May 28th, 2013
Over the weekend I watched four or five of the new Netflixed episodes of the series. Some thoughts, in no particular order:
* I don’t begrudge Mitch Hurwitz or anyone else associated with the show the extra cash and I hope that everyone in the AD production orbit got something nice out of Netflix.
* That said, I’ll finish watching this slate of episodes only out of a dreary sense of duty. It’s like the sad-sacks who hung around into the fifth season of Burn Notice: You know that you’re not even getting the product warmed-over any more. But you still stick around to see how it ends.
* Seven years doesn’t seem like such a long time, except that it is. As Brendan, the sage of WWTDD once wrote, “Time is slowly turning us all into monsters.”
(Except for Judy Greer. She looked great. And she’s so funny that she can’t get enough work so far as I’m concerned.)
* For me, the low point of the original series was the six episode arc featuring Charlize Theron, which centered around “Mr. F.” Those episodes weren’t great, but they still had gold mixed with the dross. Nothing I’ve seen so far in the Netflixed rendition of AD even approaches that level of quality.
* One of the things I loved about AD flashbacks was seeing young Lucille and young George Sr. His comb-over was great, and so was her long hair. Remember the ’70s MotherBoy Lucille? For me, the Kristen Wiig and Seth Rogen subtracted value rather than adding it.
* I’d say the same about the enormous cavalcade of cameos. And about the entire idea of incorporating Imagine Entertainment and Brian Grazer. There’s a really fine line between Hollywood satirizing itself and faux-satirization that comes off as preening. For me, this played much closer to the Burn Hollywood Burn end of the spectrum.
* I don’t want to give too much thought to this, because the truth is, once this Netflix version is over I’m going to relegate it to the same dungeon of my mind where I have Jar-Jar Binks and the Buffy series finale tied up and locked in a box. I refuse to let it taint my enjoyment of the original series.
But it seems to me that the key change is that Hurwitz–intentionally or not–chose to make the characters repellent for this Netflix run. In the original series, Michael and George Michael are the moral centers of the universe. But even in the human demolition derby that is the Bluth Family, no one is irredeemable. And to the extent that these characters were sad, they were funny-sad.
In this new series Hurwitz seems to have evolved the characters so that “funny-sad” has been replaced by “tragic-sad” or “pathetic-sad.” No one has anything redeeming about them and even our moral centers, Michael and George Michael, are pathetic, self-involved idiots. Forget not having anyone to root for in this series–there’s not even a character I want to spend time with.
I haven’t seen any reaction to the new episodes yet, but I’d be really, really surprised if they were well-received for precisely this point. Funny is subjective and people can have different opinions on whether or not the humor in the new AD works. (For me it doesn’t.) But the change in characterization of the Bluths is something that, I think, will really turn the audience off, whether or not they realize why it’s given them a cold feeling.
* This is only tangentially related, but if this is the future of streaming content, stop the ride; I want to get off.
A long time ago before anyone could actually stream anything other than movie trailers on the Apple Trailers Website, we were all promised that streaming meant that one day we’d have access to every movie and every TV show ever made, from anywhere. It was going to be awesome.
The only wet blankets were the people asking, “Hey, how’s all that intellectual property going to be managed?” But this was the INTERNET we were talking about. Information wanted to be free! New! Now! Go!
Well, our streaming future is just about here and what do we have? We have Netflix moving explicitly away from the idea that it will offer everything and instead embracing “expert programming.” Which is corporate-speak for “spending our money on original series instead of rights for existing programming.” So instead of paying for rights to older content, Netflix makes underwhelming programming that gets a lot of attention. For a bit. Until the next stunt, anyway.
Other than Netflix, what do you do? You hope that you can buy a copy of the stream from a different platform, say iTunes or Amazon. But then you don’t actually own the content. And if they go out of business, or change their ToS, well, best of luck to you.
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“Forget not having anyone to root for in this series–there’s not even a character I want to spend time with.”
I was thinking that part of the problem is that the family doesn’t have money anymore. When they’re no longer super-rich, their dysfunction is a lot more depressing.
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I sympathize with your complaints, but it probably makes sense to hold off on criticism until you finish it. It’s a tremendously ambitious work, and pretty unprecedented what Hurwitz is trying to do with it. As many critics have said, like Rashomon on steroids.
A lot of people have complained after watching the first four or so episodes, which seem to drag, where the pacing and characters seem somewhat off, and where some bits of dialogue just appear to be confusing non-sequiturs. The show only starts to make sense in the second half, as the motivations and actions of the characters you haven’t seen (much 0f) yet become more clear. The show gets better as it goes on, and I think with repeated viewings.
