(I'm going to be watching and reviewing three episodes at a time of Arrested Development. I've gone out of my way to avoid reading reviews of the new season or discussing it on blogs or forums, so these reviews are untainted by outside opinion. Also, fair warning, these aren't recaps or plot synopses. I'm assuming everyone reading has seen the episodes in question and will be launching right into analysis of each.)
Season 4, Episode 13 - "It Gets Better"
Starring Character: George Michael
For a couple of years, back when I first discovered Arrested Development in college, I'm pretty sure George Michael Bluth was my favorite television character of all time. I delighted to no end in his every awkward moment, and Michael Cera's comic delivery was phenomenally great for any actor of any age, let alone a teenage kid. (His delivery of "What, yeah, that's... fine. Ok, I guess. I don't care... stop." when Michael greets him in "S.O.B.s" remains one of the funniest lines that isn't really even a line in any sitcom ever, and that's all thanks to Cera.) So it's both meant as praise but also a little disappointing to report that George Michael's first season 4 spotlight, "It Gets Better," is... pretty good.
Like Maeby's spotlight in "Señoritis," where it was revealed that her Opie Award was just the final headshot to a dead career and that her life was a mess, the most notable narrative twist this episode pulls is the revelation that George Michael's seeming accomplishments – i.e. Fakeblock – are actually bullshit. There is no privacy software. Fakeblock is just a wood block app whose reputation spins out of control. And that was all a lot of fun (and rewarding for the longtime Arrested fan in how it plays off George Michael's woodblocking way back in the season 1 episode "Best Man for the Gob").
Where the greater story falters a bit is in George Michael's romance with Rebel, which the final third or so of the episode is dedicated to. Unlike, say, Maeby's dalliance with Perfecto, the show seems to be asking for a degree of actual emotional investment from us in this story, and I'm just not sure what's there justifies that. We already kinda did George Michael and Michael liking the same woman way back with Heather Graham in season 1, and all this just kind of seems like them trotting that story back out again, only this time spread over a whole season instead of a single episode and a lot less light on its feet.
But on the other hand I did really enjoy the alternate angles this episode gave us to Michael's story in "Flight of the Phoenix" and even Maeby's one episode ago. The way snatches of seemingly privacy-software-related conversation between George Michael and P-Hound back in the season premiere were revealed to have whole new woodblock-related meanings was wonderfully clever (and, speaking of P-Hound, I loved the Eduardo Saverin spoof with him at the end). I like everything that's here... I'm just not sure I like everything about where it's headed. But we'll get back to that when I discuss the season finale in just a minute.
Lastly, I have to give Netflix or Mitch Hurwitz or whoever wrote it credit for their technically-honest-but-wildly-dishonest episode synopsis: "At UC Irvine things get steamy when George Michael finds himself in a love triangle with his best friend Ray and his girlfriend Becky." That's such a bold, cheeky misrepresentation of "It Gets Better" that I have to wonder if it's a last-minute joke added to poke fun at HBO for their "Sam and Gilly meet an older gentleman" description for the Game of Thrones episode "Second Sons."
Like Maeby's spotlight in "Señoritis," where it was revealed that her Opie Award was just the final headshot to a dead career and that her life was a mess, the most notable narrative twist this episode pulls is the revelation that George Michael's seeming accomplishments – i.e. Fakeblock – are actually bullshit. There is no privacy software. Fakeblock is just a wood block app whose reputation spins out of control. And that was all a lot of fun (and rewarding for the longtime Arrested fan in how it plays off George Michael's woodblocking way back in the season 1 episode "Best Man for the Gob").
Where the greater story falters a bit is in George Michael's romance with Rebel, which the final third or so of the episode is dedicated to. Unlike, say, Maeby's dalliance with Perfecto, the show seems to be asking for a degree of actual emotional investment from us in this story, and I'm just not sure what's there justifies that. We already kinda did George Michael and Michael liking the same woman way back with Heather Graham in season 1, and all this just kind of seems like them trotting that story back out again, only this time spread over a whole season instead of a single episode and a lot less light on its feet.
But on the other hand I did really enjoy the alternate angles this episode gave us to Michael's story in "Flight of the Phoenix" and even Maeby's one episode ago. The way snatches of seemingly privacy-software-related conversation between George Michael and P-Hound back in the season premiere were revealed to have whole new woodblock-related meanings was wonderfully clever (and, speaking of P-Hound, I loved the Eduardo Saverin spoof with him at the end). I like everything that's here... I'm just not sure I like everything about where it's headed. But we'll get back to that when I discuss the season finale in just a minute.
Lastly, I have to give Netflix or Mitch Hurwitz or whoever wrote it credit for their technically-honest-but-wildly-dishonest episode synopsis: "At UC Irvine things get steamy when George Michael finds himself in a love triangle with his best friend Ray and his girlfriend Becky." That's such a bold, cheeky misrepresentation of "It Gets Better" that I have to wonder if it's a last-minute joke added to poke fun at HBO for their "Sam and Gilly meet an older gentleman" description for the Game of Thrones episode "Second Sons."
