10.) Top Banana
“Oh Most Definitely!”
It wasn’t the pilot, but it started the show with style, and determined the fashion of humor and snaking plot devices that the show would take for the rest of its lifespan. While everyone could probably see the “There’s always money in the banana stand” *wink wink* to mean exactly what it turned out to mean from a mile away, the real humor comes from G.O.B.’s defiance at mailing the letter. At this point we had no idea which throw-away jokes would become important, and so, to me at least, it came as a genuine surprise that the letter was the most important McGuffin in the plot. Combined with Maeby’s “scam” on the banana stand (which in truth doubled their losses) and the truly triumphant manner in which Michael lets George-Michael burn it to the ground, and then pay it all off with G.O.B. backing out of frame on his Segway. Then you’ve got sublimity.
As a thought-experiment, picture the same plot in an episode of That 70’s Show, which I like. George Sr. = Red, Michael = Eric, G.O.B. = Kelso, George-Michael = Fez, and Maeby = Jackie. The relationships stay largely the same, so it’s imaginable. How would it play out? As a credit to the plot, it would be a great episode, but as better compliment to Bateman, Tambor, Cera, Shawkat, and Arnett, not to mention director Anthony Russo, it wouldn’t touch what “Top Banana” achieves here.
Side Note: this also includes Tobias’s “fire sale” audition, which must be seen to be believed. David Cross was apparently the only actor allowed improv in the show. This is where it shows.
9.) Afternoon Delight
“COME on!”
Aside from being the first instance of the immortal line from above, this gave us some of the most uncommon pairings in the shows run, most notably Michael/Maeby and Lindsay/George-Michael. It also had G.O.B.’s increasing values for his suits, and Buster using skill-crane tactics to save G.O.B. from the banana stand, only to plummet him into the ocean, but these duos are the reason it’s as good as it is. “Not Without My Daughter” aside, this is really the only time we get to see these, and they use them to reinforce on of the show’s main comedic themes: Sex infuses society and our subconscious, and that doesn’t change just because you hang out almost exclusively with your own family. This is, of course, probably the element that turned the largest number of possible fans away from AD, aside from the fact that if you came in at episode three you already knew that you weren’t getting half the jokes. (Sex and the City spent four of its six seasons on the same episodic navelgazing until getting in gear for the fifth and sixth, and yet somehow this show didn’t get the On Demand treatment that would’ve made it absurdly popular to newcomers, ergo there is no justice in entertainment.) Still, you couldn’t get the country behind twisted incest jokes long enough to tell them at the end that none of the hook-ups were actually incestuous after all. It’s a shame, because this show, and this episode in particular, proved that we can make all the “Family Entertainment” pablum that PAX will spit out, but none of it rings true unless it indicts our worst impulses and most horrifying inhibitions. Also, the two “couples” play their revelations of the lyrics to the titular song in entirely singular ways, proof to just how unique each character truly was.
Side Note: A stoned Lucille drives over a deafened Tobias. Earlier, she attacks Tobias after he comes to help her. These are the two most memorable of the tiny number of times these two interact together alone.
8.) S.O.B.’s
“The HBO won’t want us.”
“No. It’s Showtime.”
Every time an amazing show is cancelled, we all get pissed at the philistines who pulled it off the air, who never gave it a chance, who never got it. What we forget is that those same philistines took the risk and put untold millions into making the best show they could, which we received for free (provided that we have stolen cable or a good antenna. I suggest stolen cable. It’s cheaper and you get better reception. Plus cable.) “Save Our Bluths” continued the use of on of my favorite jokes from the third season (“…the O.C.” “Don’t call it that.”) added shots at every piece-of-shit show on FOX or anywhere else that was getting better ratings, had Andy Richter in five roles, utilized a live ending and 3D, killed off a character (an old racist woman we’d never met before) and brought in Ben Stiller, Zach Braff, John Larroquet and many others for non-speaking roles, and was still one of the funniest episodes even if all of that had been stripped away. Then it ended with an admission that if they weren’t that relatable, then it could hardly be blamed on the audience. I agree. It should be blamed on piss-poor marketing, constantly shifting time-slots, and a lack of marathon showings on FX that might have allowed new viewers to catch up. But I disagree that our Bluths didn’t deserve to be saved. Still, once they were (by Showtime) Mitch Hurwitz declined. After the finale, I’m not sure where they would have gone, but I would have watched. Oh, God, would I have watched every second of it.
