Latest Fox comedy 'Arrested Development' is so funny it's doomed

10/31/03 | Color | Advance | 35p9 by 9.27i | D1 | Datebook | burr, 8437 | Arrested31 10/31/03 | Color | Advance | 35p9 by 9.27i | D1 | Datebook | burr, 8437 | Arrested31 Image 1 of / 1 Caption Close Latest Fox comedy 'Arrested Development' is so funny it's doomed 1 / 1 Back to Gallery

Arrested Development: Comedy. 9:30 p.m. Sundays, Fox.

There are moments in "Arrested Development," Fox's new sitcom, that are pants-wettingly funny. There are jokes and scenarios that bend you over in gleeful agony. All of a sudden, with this last new fall series offering -- hope having been beaten out of all of us -- we get one of the most hysterically ridiculous half hours on television.

There hasn't been a network show this funny since "Andy Richter Controls the Universe." Hey, wait a minute. Didn't Fox air that -- and cancel it? Didn't "Andy Richter" end up in the dustbin of humor history (with loads of other really good Fox series)? Must we temper our enthusiasm with the caveat that a show as brilliantly defiant of the sitcom rules as "Arrested Development" is asking for the Nielsen gods to smite it? Isn't there one honest person at Fox who will spare the ax on a show that, in a mere 22 minutes, wipes out the laughless hours wasted on everything else this fall? For God's sake, we're a desperate horde of wretches. Let us laugh with stupid abandon. Let there be a counterbalance in the world to "Good Morning, Miami."

Look at it this way. There are 48 sitcoms on broadcast television -- wait, scratch that. Fox just killed "Luis," so now there are 47. How many are really and truly hilarious? Not shows that merely make you smile. Or chuckle. Television is littered with useless, cheap chuckles. No, how many times have you laughed hard and often?

Exactly.

"Arrested Development" is about the Bluth family, which built its fortune by developing tract homes. Unfortunately, at the retirement party for George

Bluth Sr. (Jeffrey Tambor), we find out that he's cheated investors and is headed for jail. This is bad news to son Michael (Jason Bateman), about the only sane one in the family and the expected heir to the reins of the company, who's now living in the attic of a model home with his 13-year-old son George Michael.

Before going any further, it should be noted that Bateman is stunningly great in this series -- pitch-perfect throughout. His normalcy and just-below- the-surface anger make the rest of the eclectically hilarious Bluths ever more funny.

THE BLUTHS' ONLY HOPE

Just as Michael is hoping to control the company, his father gives the power to wife Lucille (Jessica Walter), a coldhearted socialite who, along with the rest of the family, has been using the company credit card at will. Furious, Michael wants to leave. He loathes this dysfunctional assemblage of clowns. And this slap is the last insult.

But they need him. And it's not too hard to see why: Sister Lindsay (Portia De Rossi) is a spendaholic rebel who married a geeky therapist, the sexually nebulous Tobias (David Cross). Brother George Oscar Bluth II (Will Arnett), who likes to call himself GOB (pronounced Job; it gets funnier, so go with it),

is a hack "illusionist" with no redeeming value; and youngest brother Buster (Tony Hale) is, well, regressive, and up until the implosion of the Bluth empire has essentially been taking classes in wildly useless things.

Michael's the only person who can save the Bluth business. With Dad in jail -- and loving it -- he sets out to save the company and the family but finds their incompetence nearly insurmountable.

There will be inevitable comparisons to "The Royal Tenenbaums," and they won't be entirely inaccurate -- there's a subtleness and irony that fuels the comedy of both. Better to be compared to "The Royal Tenenbaums" than, say, "Dumb and Dumber," which most of the current comedies could be connected to in less than four degrees.

"Arrested Development" is narrated by Ron Howard (by accident, actually -- he was filling in on the pilot and his voice just worked), whose Imagine Television created this wonderfully daring series. Smart people are behind it. The question will be -- how about the rest of the country? There's a reason so many of Fox's most daringly original series are now canceled gems. Quirky is great, but broad is what sustains comedy on American television in 90 percent of the cases.

NO PHONY LAUGHS

Where "Arrested Development" mines its hilarity is in a faux documentary style. There is no laugh track. It's shot on a shaky single camera, giving it a film quality. There are jokes on top of jokes, some subtle, others ridiculously blatant. In the pilot, Michael's mother, Lucille, says, "Look what the homosexuals have done to me." Michael says, looking at her hair: "You can't just comb that out and reset it?" A typical sitcom would have played it broad, with a roaring laugh track. Here it flies past, unremarked upon. It's damn funny, sure, but what Lucille really means is that a boat full of gay protesters is upstaging her husband's retirement party. "Everything is so dramatic and flamboyant," she says, seething. "It makes me just want to set myself on fire."

Now, that's real comic beauty, and Walter, as the mother, pulls it off perfectly (in fact, the entire cast is expert at giving their roles the right spin). There's a delicate comedic dance going on here, rivaled only by BBC America's "The Office." And that's high praise indeed.

Even the broad humor works. In the second episode there's a great running gag where the doltish Buster all of a sudden comes out of his shell and reels off some wholly inappropriate bleeped-out swearing. Just the prolonged nature of the joke is achingly funny, and the look on Bateman's face as he listens only heightens the laughter.

But this bounty is also worrisome. The two funniest shows on all of television are "The Office" and "Curb Your Enthusiasm," and neither is required to rake in 10 or more million viewers to stay alive. In fact, it might be delusional to think "Arrested Development" will appeal to the masses.

Unfortunately, it has to. Fox is an advertiser-supported channel beholden to the Nielsen numbers. It will not heed our aforementioned cheap plea for charity. That Fox keeps banging its head on the wall with all of these risky, aggressively challenging comedies is admirable. But how frustrating is it going to be -- not to be too pessimistic here -- if "Arrested Development" doesn't find an audience? Must we have 47 sitcoms of which only a handful are tolerable? No wonder discerning viewers (not to mention TV producers) are leaping over to cable. Every time a show like "Arrested Development" falters, it chases away other sophisticated comedic premises.

And yet, who knows? "Arrested Development" is in Fox's powerful Sunday sitcom lineup. And there are other examples -- well, two other examples, "Scrubs" and "Malcolm in the Middle" -- of single-camera comedies with a different comedic take that have thrived. Maybe 3 for 47 should breed optimism.

It's just painful and depressing, here in the very last fall series, to come upon something truly inspired and immediately fear for its life.