(no subject)

[proximoception]

It took some structural risks but I don't find the Arrested Development relaunch any worse than the better episodes of the original run. If anything those risks made it more interesting. So I'm kind of suspecting the tepid reaction had to do with people remembering the show as better than it was. Presumably it was mostly superior to whatever else was on network television at the time? I didn't have any reception from c. 1998-2008 so can't contextualize very accurately. If my guess is right it might also explain Firefly, which similarly seemed to me to fall absurdly short of its praise.

Though I thoroughly sympathize with the disappointed, having been tortured by zombie versions of Futurama for what, six years. We couldn't have loved it more.

Comments

[dominika-kretek.livejournal.com]

I feel somewhat immunized to being disappointed by the new Arrested Development because I rewatched the original series not too long ago and found that it didn't hold up. It was a riot back then, but the best explanation I have is that times have changed. Trapped in a house with a bunch of wealthy idiot crooks probably reached peak hilarity in W's first term.

I'll never understand the Firefly madness.

[proximoception.livejournal.com]

I dunno. Stewart, Colbert and Maher rose to prominence at the same time, but were genuinely funny. Or Thurber's anti-McCarthy pieces, like "The Peacelike Mongoose." They hold up. But I don't think Arrested Development was really about outrage. Maybe complicity? That I could see, and also how it would have been lost on me at the time.

[maundering.livejournal.com]

I haven't read any 'official' reactions to the relaunch, but I was personally turned off by all the racism & homophobia; they intensified in the fourth season in a way that was distinctly unfunny / unclever, and the punchline of "Look at these bigoted jerks!" was spread obnoxiously paper-thin.

& I've never watched Firefly, but I've found myself profoundly underwhelmed by Whedon's other work.

[proximoception.livejournal.com]

I was thinking similar things about the unfunniness of the Cross and Winkler bits of the original run. Mockery of closeted gays is starting to look like a historically short-lived common ground, where anxiety about gay-bashing met anxiety about gayness. Where if you had the latter you could just pretend to be feeling the former when you took shots at Ted Haggard.

[andalus.livejournal.com]

Firefly, as I always say, never really rose to genius but had the potential to grow into something really great. The ingredients were there. As for Arrested Development, I thought the reboot was good and novel, and was interested in it more in terms of how to tell a story --- I really don't know what your criteria is for "laughs" because I found the original very funny, and find Archer hilarious, when not high. Then again I have a soft spot for terrible people acting terribly. I figure that what turned most fans off about the new season is how whatever pretense of goodness was left in the characters --- particularly Jason Bateman's --- was gone by the first episode. They went from feeling "I sympathize with Michael Bluth for being the only voice of reason (vaguely) in this shitstorm" to "everyone's pretty much fucked all over"

Maybe "laughs" is a bad term. I watch everything at night on netflix and maybe in this context what I look for is more a consistent feeling of amusement and cleverness. 30 Rock is the standard for putting a joke in precisely every place that could fit a joke, which I find ever so entertaining, though I have no great love for it beyond amusement.

[proximoception.livejournal.com]

Well, I don't feel high amusement watching it either. Alternations of low amusement and annoyance, I guess. Mostly just annoyance with Archer. 30 Rock we haven't yet put the time in on to say.

Some of this may be generational, or genre-centered - given the competition Firefly could well have been the best tv sci fi show ever and still not been very good (live action sci fi, anyway), and it and AD really may have been among the best shows on the air when Gen Y hit full consciousness (c. ages 16-23). Hard not to love those first oases you hit in your trek through the desert, even after you're out.