Side Note: Hot Ham Water. Say it with me. Also, casting directors really do hate the gimmicky bullshit that Tobias tries to pull, which is not so much an exaggeration as it is a depressing understatement.
7.) Spring Breakout
“No, it’s like… you’re a flower, and I just don’t want to see you get plucked by one of these guys who doesn’t even care that you’re blooming.”
When the series was created, Hurwitz, Grazer and Howard wanted to cast the whole family around each other, so that everything would fit. Alia Shawkat was the first one cast, so presumably the rest of the cast was built around her. A hell of a responsibility for any actor, let a lone a teenage actress no one had ever heard of. Strangely, David Cross was one of the last ones cast (he was asked to play Buster, but opted instead for Tobias because he thought it would be a smaller role, and thus that he wouldn’t have to spend as much time in L.A.) This episode probably features her more than any other, even with the main plot of Kitty and the drinking contest and breaking Lucille out of rehab and George Sr. out of a motel room. Still, it’s Michael Cera’s delivery of the line above that sells this one. Sometimes AD would go sentimental to parody bathos, sometimes they’d do it to turn around and fuck with you, and sometimes they’d do it for its own sake just to show that they could do it better than anyone else. This was one of those times.
Side Note: “And that’s how you narrate a story.”
6.) My Mother, The Car
“I like the way they think.”
What better way to prove that you’re the best sit-com in history than by using the name (and theme-song) of the worst? Directed by Jay Chandrasekhar of Broken Lizard fame (and Dukes of Hazard infamy), this episode takes the simple and pathetic story of Michael trying to throw a surprise party for Lucille, and then spirals into a paranoid tale of lies and amnesia, unraveling at the end to be at heart about Lucille’s yearning for Michael to care for her and love her, while proving how singularly unworthy of anyone’s love she truly is. I had a friend back in high school who would open up his arms to you, and then shudder away just as y’all were about to embrace in a platonic hug. And he could do this over and over again ad infinitum, and each time you’d just believe him more. This is how Lucille is in “My Mother, The Car.” She’s the portrait of evil mothers, but you’ve gotta love someone that damn good.
Side Note: This is the first appearance of Lindsay’s SLUT shirt, which will be remembered as her official costume.
5.) Meet the Veals
“How would you like a banger in the mouth? Oh, I forgot! In the states, they call it a sausage in the mouth.”
“Actually, we just call it a sausage.”
There’s a piece of music in Arrested Development that I’ve never been able to identify. It’s only used for about two seconds, and it’s only been used twice, but both times were the very end of an episode when Michael had just inadvertently thrown George-Michael into an awkward sexual situation he wasn’t ready for. The first time is in the pilot, and the second time is here, almost two years later. That’s bad-ass, right there. AD got about the same mileage out of Ann as Family Guy gets out of Meg. That is, she’s not a bad-looking girl, but as long as everybody pretends that she is, it gets funnier every time. This episode might have the most funny exchanges, and I had to use “banger in the mouth” at the top or else lose all credibility, but the bit of, “Next you’re going to say I could be her sister.” “I would NEVER say that,” was a tough competitor. Bonus for using Ione Skye (she’s Diane Court!) as the confused, frustrated, horny religious housewife who thinks that secular and sexual mean the same thing.
Side Note: this is the first ever appearance of Franklin, and from the outset he’s treated as an actual person – an unruly friend of G.O.B.’s – rather than a puppet. Michael is, of course, the only one who ever looks at him as, you know, G.O.B.’s hand, and at the end, during the “Next week on…” part, Franklin appears to take over Buster as well, who seems shocked by what the brotha is saying to his momma.
4.) Key Decisions
“A sea of waiters and no one will take a drink order!”
