Eleven Reasons You Should Be Watching "Arrested Development"

By Erika Waddell

"Arrested Development" is the best show on network television. Sadly, its ratings aren't representative of its brilliance. Many viewers were surprised when the show was picked up for a second season, but after winning five Emmys and receiving unremitting praise from television critics across the country, Fox wouldn't give up on its little treasure. Currently in its third season, "Arrested Development" fans are still fighting to secure the show's future by writing letters to Fox, proposing strategies to the network on message boards and creating Web sites dedicated to saving their beloved Bluth family. While those who have seen the show love it, the hard part is rousing new viewers to tune in. So here is our list of the reasons you should be watching. We hope the hilarity will compel you to turn the dial to Fox on Monday nights at 8/7c. We know we will.

The Scripts
The writing is undeniably genius, with a perfect balance of in-your-face funny and over-your-head funny. Fans versed in the show's complex storylines and quick-witted humor still tend to miss a joke or four, as many of the family's predicaments result from misunderstandings rooted in crafty wordplay. Like when the youngest son, Buster, looses his hand to a "loose seal" (which escaped from his brother's magic show) while swimming in the ocean in an act of rebellion against his mother, Lucille. Or when the Bluth Company employs the slogan "Solid As a Rock" after George Sr. is jailed for doing business with Iraq. In an email interview with Courttv.com, actor Michael Cera (who plays George-Michael) says his favorite thing about the show is that they are able to get away with filthy humor. "It always amuses me," he says, "how critics go on about the plot twists and how not just anybody can watch, when really it's just the dirtiest show on TV. All we do is disguise it with fancy talk."

The Cast
Talk about group dynamic, there hasn't been a show cast this perfectly since "Seinfeld." Veteran actors Jeffrey Tambor, Portia de Rossi, and Jason Bateman, along with Will Arnett, David Cross, Tony Hale, and Jessica Walter give the show's writers an extremely talented lot to work with. Not to mention some of the best young actors we've ever believed.

Bateman, who plays Michael, the only level-headed Bluth, truly shines. His balance of frustrated company president and compassionate brother and father is absolute perfection. We think we're in love.

The Model Home
As much a character as any animate being, the model home is probably the single funniest element of the show. It was built by the Bluth Company to function as the model unit in their latest housing tract, but after the family got into legal hot water, Michael, his son, and the Fünke family decided to move in together. At any given time, additional family members can be found squatting there as well, making it so crowded that first cousins who are in love with each other (although their parents are unaware of it) are forced to share a room. Items like the television set and dining-room turkey are plastic fakes (like in the showroom of a furniture store), and the place is falling apart due to "shoddy workmanship." In a pivotal scene, Michael catches a news report on American-built mini-palaces in Iraq and recognizes that one of the homes resembles the Bluth Company's Sea Wind unit. The reporter points out the "shoddy workmanship" while reminding viewers that there have been sanctions against doing business with Saddam Hussein's regime since the early 1990s. Looks like George Sr. is in bigger trouble than we originally thought.

The Stair Car
You'll laugh out loud when you see the family's mode of transportation, a truck with a full staircase descending from its cab (it was once used as a gangway to the family jet). Though the Bluths make good use of the staircase -- Michael runs the stairs while training for a triathlon, Lindsay walks an activist down from a tree -- many mishaps result too. In one very funny scene, while attempting to park at the airport, Lindsay's husband, Tobias, is waved onto the tarmac and makes headlines after causing delays to the entire western flight grid. And, of course, stair-car drivers must watch out for "hop-ons." Cera tells us his favorite hop-on scene is when George Sr. escapes prison and heads to Mexico, where locals use the stairs to jump over the border into the United States.

The Never-Nude
One of our favorite characters, Tobias Fünke (pronounced Fyoonk-A), suffers from a seriously funny phobia. Tobias is what the Bluths call a "never-nude," or one with a psychological aversion to being completely naked. He wears tiny denim cut-offs at all times, under clothing, under towels and even in the shower.

