Arrested Development

Arrested Development is an American satirical television sitcom created by Mitchell Hurwitz. It follows the Bluth family, a formerly wealthy, dysfunctional family and is presented in a serialized format, incorporating handheld camera work, voice-over narration, archival photos and historical footage, and maintains numerous running gags and catchphrases. Ron Howard served as both an executive producer and the omniscient narrator and, in later seasons, appears in the show as a fictionalized version of himself. Set in Newport Beach, California, the series was filmed primarily in Culver City and Marina del Rey.
Arrested Development received critical acclaim. It won six Primetime Emmy Awards and a Golden Globe Award, and attracted a cult following. It has been widely regarded as one of the greatest TV shows of all time. It influenced later single-camera comedy series such as 30 Rock and Community.
Despite the positive critical response, Arrested Development received low ratings on Fox, which canceled the series in 2006. In 2011, Netflix licensed new episodes and distributed them on its streaming service. These episodes were released in May 2013, and was among the first of Netflix's original programming. Netflix commissioned a fifth season of Arrested Development, the first half of which premiered in May 2018, and the second half in March 2019. The show was scheduled to be removed from Netflix in March 2023, but this was reverted after a deal was reached over the streaming rights.

Production

Conception

Discussion that led to the creation of the series began in the summer of 2002. Ron Howard had the original idea to create a comedy series in the style of handheld cameras and reality television, but with an elaborate, highly comical script resulting from repeated rewritings and rehearsals. Howard met with David Nevins, the president of Imagine Television, Katie O'Connell, a senior vice president, and two writers, including Mitchell Hurwitz. In light of recent corporate accounting scandals, such as Enron and Adelphia, Hurwitz suggested a story about a "riches to rags" family. Howard and Imagine were interested in using this idea, and signed Hurwitz to write the show. The idea was pitched and sold in Q3 2002. There was a bidding war for the show between Fox and NBC, with the show ultimately selling to Fox as a put pilot with a six-figure penalty.
Over the next few months, Hurwitz developed the characters and plot for the series. The script of the pilot episode was submitted in January 2003 and filmed in March 2003. It was submitted in late April to Fox and was added to the network's fall schedule that May.

Casting

was the first cast in the series. Michael Cera, Tony Hale, and Jessica Walter were cast from video tapes and flown in to audition for Fox. Jason Bateman and Portia de Rossi both read and auditioned for the network and were immediately chosen. The character of Gob was the most challenging to cast, but when Will Arnett's audition played the character "like a guy who thought of himself as the chosen son, even though it was obvious to everyone else that he was the least favorite," he was chosen immediately for his portrayal. The characters of Tobias and George Sr. were originally going to have minor roles, but David Cross and Jeffrey Tambor's portrayals mixed well with the rest of the characters, and they were given more significant parts. Howard provided the narration for the initial pilot, and his narrating meshed so well with the tone of the program that the decision was made to keep his voice. Howard aided in the casting of "Lucille 2"; the producers told him that their dream actress for the role was Liza Minnelli but that they assumed no one of her stature would take the part. She agreed when Ron Howard asked her himself, because they were old friends; she had been his babysitter when she was a teenager.

Filming techniques

Arrested Development uses several elements that were rare at the time for American live-action sitcoms. It was shot on location and in HD video with multiple cameras, parodying tactics often employed in documentary film and reality television, straying from the "fixed-set, studio audience, laugh track" style long dominant in comedy production. The show makes heavy use of cutaway gags, supplementing the narrative with visual punchlines like security camera footage, Bluth family photos, website screenshots, archive films, and flashbacks. An omniscient third-person narrator ties together the multiple plot threads running through each episode, while humorously undercutting and commenting on the characters. Arrested Development developed self-referentiality through use of in-jokes that evolved over multiple episodes, which rewarded longtime viewership.
Because of scheduling conflicts, the fourth season used a different format with longer episodes focusing on one character. The season was later re-edited to be more in line with the format of the other seasons.

Cancellation and revival

During the series' third season in 2006, despite months-long rumors of Arrested Development having been picked up by the cable television network Showtime, creator Hurwitz declined to move the show to another network. Hurwitz said, "I had taken it as far as I felt I could as a series. I told the story I wanted to tell, and we were getting to a point where I think a lot of the actors were ready to move on." He said that he was "more worried about letting down the fans in terms of the quality of the show dropping" than he was about disappointing fans by not giving them more episodes. He also said, "If there's a way to continue this in a form that's not weekly episodic series television, I'd be up for it".
After the series cancellation, Fox Entertainment Group sold the initial 53-episode run for syndication. In a first for its kind, the syndication involved a three-year deal with Microsoft's nascent internet video streaming service MSN Video before the series would go on to cable channel G4.
On October 2, 2011, the cast of Arrested Development reunited for a panel at The New Yorker Festival in New York. At the panel, Hurwitz declared his intention of producing a truncated fourth season as a lead-in to a film adaptation.
Six years after the series had been canceled by Fox, filming for a fourth season began on August 7, 2012. Fifteen episodes of the show's revival season were released simultaneously on Netflix on May 26, 2013. Although it received generally favorable reviews, it was far less well-received than prior seasons, leading Netflix to re-edit the season in 2018. Netflix confirmed on May 17, 2017, that a fifth season was expected to be released on its service in 2018, with filming taking place from August 2017 to November 2017. Arrested Development was set to be removed from Netflix on March 15, 2023. However, after a last-minute deal, Netflix retained the streaming rights.

