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The Hilariously Traumatic Secret Of Arrested Development
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May 7, 2025
Few shows on television deal with family issues the way Arrested Development did. With its intricately woven web of parental mistakes, petty grudges, and inter-generational emotional baggage Arrested Development made looking at family trauma hilarious. It's a fine line to walk, but Arrested Development nailed it.
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The party is not for Buster anymore
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No, Michael, it's for you. Take a look at Banner, Michael. Family
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It's often more of a burden than a gift. No show has mined this concept more than the beloved sitcom Arrested Development
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With an intricately woven web of parental mistakes, petty grudges, and intergenerational
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emotional baggage, the show has a keenly intimate perspective on comedy. So much so, in fact, that the central dramatic engine of the program isn't standard oddball
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characters and high-concept premises, it's family trauma. Your average American male is in a
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perpetual state of adolescence, you know, Arrested Development. Hey, that's the name of the show
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Created by Mitch Hurwitz and originally airing on Fox for three years and then later on Netflix
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for two revival seasons, Arrested Development centers on the highly dysfunctional extended
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family of the corrupt real estate developer George Bluth Sr., who is arrested and imprisoned
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in the series pilot for building unlawful homes in Iraq for Saddam Hussein. There's a good chance
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I may have committed some light treason. Over the course of the show, we witness sibling rivalries
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intergenerational infighting, and a supreme lack of empathy and understanding. But against all odds, it's hilarious
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Also, the attorney said that they're going to have to put a halt on the company's expense account. Interesting, I would have expected that
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after they're keeping Dad in jail. Much of the comedy in the show is derived from the sheepishly flustered antics
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of Jason Bateman's Michael Bluth, as he attempts to hold his family of misfits
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weirdos, and egomaniacs together. Well, that and sort out all the trauma they've endured
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due to their abusive upbringing. What, are you taking stupid pills? Come on
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This was a management tool that he used to keep Michael working for his approval
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Arrested Development was serialized. Most half-hour syndicated sitcoms made sure they didn't have long-running story elements
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in order to slot into the established cable syndication pipeline. Arrested Development didn't care about that
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meaning the show used a serialization as an added way of generating comedy
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Dad, I'm trying to find some money for the family. There's always money in a banana stand
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They could introduce longstanding running bits, all of which flow directly from the frictions
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of the family members and their emotional hangups Hurwitz and his staff of writers craft a portrait of a family reeling from the mistakes of the previous generation They emotionally ill to handle the conflicts at hand and despite them all
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suffering from various stages of narcissism, egocentrism, and post-traumatic stress, they're trying to do their best
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Sure, Michael is positioned as the straight man at first glance, but the show quickly
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develops that idea out into a much more complicated network of relationships
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So what we'd like to do here is just go around the room and have everyone talk a little about
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Michael. Things we don't like about him or how he annoys us. As the emotional center of the family
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Michael views himself as the only sane one. But in many ways, he's just as flawed as the rest of
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them. He's overcompensating for George Sr. and Lucille's lack of parenting. He cements himself
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as the new parental figure of the family. But why is that? Why would someone continually put
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themselves in a position where they need to play parent to their siblings and actual parents
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Because of the traumatic upbringing he endured, George Sr. was such a psychotic parent that he
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literally tortured his children as a means of attempting to instill lessons in them
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As evidenced in the running bit with J. Walter Weatherman, where instead of having simple
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conversations with his children, George Sr. paid his one-armed employee to be repeatedly dismembered
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in order to prove a point that similarly, what type of mother would put up
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with their children being constantly endangered, one who's a serial addict and alcoholic
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That one kind of explains it all. The trauma endured by the whole family, thanks to the actions of George Sr. and Lucille
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manifests throughout all of the characters on the show. Job, played by Will Arnett
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never received the attention he needed as a child, so he's now a frustrated sleight-of-hand magician
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But like so many affluent people, because he never struggled, he never had to actually
