DVD Talk Forum - It was Arrested Development...

Quote:

Originally Posted by Michael Corvin

I just got my first iPod yesterday, the 60GB Video. I have zero interest in the video function, but in commemoration, the first thing I put on it was the series finale of Arrested Development. :up:

I just got the 60 gig as well, and this thread has inspired me to put every episode on it so i can always have Arrested Development on me.

I've avoided this thread thread forever since i didn't want to face the truth, ... just wanted to say that, don't know what to add to this.

Heres a review I wrote for my college newspaper right after the season finale (before it was officially cancelled), hope you enjoy it.

After a long fight and numerous near cancellations, the Bluth family has finally left TV, well sort of. Arrested Development ran for three years on the Fox Network, but that all came to an end on Friday when the final four episodes were dumped in a single two hour block against the opening ceremonies of the Olympics.
Arrested Development became the show that couldn’t get a break. After low ratings in its first season, Fox decided to give the critical darling a second chance and placed it in the middle of its Sunday night line up, where shows tend to do well. Unfortunately ABC decided to air a new show against it, Desperate Housewives. Instead of Arrested Development taking off and becoming the show to watch, the housewives took over TV and nearly cancelled everything that aired against it.
The third, and possible final, season produced some of the lowest ratings for a network show ever. The fans rallied behind the show, watching it on multiple TV’s trying to boost ratings, but nothing worked. The final straw occurred when Fox’s new baby, Prison Break, aired in the same timeslot and saw a massive ratings boost.
The Bluth family may just be too crass for the heartland, who would rather watch reruns of According to Jim. Arrested Development followed a family hopefully the complete opposite of your own. They all lied to and fought each others in a variety of comical situations that you had to watch the entire show in order to get the full impact. The jokes were smart and came at you one after another but some you didn’t understand until a second or third viewing.
The final four episodes presented a bittersweet ending to the show by masterfully bringing it all back to where the show began. The main plot running through the show for the past three years has been Michael Bluth (Jason Bateman) taking over his family’s real estate development company after his father is put on trial for treason. The family is a wild bunch of rich idiots, like Gob (Will Arnett) the eldest son who wants to become a magician or Lucille (Jessica Walter), the matriarch of the family who has such theories as you must finish a bottle of vodka right after you open it or else it will go bad.
The episodes found the Bluths coming together in there own fashion to save the family and finally clear their father’s name. At one point a few members of the family are riding in a taxi in Iraq when the driver informs them that the ride took so long due to the “Cheney Expressway” being backed up all the way to “Halliburton Road.”
Despite the show ending with an epilogue, there are reports flying around saying that Showtime is in talks to pick up the show once Fox officially lets it go. Fox can’t be blamed for cancelling the show; they kept it on air for two more seasons than any other network would have. Showtime realizes the cult audience that has flocked to the show, and wants to bring those faithful viewers to the pay service.
Series creator Mitchell Hurwitz may not want to continue the show now that the final episodes on Fox have aired. The main story line has been solved, but a few more remain open. The show could go on and nobody would complain, but it just felt like the end.
Whether or not the show continues depends on the writer’s confidence that they can still continue on this family even with out the hilarious drama that played out. Arrested Development will be one of those shows like Freak and Greeks or Firefly that had a brief run on TV but became huge hits on DVD.
For the final time Arrested Development is thrown up in the air, will it be picked up by a pay cable channel or will it go down for ever as one of the funniest shows that never got a break? I think Executive Producer/Narrator Ron Howard put it best in the final line of the show, “no, I don’t see it as a series, maybe a movie.”