Having recently re-watched Arrested Development season 4 after the remix and watching the first half of season 5, Netflix has officially killed Arrested Development for me. I have removed the show from my queue and will not bother to watch the second half of season 5 if they even make it at all. The show used to be quick and funny and kept you laughing the whole time, but under Netflix it’s slow and boring and I can count on one hand the number of times I laughed per season. It also used to be a subtle jab at the political aspects of the day under the Bush administration, but now it’s just out of touch and not even subtle about the political message with it’s showing Trump talking about his wall. Since I’m moving away from Netflix (read that story here) I might buy the first three seasons on Amazon just to enjoy the show when it was actually good, but I think I’ll wait until the bad taste in my mouth is gone from seasons 4&5. (here’s a link to that if you also want to buy it)
Season 4 (2013)
Ok having everyone in a different episode, not interacting with each other, was just a bad idea. The whole magic of the show as the group acting together, when everyone is apart it’s just stupid obnoxious people not being funny, and that’s not anything people want to watch, and it’s really not what the show was built on. But I have to give Netflix and everyone involved credit because the owned it, for about 5 years then they didn’t.
Season 4 (Remix)
As if season 4 wasn’t bad enough as it was, someone got the bright idea to cut the episodes up to make the episodes more like the originals with only a few REALLY bad green screen clips added as filler. So now they’ve taken an already bad season and tried to fix it without re-shooting which is like doing a bad job painting a car then throwing on some clear coat and expecting that to fix it, it’s still going to look like crap but now the clear coat calls more attention to your poor work.
Season 5
I had high hopes for season 5, maybe that’s why I hate it so much now. While it was nice to see the show back to it’s original format there were just to many things that bugged me about this season to make it enjoyable.
(SPOILERS)
Michael & George Michael – Michael always kind of domineered George Michael and that was what led to some of the funnies moments, but now with George Michael having a backbone, and Michael seeming like he’s lost his backbone while still trying to dominate his son just isn’t funny.
Gob – The whole Gob is gay thing seemed like an after thought, like it wasn’t really thought out and just added at the last minute to fill time. I get what they were going for, the whole repressed gay man is overly sexual with women to compensate for his feelings thing, but it just fell flat for me.
Maeby – The whole fun of Maeby was that she kept pulling bigger and bigger scams, now she’s just going back to high school and living in a retirement home. You can’t just do a full 180 on a character like that and expect it to work.
Tobias – Tobias just seemed pathetic this season, making fun of him wasn’t funny this time. There wasn’t really the crazy antics like before, now it was just a sad lonely man looking for recognition and being put down and used. Nothing about Tobias made me laugh, it just made me sad for him.
(END OF SPOILERS)
Conclusion
I’ve lost faith in Netflix’s ability to save Arrested Development, and will look back on the first three seasons as the only true seasons of the show and try my best to forget seasons 4 & 5 even exist. If the people at Netflix were smart they’d just come out and say that due to Portia de Rossi retiring from acting, Jeffrey Tambor’s Harassment allegations, and low viewership (they can make it up there aren’t ratings for Netflix shows anyway) they’ve decided to end the show. Hopefully they will realize the amount of damage they’ve done to a once great show and put it out of it’s misery, but I highly doubt they will do that and will continue to beat the dead horse to milk every last cent out of it, because that’s what Hollywood does!