Phoenix Comicon was a tonnage’o fun as always. David was my travel companion, roommate and life partner (con husband) for a week (also as always). Saturday night we had the very Arrested Development related debate illustrated in the panels above. At least the first two, maybe two and a half panels of it. In the end, we decided that wives were the way to go (plus the hotel Internet was so shitty, I expect it would have been a less than optimal viewing experience… also wives… yes, happy wives). I’ve been home for all of 14 minutes, so I am going to go sit in a familiar chair, in a familiar state that is (at least currently) below 100 degrees outside, eat some familiar leftovers and get my Bluth on.

COMMENTERS: Without getting into spoilers AT ALL, have you watched the new Arrested Development episodes? What are your initial thoughts? I am hearing bad things on twitter, but I am reserving judgement until I’ve seen them for (and blue’d) myself.

Comments (31)

@heroicraptor· 105 weeks ago

Don’t overhype it for yourself. It’s really funny. Look at the good, don’t try to dig for the bad.

1 · active 105 weeks ago

MrSueDenim· 105 weeks ago

Excellent advice. Make sure that you watch them in order to savour the funny. I just finished episode 15 and found it was impressively good how each episode connected with each other.

Season 5/The Movie can’t come out fast enough though. </frustrated-impotent-fanboy-whinge>

Echelon Four· 105 weeks ago

I’ve seen about 6 of them. I thought they were good. The structure of each episode focuses on a particular character, rather than all episodes being everyone. I think that is what is causing the negative reactions. The show is still good, it just doesn’t live up to the impossible standards set for it.

negativsteve· 105 weeks ago

I didn’t care for the “Focus on one character per episode” format at first, but as I watched a few episodes and all of the pieces began to fit together, it began to grow on me. Now that I have burned through the entire season, I really enjoyed it. I am going to wait a week or two and burn through the episodes again, looking for details and subtleties that I missed the first time around.

Jordan· 105 weeks ago

I’ve honesty enjoyed it, even going in as a longtime fan. The whole season is one mega-story that builds upon itself, which means some jokes are only going to be caught on a second viewing. That said, it still feels like Arrested, and the long-term storytelling is enjoyable. The biggest burden is the catch-up for each character, but most have two episodes to spread their wings and have fun.

@borednihilist· 105 weeks ago

Strange; my tweeps have been reacting mostly positively to it, and having seen six episodes, I love it, and have only enjoyed the season more as it has progressed. I like the story structure; it will definitely repay rewatches.

theragingcelt· 105 weeks ago

When you get to Episode 11, you are going to be in for a shock.
I will say nothing else.
Except to make the bold statement that this Season of AD is the “Cloud Atlas” of sitcoms. Make of that statement what you will.

Orion M· 105 weeks ago

Season 4 is brilliant. It’s very dense, and it takes a couple episodes to build before everything starts falling into place. But it’s really, really good.

…it’s much darker than I anticipated. Much darker than anything that happened in the first three seasons. But still brilliant.

(Also, Seth Rogen as young George Sr. He’s very good!)

Dave Kinsella· 105 weeks ago

I’m 10 episodes in and it’s cleverly put together, I like the way the series gradually reveals more details in scenes that have already been shown. Also some very funny moments and great in-jokes from the first three series.

Zach· 105 weeks ago

Its brilliant, but you basically have to watch it all at once to get the brilliant mesh that exists. The pacing is actually wonderful, and I found the format and style to be a really nice break from the predictability of sitcoms.

KRW· 105 weeks ago

It’s SUPER meta. I remember it as being subtle meta before, but now it’s sort of like hard to relax and watch it. Every third second it’s like the creators are screaming “HEY GUYS! WE’RE A TV SHOW! WE’RE TOTALLY A TV SHOW! IT’S FUNNY BECAUSE WE ARE SELF-AWARE AND A TV SHOW!” Other than that, it’s pretty good.

Steven Don· 105 weeks ago

Little typo in the title there. “Convetion”. Anyway, off to watch AD.

redd galaxie· 105 weeks ago

The writing is amazing. I enjoyed the hell out of almost all of it. I didn’t really care for the ending. A few questions were left unanswered, and the end on an awkward note.

DuckAmuck· 105 weeks ago

I saw 1. The “making fun of our situation” jokes are clever as well as cleverly hidden.
My main thing was: wow – I’d forgotten all these people were in it, and THIS is what they look like now?

@sonochamp· 105 weeks ago

I liked this season, but it wasn’t as good as the previous 3. Go win with low expectations, because that’s where most of the disappointment on twitter came from. People set their expectations incredibly high after 6 years that it’s impossible for the show to meet said expectations!

brigidkeely· 105 weeks ago

I haven’t seen it yet because my husband’s all “but I don’t remember the previous seasons enough, so we must now watch them all, but I’m not going to propose this until the latest, newest season is out!” like a huge asshole. The promo looked really disappointing, though.

