The
critically-acclaimed television show Arrested Development,
which premiered in 2003 on the Fox Network, is
quaintly described in Ron Howard’s introductory voice
over as, “The story of a wealthy family, who lost everything,
and the one son who had no choice but to keep them all together.”
But
it’s really a post-Enron Soap, with a large cast
of oddball family members taking irreverent potshots at one
another, the upper-class, and at the monolithic notion of family.
The
clan is held together by Michael Bluth (Jason Bateman), the
most functional member of a whacked out wealthy family that
is thrown into economic crisis when their father, George Bluth,
Sr. (Jeffrey Tambor) is sent to prison by the SEC for fraud.
George’s imprisonment brings the Bluth family gravy train
to a screeching halt, and Michael must curb his family’s
outrageous spending habits while raising his own teenage son,
George Michael (Michael Cera) to be a hard-working, law-abiding
citizen.
Battling
Michael every step of the way are his manipulative socialite
mother, Lucille Bluth (Jessica Walter), older brother and “illusionist”
(aka magician) G.O.B (Will Arnett), his mother-loving younger
brother Buster (Tony Hale), and Michael’s narcissistic
twin-sister Lindsay (out lesbian actress Portia
de Rossi).
Lindsay
has a family of her own, her husband and wannabe actor, Tobias
Funke (David Cross), and their teenage daughter Maeby (Alia
Shawkat)--the object of cousin George Michael’s burning
desire. When the family business goes belly-up, Michael and
his siblings must live together in one of the poorly-constructed
model homes built by the Bluth Company in planned community,
Sudden Valley.
To
say there’s nothing else like it on television
is an understatement. How many comedies have you seen make a
running joke out of an Oedipus complex?
