Skip to main content

Can't Get "Arrested" in This Town

The (possibly) final four episodes of the supremely brilliant comedy Arrested Development are airing tonight, heaped together into a two-hour block. FOX has yanked viewers of this amazing show around for the last three seasons, changing timeslots, pulling it off the air for months at a time, airing the episodes out of order, etc. In other words: typical FOX modus operandi.

Hopefully tonight isn't the last outing of the Bluth family, a family so crazy and self-absorbed that it makes me value my own family that much more. According to USA Today, it's still possible that the show could find another home on ABC (less likely) or Showtime (more likely), as a companion piece to Weeds, but it's not looking good.

Until our prayers are answered (and there are many of us willing to follow the Bluth clan to cable), tonight’s final episodes, which introduce Justine Bateman as Nellie Bluth—a new, secret Bluth daughter—may be the last we see of their topsy-turvy world for a while.

One glitch that’s holding things up on a possible deal with Showtime is whether or not the show’s creator Mitch Hurwitz will stay on with the show.

According to USA Today, Hurwitz says he's interested, but exhausted from the show's labor-intensive editing and wants to take a break before making a move. "I'm really torn,” Hurwitz told USA Today. “It's a really important show to me, but on the other hand, maybe it has lived the life it needs to live. What weighs against it is it's a soul-crushing amount of work."

Come on, Mitch! If Arrested’s Bluths have taught us nothing, it’s that if the ship is going down, you might as well have a drunken, debauched time while it sinks. And hopefully tonight is no exception.

"Arrested Development" airs tonight (in yet another timeslot—possibly its final one) on FOX at 8:00 pm PST.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Have a Burning Question for Team Darlton, Matthew Fox, Evangeline Lilly, or Michael Emerson?

Lost fans: you don't have to make your way to the island via Ajira Airways in order to ask a question of the creative team or the series' stars. Televisionary is taking questions from fans to put to Lost 's executive producers/showrunners Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse and stars Matthew Fox ("Jack Shephard"), Evangeline Lilly ("Kate Austen"), and Michael Emerson ("Benjamin Linus") for a series of on-camera interviews taking place this weekend. If you have a specific question for any of the above producers or actors from Lost , please leave it in the comments section below . I'll be accepting questions until midnight PT tonight and, while I can't promise I'll be able to ask any specific inquiry due to the brevity of these on-camera interviews, I am looking for some insightful and thought-provoking questions to add to the mix. So who knows: your burning question might get asked after all.

What's Done is Done: The Eternal Struggle Between Good and Evil on the Season Finale of "Lost"

Every story begins with thread. It's up to the storyteller to determine just how much they need to parcel out, what pattern they're making, and when to cut it short and tie it off. With last night's penultimate season finale of Lost ("The Incident, Parts One and Two"), written by Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse, we began to see the pattern that Lindelof and Cuse have been designing towards the last five seasons of this serpentine series. And it was only fitting that the two-hour finale, which pushes us on the road to the final season of Lost , should begin with thread, a loom, and a tapestry. Would Jack follow through on his plan to detonate the island and therefore reset their lives aboard Oceanic Flight 815 ? Why did Locke want to kill Jacob? What caused The Incident? What was in the box and just what lies in the shadow of the statue? We got the answers to these in a two-hour season finale that didn't quite pack the same emotional wallop of previous season ...

In Defense of Downton Abbey (Or, Don't Believe Everything You Read)

The proof of the pudding, as they say, is in the eating. Which means, if I can get on my soapbox for a minute, that in order to judge something, one ought to experience it first hand. One can't know how the pudding has turned out until one actually tastes it. I was asked last week--while I was on vacation with my wife--for an interview by a journalist from The Daily Mail, who got in touch to talk to me about PBS' upcoming launch of ITV's period drama Downton Abbey , which stars Hugh Bonneville, Dame Maggie Smith, Dan Stevens, Elizabeth McGovern, and a host of others. (It launches on Sunday evening as part of PBS' Masterpiece Classic ; my advance review of the first season can be read here , while my interview with Downton Abbey creator Julian Fellowes and stars Dan Stevens and Hugh Bonneville can be read here .) Normally, I would have refused, just based on the fact that I was traveling and wasn't working, but I love Downton Abbey and am so enchanted with the proj...