(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

[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.