At its heart, Arrested Development was the most bizarre of soap-operas, which again probably had a lot to do with why it didn’t catch on. I don’t think any of the jokes were really above the heads of middle-America or anywhere else, having grown up in middle-America and thus blessed with the knowledge that the people out there aren’t stupid. But the way this show dealt with the conceit that anyone watching had completely absorbed all information from all previous episodes could sure make you feel stupid if you waded into it mid-way through. To use another fetish of mine for analogy, it’d be like starting the Harry Potter franchise at Order of the Phoenix. You might enjoy it, but you wouldn’t understand the significance of muggles, dementors, Death Eaters, Avada Kedavra, or any number of other things, if you even got what they were at all. AD has always felt like an exclusive club for those who saw it from the beginning, and as such was not built for weekly, ever-changing time slots. It was built for DVD. “Key Decisions” was really the first to bring in the big guns of running jokes and story-lines; it was the last stop for the bus, and if you didn’t catch it by then, you’d be walking the rest of the way. It’s also easily the best of the first season episodes. It introduces Marta (in her first and most devastatingly beautiful incarnation), it has White Power Bill, it has Ron Howard’s brother Clint as Johnny Bark (“That’s why you never get out of the tree.”) and it has G.O.B. trying to chase down a jail-cell key with numerous varieties of liquor. And then it ends it all with a heart-rending moment played moments later for laughs, even as the emo soundtrack is still rolling. Pure genius.
Side Note: “I’ve made a huge mistake.”
3.) The Ocean Walker
“Well, as long as it’s not too deep…”
Nothing in the show’s run was as divisive as the Rita storyline (and I include Martin Short’s part in “Ready Aim Marry Me,” as everyone agrees that sucked.) Some people hated Charlize Theron’s English accent, which wasn’t great, while other people had other objections that I’m sure were petty and envy-based. Fuck the haters. Rita was one of the greatest things in the show. Michael is generally considered to be the only competent one in the family, and certainly the only normal one, but neither of these things are true. Michael is just as incompetent as everyone else, but only seems competent because of his devotion to proving how much better he is than the others, and his veneer of sanity masks a perfectionist attitude and self-centeredness that verges on delusional. Rita brings out the best that Michael could be, the man what he wants to be. Through her he stops worrying about work so much, he starts loving life, he smiles, and he falls in love. And then, George-Michael (and the rest of the family) discover that she’s retarded. I wrote above about how Freaks and Geeks could throw the switch between heartbreaking and hilarious with little-to-no turn-around time. This episode is the first time I’d ever seen someone manage both simultaneously, for twenty-threee minutes of uninterrupted glory.
Witness Rita screaming for the chance to go be with the man she loves as her uncle latches the “invisible locks” on the door. Witness George-Michael’s face as she turns on the Wiggles and starts singing and clapping along in the stair car, and then going to find his father at the hotel room, not wanting to break his heart, but knowing that Michael should know the truth. Witness Michael viewing George-Michael’s tape, his world and new-found hope crashing around him as he watches his fiancée eat a series of plastic grapes. Witness George-Michael trying to remind his father that he loves this woman, and that any problems are a matter of perception and, drawing an explicit – and apt – comparison to his own love for Maeby, while self-involved Michael ignores it all and focuses on Rita’s IQ. Witness how the whole family, who each have come to adore Rita, change how they treat her and act around her once they find out about her handicap (and fortune.) Witness her running off from embarrassment in a pink-blouse and inside-out wedding dress (Lindsay’s idea) and Michael then realizing that he can probably catch her after all, as she wouldn’t have won a silver medal in that Olympics. And then, once we know that as good as she would be for Michael, the Bluths would be no good to her, witness her walking out of Michael’s life forever, across the water in the swimming pool…
Side Note: …And then we find out that the swimming pool thing was another one of G.O.B.’s illusions, and the whole wedding goes to shit exactly as Michael’s first wedding did.
2.) Righteous Brothers
“You’re high!”
“You’re drunk!”
“Not this time!”