Cole· 105 weeks ago

This is a show I’ve been with since the second episode aired, and I was not disappointed. The altered structure means that there’s less progression per episode than many people may be used to, but we have half a decade of catching up to.

I loved it. A perfect balance of what makes Arrested Development what it is and new ideas and structure to keep things interesting.

@EmMaeKay· 105 weeks ago

I’m enjoying the new episodes immensely! There’s a wonderful mix of throwbacks to the existing jokes, and some new funny stuff as well. I don’t fully understand the flack, I guess.

Red· 105 weeks ago

It’s okay. I’m not rolling on the floor laughing like I used to be, but I don’t regret seeing it through either.

Candace· 105 weeks ago

I haven’t seen the show at all, I just wanted to say the 3rd panel is hilarious! The facial expressions, the body language – perfect!

deadrobot· 105 weeks ago

I dunno. I think “Sex with a man” would possibly enrage your spouses.

1 · active 105 weeks ago

Ali· 105 weeks ago

That was the punchline.

WorldMaker· 105 weeks ago

Binged over the weekend and thought it was great. It tells one continuous story (the last 5 years in the history of the Bluths) and so there was a strong temptation to binge all of it, which you may or may not want to try to avoid.

Ali· 105 weeks ago

I saw it. Loved it. Wish we got a little more tying-up of plot threads (especially GOB’s) but it was pretty great overall. No chicken dance though.

Liam· 105 weeks ago

So you played with David’s Transformers?

1 · active 104 weeks ago

The Unknown FB· 104 weeks ago

There may have been some shortpacked hijinks.

neminem· 105 weeks ago

Yep, that was me, only I was the one who made my girlfriend not watch it without me.

I’ve now watched about half of it, and I agree with the general consensus so far that the first couple episodes weren’t as good as the average AD episode, but subsequent episodes so far have not only been quite up to part with the best of them, but also retroactively made the first couple way funnier, too.

1 · active 105 weeks ago

neminem· 105 weeks ago

(Well, and she didn’t, obviously, decide to instead get it on with a girl while I was gone. At least, not to my knowledge.)

Videostoreguy· 104 weeks ago

Frankly, I was just happy to see AD back. It was like pizza: even when it’s bad, it’s still pretty good. But the fact that we may never see new ones again weighs on me.

1 · active 97 weeks ago

emperorbailey· 97 weeks ago

You will see new ones.

Chaucer59· 99 weeks ago

Unsexiest bromance moment ever.

Not cool cool cool cool at all. 

TV actors live under the constant threat of their livelihoods being ripped away by some faceless executive. Which I suppose is better than having their faces ripped away by some lifeless executive. It has to be an unbelievable shock going from a professionally unemployed actor to making 10’s of thousands of dollars a week to wondering how you’re going to afford your pool boy’s Lexus payment when essentially not of the decisions that affect those major life changes are in your control. Hollywood is basically a glorified temp service broadcast to the world.

I’m a big Community fan, and it’s a shame to see NBC shelve their second best show (sorry Abed-heads, but 30 Rock is perfect) because not a wide enough swath of middle America can relate to its deep pop culture references, bizarre concept episodes and general geekiness. It’s one of the only shows actually pushing the boundries of what can be done with a comedy on network TV. I guess the problem is if you keep pushing boundaries, you eventually hit a wall. I hope the show rebounds and comes back stronger than ever, but it might just be too quirky, smart and genuinely funny to survive. At least we still have Whitney, right? What do you bring to your Whitney viewing parties? Chocolate? Red wine? A bullet?

• TV Bits: ‘Community’ Gets Benched and More
• The 10 geekiest moments of Community
• “Philosophy of Film and Television Narrative”: How NBC’s ‘Community’ Shatters the Boundaries Between Reality and Fiction
• ‘Community‘ Creator Fully Aware What We’re Doing Whenever Alison Brie Jiggles

COMMENTERS: Lament the seemingly inevitable demise of Community, or dare to proclaim why you won’t miss it once it’s gone (is it because you had your human heart replaced with a can of powdered turnips?). Feel free to post links to your Inspector Spacetime fanfic in the comments as well.

If you’ve never met the real Eli and you would like to get to know him better, just watch this.

“Machine Girl” is basically a love letter to Eli’s brain written in arm stump blood, with a machine gun, on your face.

Last thing: I was talking to the Internet and I asked him what it would be like if an electric carving knife was sodomizing a watermelon. Then I cried because I knew we would never know. The Internet smiled and said, “I thought you’d know me better by now.” Then he unzipped his pants and raped my eye-holes with this video.

The only thing that would make it better would be someone screaming in German throughout the whole clip. THANKS, INTERNET!!! YOU”VE BLINDED ME WITH YOUR PENIS AGAIN!