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apply himself and therefore is terrible at it. Eight of diamonds. That's amazingly close
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Lindsay, played by Portia de Rossi, is a shallow rich kid. On the surface, she seems like a critique of the Paris Hilton rich girl persona
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She has no direction in life no real goals or dreams other than to receive attention look beautiful and be wealthy without having to work for it She constantly seeking male approval due to the fact that she married to someone who is obviously gay and has no physical attraction to her
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I have needs, you know. And how am I not addressing your needs? How can you even ask that
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What is this? Oh, go right to that! But it's in the eighth episode of season one, My Mother, The Car, where Lindsay provides
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a deeper insight into the trauma she's endured being a member of the Bluth family
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After attempting to receive attention from male prisoners by wearing a provocative shirt with no
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bra on, Lindsay visits her currently incarcerated father and has a heart-to-heart with him
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where she inadvertently reveals how she receives love. That's all I've ever wanted from you, Daddy
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For you to spend money on me. Perhaps the most depressing member of George and Lucille's children is Buster
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played brilliantly by Tony Hale. As the youngest member of the Bluth family, his identity has always been that he is the baby of the flock
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Because of this, he's permanently stunted. He turned out a little soft
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Yeah, a little doughy. I don't know, maybe it was my fault
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Maybe I just ignored the guy. He still lives with his mother Lucille
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and finds it almost impossible to extricate himself from her orbit. He is simultaneously in love with his mother and hates her
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And when he does finally get away from her, he just replaces her with another woman named Lucille
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I'm feeling proud, even. Arrested Development's commitment to mining this idea of how grief and trauma that aren't dealt with can fester and corrupt people emotionally
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is handled so expertly that it even manifests in the next generation of Blutes
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Michael's son, George Michael, is a weak, timid, and fragile boy who is in love with his cousin
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Why? Because of how Michael attempted to not repeat the oppressive and chaotic
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parenting style that his mother and father employed. Michael opted to be the
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cliche helicopter parent and it ruined George Michael. It robbed him of his
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personal agency. George Michael is not self-sufficient, constantly questioning himself and completely anxiety Maybe it was the other George Michael you know the singer Yeah that makes sense Yeah Conversely Tobias and Lindsay daughter Maybe was almost completely neglected as a child
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Lindsay was too busy being a socialite, and Tobias was consumed with his passion for acting
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Oh my God, we're having a fire sale. Oh, the burning! It burned me
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Thus, she was forced to fend for herself, become self-sufficient, and mature beyond her years
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Maybe and George Michael's relationship on the show is consistently played for laughs
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And that's when George Michael finally got close to Maybe, who, by the way, might not be his biological cousin
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However, beyond this one-note-running joke is a darker motivation for why George Michael is in love with his cousin
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She's everything he wishes he was. Yes, she has the pain of basically having absentee parents
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but that's forced her to become self-determining in a way that George Michael will never be
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Maybe, where have you been? He left me at home. You do remember you have a daughter, right
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Uh, yes. Of course we remember, and we were worried sick. It's important to revisit the genesis of Arrested Development
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in order to accurately understand how something so unique and insightful on a character level
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actually made it to air on a network. Ron Howard pitched the idea of a show shot
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in the style of a documentary to series creator Mitch Hurwitz because of the blossoming digital video technology of the time
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No, I, uh, I don't see it as a series. Without the thematic reality and dark characterization that Hurwitz and company built on for Arrested Development
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it wouldn't have been nearly as successful if they hadn't built characters that were so steeped in trauma
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It might not have made it on air at all. In fact, you could say that the intergenerational trauma and our responses to it is the central preoccupation of the show
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In many ways, the show developed its characters the way a prestige drama would have
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It told long-running stories of season-long arcs, and it built wholly realized characters that have depth, complexity, and flaws
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And it exploited those flaws for comedy gold. I'll be your wingman
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Even if it means me taking a chubby, I will suck it up
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That's enough family stuff for today
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