I’ve got to confess that I’m a sucker for George-Michael & Maeby. Thankfully I’m not alone. When I went to Virgin tonight to finally buy all the DVDs for myself, the check-out girl couldn’t shut up about it herself. And she felt a little guilty about wanting them to be together, which, I guess, is kind of the point. In this outing, George Sr. cuts Oscar’s hair to put his brother in prison in his place, G.O.B. cuts an album with Franklin, and Maeby cuts the Tantamount remake of Dangerous Cousins down in running time in an extraordinarily obscure call-back to G.O.B.’s increasing suit prices in “Afternoon Delight.” But then the damndest thing happens. Maeby kisses George-Michael, and the house collapses beneath them. They fall onto the couch and kiss some more, and afterwards it’s appropriately weird between them. X-Files fans waited for years and years for Mulder and Scully to get it on, even though the tension is what made it fun. Tom Cherones had Dave and Lisa get together at the beginning of NewsRadio so as to avoid that same syndrome. But rarely has anyone created a main romantic arc that everyone wants to happen, but which is also so wrong that you can’t get past the, you know… incest. Ann was an ingenious character, because she made a relationship with Maeby seem much more natural and cool than one with a devout and prudish Christian. And then Ann dumped George-Michael for G.O.B., but that’s another season. In “Righteous Brothers,” we get a kiss that literally brings the house down. That’s ballsy.
Side Note: Lindsay runs up to fight Kitty over Tobias, and gets floored with one punch. As she comes to, Tobias purrs that she fought for him, and then jovially informs her that he’s running off to Vegas with Kitty. Brilliant!
1.) Exit Strategy
“Didn’t he just say G.O.B. should be ashamed of himself?”
“No, but give it a little while. Somebody will.”
“Development Arrested” is the denouement of the series, but this is the real climax. Bringing some sense of closure to all stories except for the one that we didn’t know existed until the finale. I think I’ve probably mentioned in a few places already how this show runs on long storylines and inside jokes, but part of that is that it therefore just gets better as it goes along. At the beginning of the show, we had no idea that some of the throw-aways would actually be important to the future plot. By the last episodes, we understood that all of them were. It begins with Lindsay parroting Lucille’s “little fibs” to explain her alcoholism, and then moves onto every member of the family, save for Michael, finding a way out of giving a deposition in the trial once it’s finally arrived, and then moves onto G.O.B. getting arrested for accidentally inciting an anti-American demonstration in Iraq, while Lindsay and Lucille fake going into rehab and Tobias involves himself in a sting with Richard Belzer involving scrap-booking and Buster falls in love with a nurse who’s head-over-heels for him as long as he’s brave enough to not be around her or talking to her. Then there’s the bombshell. The literal bombshell in the hide-away room of the model home in Iraq housing all the Hussein look-alikes (including the scarred, presumably real, Hussein.) The moment we see the warhead we know that we’ve finally gotten to the heart of the story, and that we’ll know, after all this time, what George Sr. has been up to. And then we find out it’s a home-fill and within a minute and a half all of it has been explained to the simplest possible explanation with as little exposition as possible. By contrast, Alias needed forty-two minutes to explain half a season, with the commissioner just telling her everything on a plane ride. Roblems are solved, and everybody’s happy.
Except for Maeby. And George-Michael. Everybody had forgotten about Maeby’s birthday, and so George-Michael sent out invitations to everyone in her address book to get them to come, which inadvertently outed her to Tantamount. When she shows up, and George-Michael is the only one yelling (but not really yelling. He doesn’t do that) “Surprise!” she’s a little bit pissed at him, but more than anything she appreciates the gesture and is pissed at everybody else, including her parents, for not giving enough of a shit to come. Then they get drunk on fake wine, and George-Michael tells her that they may not actually be cousins, and they dive into second base “head first, like Pete Rose.” And it wasn’t awkward afterwards until Tobias showed them the “rough” pictures. Maeby is to George-Michael what Rita was to Michael. George-Michael is just better when she’s around. And if the end of “Development Arrested” satisfied our better angels about that one, then “Exit Strategy” gave us what we really wanted deep down.
Side Note: Gary Cole as the American cab driver in Iraq, who thus gives us the final link between all shows mentioned at the top.
(Expect similar features on the other shows in the coming weeks.)
