proximoception | (no subject)

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.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

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.

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.