gets douchy, losing its
coolness. That never happened with Arrested
Development because no matter how "inside" the jokes became,
the show was never condescending or snobby in its coolness. Maybe more
importantly, it never missed.
Three seasons brought us 53 episodes and not once was there a misfire. At
times, the showed seemed to toy with jumping the shark and then somehow made a
joke out of jumping the shark (this actually happened in an episode and it's
one of the most glorious moments in the history of television) and kept right
on truckin'. If I were to draw the "career" trajectory of Arrested Development on a
line graph, the line would start with the pilot episode somewhere around
"95 Percent Awesome" and never drop below that mark. (It would
actually be a pretty boring graph, come to think of it.) 53 episodes, all of
them incredible. No other show has ever or most likely will ever do that.
Each and every week, I
would think the show had peaked and each and every week they'd come back with a
better, more absurd episode that blew me away. If I had to do something on
Sunday night, I'd record the new episode on my VCR (that really was a thing at
one time; Google it) and run home to watch it as soon as I could. I annoyed the
crap out of everyone around me about how good Arrested
Development was and literally begged my friends to watch it. When the
first season came out on DVD, I immediately purchased it and threatened bodily
harm on the family members of two friends until they both agreed to watch it.
We ran through the entire season in less than a weekend and they were both
hooked.
And that is perhaps
the most frustrating part of the Arrested
Development experience: everyone who watched it loved it...but
no one watched it.
While I had been
preaching the show's merits from the beginning, no one seemed to care. The
ratings were poor and Fox (in their infinite wisdom) had no idea how to market
a show that was smarter than anything that had EVER been on network television.
Make no mistake, this was a tough sell but Fox still botched it. Arrested Development could
have been the cornerstone of a comedy lineup but Fox couldn't figure out how to
make that work, nor could the network surround it with the right shows. The excruciating
thing is that no other network at the time would've taken a chance on a show
like Arrested Development and
yet Fox was the worst network when it came to allowing a show to grow an
audience. That's kind of a nasty catch-22 there; Arrested Development would
have had an opportunity to thrive at NBC but at the time, NBC would never take
a chance. In its three seasons, Arrested
Development received 22 Emmy
nominations, winning six. That would have been enough to give it some breathing
room at another network but Fox didn't care about Emmys. In the third season,
the show was given "one last chance" to draw ratings (which the show
again played off of beautifully) and then promptly put the remaining new episodes
up against the opening ceremonies of the 2006 Summer Olympics. It was then
promptly cancelled. I cried for a week.
The truth is Arrested Development was
the guinea pig, the first of a new brand of sitcoms that paved the way for
everything to come but couldn't survive the fight. It was innovative in a way
that neither the masses nor the networks were ready for. It was simply ahead of
its time. The Fox network of today probably would give the show a real chance
to find an audience rather than backing away from it so quickly and moreover,
more viewers are primed for the show's brand of comedy, due in large part to
the number of shows that can trace their origins directly to it. There is no Office, Modern Family, Big Bang Theory, or
(especially) 30 Rock without Arrested Development. That may
seem like an opinion but I'd be willing to claim it to be scientific fact
because it's the absolute truth in my mind. All of these shows (and many
others) belong to a new brand of sitcom that has the audacity to treat the
audience like they might actually have brains capable of thinking through a
particularly clever joke. That doesn't happen without the influence of Arrested Development.
wow! a GREAT wrap of Arrested Development. gonna have to save this page. You're right. It really served as a guinea pig and trailblazer for so many of the sitcoms out now.
ReplyDeletesuper excited for the next chapter
It's amazing to me how many people watch and love this show now. So stinking good. Thanks for the comments!
ReplyDelete