Why You Should (Probably) Let Your Favorite Show Die Jessica Leahy Columbia College Chicago (2017)
Watching the new season of Arrested Development by May 26th was a terrifying deadline to meet not just because my friends had planned an elaborate party complete with frozen bananas and blue body paint, but also because I wasn’t ready for something new. Don’t get me wrong, Arrested Development’s fascinating and complex characters—who were actually hilarious without trying too hard—and their plotlines—which were effortlessly executed— quickly hooked me. I was just terrified that the reboot would do something to taint my love for the original series. Unfortunately, that’s exactly what season four did.
Granted, there are some hilarious bits in the new series; Gob’s plotline made me laugh to the point of tears on multiple occasions. But the season wasn’t hilarious enough to make me marathon it in one night—it was just way too much for anyone to properly process, especially considering how “all over the place” the season was. And once the end credits rolled across Watercooler Journal
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my screen a few days later, Netflix already badgering me into similar TV shows, I couldn’t help but feel crushing disappointment. It took me a while to voice my concerns about the fourth season. I wanted so desperately to love it just as much as everyone else seemed to, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that there was something missing from this new season, the same thing that made Arrested Development the amazing series it was. After finally discussing my qualms with the new season in a class many months later, I realized what was missing: the Bluth family was not a family anymore. The new format had ripped them apart and isolated them in their own episodes. This completely violated the core of the show. These individual people share virtually nothing in common and barely interact with each other, while in previous seasons, AD characters complement one another in shared scenes, sometimes even taking little quirks from each other like you would see in any family.
“…I realized what was missing: the Bluth family was not a family anymore.” No show that ends with (almost) all loose ends tied can ever hope to come back gracefully, especially with a massive six-year gap to fill. The fourth season was messy, confusing, and frustrating; it felt like it was trying to create a lot of new content while grasping desperately at what made the original show so popular. More importantly, it did not have what the original series had: complete apathy for approval. The original Arrested Development never cared if its content defied the ordinary or stepped on norms (see George Michael kissing his first cousin Maeby in the pilot). The show’s fearlessness created its devoted fan base; fans loved the dry and apathetic humor of the characters and the show. It felt like the reboot relied so heavily on approval of that fan base that it practically grabbed fans by the shoulders and shook them violently while screaming, “TELL ME YOU LOVE ME!” Granted, part of my disappointment with this resurrection stemmed from my high expectations. While I knew it was unrealistic to expect so much out of the fourth season, part of me still held on to the hope that the new season would be just as good as the original. There is no way that you can bring the entire original cast back together and not have something fantastic come of it, right? Arrested Development had to be different from the other fan-servicing reboots of Watercooler Journal
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shows that came before. My childlike optimism and love for the series both desperately needed it to be the same. But I guess the simple lesson here is this: it wasn’t.
image credits, in order: ŠNetflix, via http://www.ign.com Watercooler Journal
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