This doesn’t always work and I’m not entirely thrilled with it yet. I would have been much happier with just another season of AD episodes, but for logistical reasons, that was never going to happen. So, instead of giving us another season of “meh AD,” Hurwitz opted to try something much more ambitious and potentially, much more rewarding.
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Regarding your notes on Michael’s and George Michael’s characters:
One of the themes (meta-jokes) in the season is the absence and disconnectedness of the Bluth family as a unit. Hurwitz was obviously aware that AD can’t be AD without the Bluths all hanging around either the model home or the Balboa Islands penthouse, and I think came to the decision to demonstrate what would happen if Michael et al failed in their quest “to keep the family together.”
The consequences of this, as had been hinted throughout the original run, is that all the characters spin wildly out of control. The Bluths need each other, both as a family and as a comedic ensemble.
Michael was the moral Bluth, in comparison to the rest of his family, but was not really moral in an objective sense. Michael certainly invested a lot in trying to appear to be the competent and moral Bluth, but as Lindsay and others pointed out, a lot of that was just the moral superiority and ego trip. In some sense, Michael’s devolution is a logical next step.
Now, whether all this works and is funny is another question. It’s worth pointing out that this season is really one long episode. There’s still time for Michael to redeem himself in the next, whether that be a movie or another season.
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See, this is what effects all succesful hipsters over time: the British version/original version/Run DMC version-was-so-much-better is the gen-X standard pose, at least since the Star Wars prequels. You could have written that posting with a James Last Certified ‘The Original Was Way Better’ program v.2.2 (not compatible with Mac or Windows 7), and I think you just did.
I’m sorry, I thought it was just as good. And no, I did not like Jar Jar Binks. So stop it, Last: you’re killing my dream of seeing a gereiatric Nathan Fillion in ill fitting brown pants come wheezing to life in a Netflix Fixodent ad-supported moment.
Say you thought it was awesome, Last. SAY IT!
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What did you expect would happen to these characters, JVL? How could the beautiful chaotic descent of such a dysfunctional, wasteful family be sustained over 7, 8 years, or result in anything resembling a comforting or happy landing?
I think you are missing a key component in your interpretation/appreciation of this series: the overriding political subtext.
I’m not sure there has ever been such a thoroughly yet subtly psycho-political show on tv, except maybe
The original, like the exquisite tragedy ‘The Sopranos,’ was set in the Bush II-Hussein era and deeply, consciously shaped by that fact.
It was always a comic study of existential fear, dread, and fatherhood. It was funny, but it was always set in our world.This appendix of the series takes place now, after the great bubble pop that the original predicted between the lines, during the Obama economic “recovery” and the great re-treating, re-treading and re-terming of all categories, moral or not. Of course, there can no longer be any more illusions of any “moral center of the universe,” or direction – all such satirical illusions of the original by which you insist on understanding and judging the series, as merely another “show” have since imploded and can now be all the more clearly be seen as the anxious lies they were without the metaphorical rug or its false threads of familial relation beneath them any longer.
Sure, it’s different, but so is the world it is set in. (Of course, this is still the same 21st century – we are still doomed to acting like it’s the eighties.)
Maybe it’s not as warm or funny as the original, but even that was not appreciated by most in its time – not until America enjoyed the distance of hindsight. It may take longer for anyone to face the painful absurdity of the current era of loss and despair that the new semi-original season ably reflects. -
[…] bunch you could see being friends with. That is no longer the case. As Jonathan V. Last succinctly wrote, he’s now a “pathetic, self-involved […]
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[…] dutifully making my way through the rest of the Netflixed season and for the most part, my first impressions haven’t modulated much. In the comments, someone argued that “It’s a tremendously […]
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I don’t understand, and won’t speculate, as to why Greer gets this much work. Basically a tackier downmarket Jane Adams.
Netflix to me is useless… At least Spotify over time made the effort to sign up music I actually wanted to hear (not 100% there yet–yesterday couldn’t stream either The Perfect Prescription or Psychedelicatessen, so settled for Metal Machine Music)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F3CTVDuB3ZQBut with NF– upon realizing I’d watched more than 3 of those shlock bastardized genre cash-ins from The Asylum–due to my 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, or 10th preference being unavailable–I canceled. With irritation I remember Holman Jenkins’ column detailing exactly how worthless the service is & will always be, but then somehow predicting they’d turn around into a satisfactory company.
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Hmm, I meant the Stu Spasm/Lubricated Goat album; turns out iTunes does stream something under the “Psychedelicatessen” entry, sort of a wanky Dream Theaterish thing… Trying to stump Spotify every weekend is why I haven’t fixed various structural collapses throughout my house over the last 18 months
Adam May 28, 2013 at 3:08 pm
I don’t mind you bagging on Arrested Development — I don’t have a dog in that fight — but Burn Notice still rules.