A (largely) spoiler-free review of Arrested Development: Season Four

A lot has changed in the last seven years. The housing bubble has collapsed, George W. Bush has evaporated back into the mist of evil he originally coalesced out of, and the mist has offered up two other gurning puppets called Cameron and Clegg to take his place.

Now you can add ‘the availability of the cast of Arrested Development’ to that list.

I understand that times have changed and that Michael Cera has gone from playing George Michael in Arrested Development to playing George Michael in endless independent films with handwriting on the cover and quirky titles like ‘The 1001 Tasks of Ludicrous Whizzler.’ Not to mention the fact that Portia de Rossi is now – apparently – Ellen’s full time wife.

But having each episode of the new series focus on a different Bluth to fit around the cast’s complex schedules removes the source of a great deal of the comedy.

Arrested Development’s humour came from watching Michael Bluth attempt to deal with the continuous, daily mess created by Gob’s failed magic attempts, Tobias’s failed auditions, Lindsay’s idiotic flirting, his son’s stilted attempts to assert his independence (and get off with his cousin) and his father’s constant attempts to hijack the company, usually from prison. Or the attic. Their inevitable, regular horn-locking created effervescent, natural comedy.

Now that those horns aren’t clashing as much, the jokes seem a lot more forced.

What’s worse, Michael Bluth – when taken away from the balancing force of his family this series – seems like a fairly sad figure. He used to be the glue that held the programme together, the straight man, the foil, the alka-seltzer of sanity dropped into the broth of madness created by the rest of the Bluths, but in the first episode of season four, he’s a deluded, washed up guy sharing a college dorm with his son while trying to take a distance learning class in law in Phoenix.

That’s not to say that there weren’t any nice touches. It was nice to see Lucille Two and Barry Zuckerkorn again, both as dizzy and incompetent as ever. Also, the report from the UK (‘Wee BBC2’) in episode one was a pleasing nod to the whole Mr. F fiasco, and there were several callbacks to Michael’s appearance in his school play (‘You’re a crook, Captain Hook!).

Unfortunately this sort of reference acted as a bit of a double edged sword, reminding the viewer of funnier, slightly less peculiar times. The new series is almost a sketch show, a series of interlocking vignettes with startlingly bad sound (unless it’s just my TV) and an overly convoluted plot that’s designed to knit the individual episodes together in the end, but that just leads to confusion in the short term.

Goodness knows what a brand new viewer would make of it, but no one has to be a brand new viewer given the fact that all three previous series are also appearing on Netflix. It’s catering entirely for the converted, possibly one of the first programmes ever to get an entirely free pass when it comes to the creation of fan-pleasing nonsense.

The good news is that it’s still funny and cheerfully strange, but not quite as rich, varied and subtle as the original. If seasons one to three were an aromatic Caffe Nero cappuccino, season four is one of those powdery Millicano sachets that smell faintly of ammonia and taste almost – but not quite – entirely unlike fresh coffee. Though crucially they still deliver that vital caffeine hit.

That’s season four in a nutshell. It’s the same voiceover, the same silly scenarios, the same cast. It satisfies on many levels, but it’s a different kind of drink.