Tobias also always chooses the wrong words. A favorite example is his business card, indicating that he's both an analyst and a therapist. It reads: "Tobias Fünke, Analrapist." Priceless.

The Names
Whether they're puns, indications of the character's personality, or just sound funny, character names are reflective of the show's clever writing. You've got Michael's son, George-Michael, which is the unfortunate combination of his grandfather and father's names. Then there's GOB (pronounced "Jobe"), short for George Oscar Bluth II, which is constantly being mispronounced as Gobb. Lindsay and Tobias' daughter is named Maeby, pronounced "Maybe." There are wonderful wordplays almost every time her name is spoken -- for example, "This is Tobias' daughter, Maeby." Maeby is also Michael Cera's favorite character name, which he says, "actually came from [creator] Mitch Hurwitz's two daughters, Maisie and Phoebe." And of course there's Bob Loblaw (Scott Baio), the family's newest attorney. Say his name and it comes out "blah blah blah."

The Magician
GOB, the eldest Bluth son, adds another layer of hilarity to the show with his magic tricks. He attempts outrageous "illusions" like making the family yacht disappear (he sinks it) and taking a sword in the stomach (he loses two fingers). Michael Cera says that GOB's best trick is when he attempts to impress people with mini-explosions from the palms of his hands, but ends up squirting lighter fluid all over them, to which he responds, "But still, where did the lighter fluid come from?" GOB even tries his hand at ventriloquism, with an African American puppet that says all the racist things GOB can't away with. And like a true magician, GOB uses live animals in his act... but almost always accidentally kills them. He also thinks he should be able to return the dead animals to the pet store.

The Cameos
Often playing the most eccentric of characters, celebrity guests are highlights of the show. Liza Minnelli, Heather Graham, Ben Stiller, Julia Louis-Dreyfus and Charlize Theron as a British spy have all made appearances. The list goes on and on, but our favorite scene involving a guest star takes place when Zach Braff plays a director for the video series, "Girls With Low Self-Esteem," which Lindsay and Tobias protest for its exploitation of young women. In order to give Braff's character a taste of his own medicine, Lindsay and Tobias pull down his pants in the middle of a spring break shoot, revealing his cut-off jean shorts -- turns out he's a never-nude too.

The Legal Stuff
Any fan of the crime and investigation genre will enjoy this satirical take on the legal process. Take, for example, George Sr. (who was convicted on a host of SEC violations) who thinks of jail as a vacation. When reminded that he's doing time, George Sr. replies, "I'm doing the time of my life!" He's often shown in the pen playing baseball and eating ice-cream sandwiches. He even discovers Judaism in solitary confinement and produces a series of inspirational videos under the title, "Caged Wisdom." And of course there are hilarious cracks at lawyers. Henry Winkler, whom Michael Cera calls "mind-blowingly funny," plays the family's longtime attorney, who has more amusing, creative and terrible ways to wiggle out of a legal bind than any other TV lawyer.

The Frozen Banana Stand
A big hit in the '70s, kids had turned the Bluth's banana-shaped business on Balboa Island into a pot-dealing mecca so widely known that a song had been written in its honor, "Big Yellow Joint."
But more recently, it had served as more of teaching tool for Michael to instill values in his son, requiring George-Michael to work there the same way that he had. Out of rebellion, father and son torch the stand, not realizing that when George Sr. had repeatedly said, "There's always money in the banana stand," he was speaking literally — he had stashed $250,000 in the walls.

The Blue Man Group
Many of the show's best jokes and plot twists stem from Tobias' fascination with the performance art group, The Blue Man Group. Feeling low about his failing marriage, he stumbles upon a flyer for the act and attends a performance under the impression that it's a support group for depressed men. From that moment on, the struggling actor is obsessed with becoming an understudy, often walking around the house painted blue. But when he finally makes the trek to Las Vegas to audition for an opening, he learns the spot has just been filled by someone whom the casting director says is "always in character" -- none other than George Sr., who is on the run and incognito.

(Published on CourtTV.com Nov. 10, 2005)