The Emotional Heart of Arrested Development
I first discovered Arrested Development my senior year of high school, a couple years after it went off the air. It blew me at the time. Sorry, I forgot to say away. It blew me away at the time, and I’ve developed a deeper appreciation for it over the years.
The initial three-season run is still the best thing that’s ever been put on television. It’s the smartest, funniest show I’ve ever seen, and nothing really comes that close. The fourth season is also very good — the original cut, not the dumb chronological recut they released a few years ago — but it’s a very different show and doesn’t have the same level of humor. The fifth season was extremely disappointing, and I don’t recommend watching it unless you’re an Arrested Development completist like myself.
Anyway, let’s get back to seasons 1–3. The show is an absurd family comedy, a sharp workplace satire, and a scathing political commentary all rolled into one impossible sit-com. Somehow it manages to do all three impeccably well. The sheer volume of jokes in each episode is astounding. Laugh at one joke, and you’ll miss the next two. Yet quantity somehow does not come at the expense of quality. Each episode is overflowing with so many hilarious, quotable lines that even the most devoted fans are caught off guard by missed or forgotten jokes upon rewatch.
I pick up new things every time I rewatch the show. I’ve always admired its intelligence and wit, but the thing that stood out to me this time is its emotional resonance. The below scene that closes out the third episode of season three impacted me on a different level than it has in previous viewings, and it changed the way I look at the show as a whole.
I’ve never felt much compassion or empathy for the ridiculously incompetent members of the Bluth family. Maybe that’s because the show’s breakneck pace doesn’t give viewers a chance to dwell on its characters’ troubles, or maybe I’m just getting soft in my old age. Either way, watching this scene the other night felt like a punch to the gut.
The core driving motivation of every Bluth is a futile longing for the approval of detached, uncaring parents. Gob desperately wants his father’s love and attention and will do anything he asks at the drop of a hat, even if it means betraying his brother Michael, the only person that actually kind of cares about him. Michael wants nothing more than his father’s approval of his work as president of the family business. Lindsay just wants her dad to tell her she’s pretty, and Buster, well, Buster has a disturbing Oedipus complex that prevents him from ever really growing up. At no point do any of them realize that the love of their parents is unattainable. They just keep pushing that boulder up the same impossibly steep hill.
Meanwhile, aside from Buster, they all have their own offspring desperately seeking their approval, but the Bluth siblings are barely capable of even noticing their children because their parents never noticed them. This dynamic creates countless comedic situations, but underneath all the quick-witted humor, it’s pretty depressing. George Michael, Maeby, and Steve Holt! are doomed to live the same sad, lonely existence as their parents.
The older I get and the more I learn about the world, the more I realize that no one has any idea what they’re doing. As a kid, you think adults have everything figured out. Then you become one, and you realize that no one does. We’re all just stupid children blindly staggering through life making the same mistakes that humankind has made for thousands of years. Collectively as a species, we never really learn anything. We still fight pointless wars, mistreat people that are different, and pursue our own self-interest above all else. We’re stuck in a perpetual state of arrested development.
At first glance, the wealthy, idiotic Bluths don’t seem particularly relatable, but the show utilizes their incessant adolescence to illustrate universal struggles that we all experience. It captures the feelings of doubt and insecurity known all too well by adults trying to live the best life they can without a true understanding of what that looks like.
Michael Dixon is a mild mannered accountant by day and a mild mannered movie watcher by night. He will not do your taxes for you. He lives in Austin, Texas with his lovely television and collection of fine whiskies. You can’t purchase his book anywhere because it doesn’t exist.