Characters

Main characters

The plot of Arrested Development revolves around the members of the Bluth family, a formerly wealthy family who continue to lead extravagant lifestyles despite their changed circumstances. At the center of the show is Michael Bluth, the show's straight man, who strives to do the right thing and keep his family together, despite their materialism, selfishness, and manipulative natures. Michael is a widowed single father. His teenage son, George Michael, has the same qualities of decency but feels a constant pressure to live up to his father's expectations and is often reluctant to follow his father's plans. He battles with a crush he has on cousin Mae "Maeby" Fünke, which developed from a kiss she gave him as part of a prank.
Michael's father, George Bluth Sr., is the patriarch of the family and a corrupt real estate developer who is arrested in the first episode. George goes to considerable lengths to manipulate and control his family in spite of his imprisonment, and makes numerous efforts to evade justice. His wife, and Michael's mother, Lucille, is ruthlessly manipulative, materialistic, constantly drunk, and hypercritical of every member of her family. Her grip is tightest on her youngest son, Byron "Buster" Bluth, who is overeducated on various random subjects but lacks emotional intelligence or common sense. Buster is also a mother's boy with dependency issues and is prone to panic attacks.
Michael's older brother is George Oscar Bluth II, known by his initials GOB, which is pronounced in the series like the Biblical figure Job. An unsuccessful professional magician whose business and personal schemes usually fail or become tiresome and are quickly abandoned, Gob is competitive with Michael and bullies Buster. Michael's twin sister, Lindsay, is spoiled and materialistic, continually seeking to be the center of attention and espousing various social causes for the sake of vanity. In the finale, it is revealed that she and Lucille are half-sisters. She is married to Tobias Fünke, a discredited psychiatrist-turned-aspiring actor. Tobias is a self-diagnosed "never-nude", whose language and behavior have heavily homosexual overtones to which he seems oblivious and which are the center of much tongue-in-cheek comedy throughout the series. Their daughter, Maeby, is a rebellious teen with an opportunistic streak, who seeks to defy her parents for the sake of attention, and otherwise pursues boys and power, and furthers her complicated relationship with George Michael.

Recurring cast

Numerous other characters appear in recurring roles.

Jeffrey Tambor as Oscar Bluth, George Sr.'s identical twin brother, a lethargic ex-hippie seeking the affection of Lucille.
Henry Winkler as Barry Zuckerkorn, the family's lawyer, an incompetent sexual deviant who often hinders the family's legal battles rather than helping them. He is eventually replaced by Bob Loblaw.
Liza Minnelli as Lucille Austero, AKA "Lucille 2", Lucille's "best friend and chief social rival" as well as a sometimes-love-interest of Buster and Gob. The character was killed off in the fifth season.
Justin Grant Wade as Steve Holt, a high school super-senior and football star at the high school George Michael and Maeby attend, and later discovered to be Gob's son.
Carl Weathers as a fictional parody of himself, Tobias's frugal acting coach.
John Beard as a fictional version of himself, a news anchor reporting on the characters' antics.
Mae Whitman as Ann Veal, George-Michael's stern Christian girlfriend, often forgotten or disparaged by Michael.
Patricia Velasquez as Marta Estrella, Gob's girlfriend who eventually reciprocates Michael's infatuation with her and ends up causing conflict between the two brothers.
Steve Ryan as J. Walter Weatherman, a former employee of George Sr. who appears in flashbacks, in which he helps teach lessons to George Sr's children, by participating in staged accidents where he would "lose" his arm.
Charlize Theron as Rita Leeds, an intellectually disabled British woman whom Michael becomes infatuated with, not recognizing her disability.
Dave Thomas as Trevor
Judy Greer as Kitty Sanchez, George Sr's manipulative assistant, lover, and partner-in-crime.
Ed Begley Jr. as Stan Sitwell, the owner of Sitwell Enterprises, a rival company to the Bluth Company.
Christine Taylor as Sally Sitwell, Stan Sitwell's daughter and a long-standing love interest for Michael.
Justin Lee as Annyong, the adopted Korean son of Lucille and George Sr.
Julia Louis-Dreyfus as Maggie Lizer, an attorney and compulsive liar who has a recurring relationship with Michael.
Rob Corddry as Moses Taylor, the star of the fictional TV show Wrench! and a noted gun rights activist.
Ben Stiller as Tony Wonder, a magician and Gob's chief rival, well known for baking himself into a loaf of bread to feed the troops.
Amy Poehler as Gob's unnamed and frequently forgotten wife, who married Gob as the final in a long line of escalating dares.
Jane Lynch as Cindi Lightballoon, a government mole who tries to gather incriminating information from an incarcerated George Sr. but ends up falling in love with him instead.
Ron Howard as a fictionalized version of himself, a movie producer who offers to adapt the Bluths’ lives into a movie.
Isla Fisher as Rebel Alley, Ron Howard's fictional daughter and love interest of both Michael and George Michael.