The party is not for Buster anymore.
No, Michael, it's for you.
Hey.
Take a look at banner, Michael!
Family-- it's often more of a burden than a gift.
No show has mined this concept more than the beloved sitcom,
Arrested Development.
With an intricately woven web of parental mistakes,
petty grudges, and intergenerational 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 characters
and high concept premises-- it's family trauma.
Your average American male is in a perpetual state
of adolescence-- you know, arrested development.
Hey, that's the name of the show.
Before we get too deep into today's episode,
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Created by Mitch Hurwitz and originally airing
on Fox for three years and then later
on Netflix for two revival seasons,
Arrested Development centers on the highly dysfunctional
extended family of the corrupt real estate developer George
Bluth, Sr., who is arrested and imprisoned in the series pilot
for building unlawful homes in Iraq for Saddam Hussein.
There's a good chance I may have committed some light treason.
Over the course of the show, we witness sibling rivalries,
intergenerational infighting, and a supreme lack
of empathy and understanding.
But against all odds, it's hilarious.
Also, the attorney said that they're
going to have to put a halt in the company's expense account.
[GASPING]
Interesting.
I would have expected that after they're keeping dad in jail.
Much of the comedy in the show is
derived from the sheepishly flustered antics
of Jason Bateman's Michael Bluth as he attempts
to hold his family of misfits, weirdos, and egomaniacs
together.
Well, that and sort out all the trauma
they've endured due to their abusive upbringing.
What are you taking, stupid pills?
Come on.
This was a management tool that he
used to keep Michael working for his approval.
Arrested Development was serialized.
Most half-hour syndicated sitcoms
made sure they didn't have long running story elements in order
to slot into the established cable syndication pipeline.
Arrested Development didn't care about that,
meaning the show used a serialization as an added
way of generating comedy.
Dad, I'm trying to find some money for the family.
Always money in a banana stand.
They could introduce longstanding running bits,
all of which flowed directly from the frictions
of the family members and their emotional hang-ups.
Hurwitz and his staff of writers craft
a portrait of a family reeling from the mistakes
of the previous generation.
They're emotionally ill-equipped to handle the conflicts
at hand.
And despite them all suffering from various stages
of narcissism, egocentrism, and post-traumatic stress,
they're trying to do their best.
Sure, Michael is positioned as the straight man
at first glance, but the show quickly develops that idea out
into a much more complicated network of relationships.
So what we'd like to do here is just go around the room
and have everyone talk a little about Michael--
things we don't like about him or how he annoys us.
As the emotional center of the family,
Michael views himself as the only sane one.
But in many ways, he's just as flawed as the rest of them.
He's overcompensating for George, Sr. and Lucille's lack
of parenting.
He cements himself as the new parental figure of the family,
but why is that?
Why would someone continually put themselves in a position
where they need to play parent to their siblings
and actual parents?
Because of the traumatic upbringing he endured.
George, Sr. was such a psychotic parent that he literally
tortured his children as a means of attempting to instill
lessons in them, as evidenced in the running bit with Jay Walter
Weatherman where, instead of having simple conversations
with his children, George, Sr. paid his one-armed employee
to be repeatedly dismembered in order to prove a point that--
That's why you always leave a note.
Similarly, what type of mother would put up
with their children being constantly endangered?
One who's a serial addict and alcoholic.
That one kind of explains it all.
The trauma endured by the whole family,
thanks to the actions of George, Sr. and Lucille,
manifests throughout all of the characters on the show.
Joe, played by Will Arnett, never
received the attention he needed as a child,
so he's now a frustrated sleight of hand magician.
But like so many affluent people, because he never
struggled, he never had to actually apply himself
and therefore is terrible at it.
Eight of diamonds.
That's amazingly close.
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.
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's constantly seeking male approval due to the fact
that she's married to someone who is obviously gay
and has no physical attraction to her.
I have needs, you know?
And how am I not addressing your needs?
How can you even ask that?
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 a deeper
insight into the trauma she's endured being
a member of the Bluth family.
After attempting to receive attention from male prisoners
by wearing a provocative shirt with no bra on,
Lindsay visits her currently incarcerated father
and has a heart to heart with him, where she inadvertently
reveals how she receives love.
It's all I've ever wanted from you, daddy--
for you to spend money on me.
Perhaps the most depressing member
of George and Lucille's children is Buster, 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.
Because of this, he's permanently stunted.
He turned out a little, uh, soft,
you know, a little doughy.
[WHIMPERING]
I don't know.
Maybe it was my fault. Maybe I just ignored the guy.
He still lives with his mother, Lucille,
and finds it almost impossible to extricate himself
from her orbit.
He is simultaneously in love with his mother and hates her.
And when he does finally get away from her,
he just replaces her with another woman named Lucille.
I'm feeling proud even.
[LAUGHS GIDDILY]
[GASP]
[SHATTERING]
Arrested Development's commitment
to mining this idea of how grief and trauma
that aren't dealt with can fester
and corrupt people emotionally is handled so expertly
that it even manifests in the next generation of Bluths.
Michael's son, George Michael, is
a weak, timid, and fragile boy who is in love with his cousin.
Why?
Because of how Michael attempted to not
repeat the oppressive and chaotic parenting
style that his mother and father employed.
Michael opted to be the cliché helicopter parent,
and it ruined George Michael.
It robbed him of his personal agency.
George Michael is not self sufficient,
constantly questioning himself and completely anxiety ridden.
Maybe it was the other George Michael,
you know, the singer songwriter.
Yeah, that makes sense.
Yeah.
Conversely, Tobias and Lindsay's daughter, Maeby,
was almost completely neglected as a child.
Lindsay was too busy being a socialite,
and Tobias was consumed with his passion for acting.
Oh, my God!
We're having a fire--
sale.
Oh, the burning!
It burns me!
Thus, she was forced to fend for herself,
become self sufficient, and mature beyond her years.
Maeby and George Michael's relationship on the show
is consistently played for laughs.
And that's when George Michael finally
got close to Maeby, who, by the way,
might not be his biological cousin.
However, beyond this one-note running joke
is a darker motivation for why George Michael is
in love with his cousin.
She's everything he wishes he was.
Yes, she has the pain of basically
having absentee parents, but that's
forced her to become self determining in a way
that George Michael will never be.
Maeby, where have you been?
You left me at home.
You do remember you have a daughter, right?
Uh, yes, uh, of course we remember,
and we were worried sick.
It's important to revisit the genesis of Arrested Development
in order to accurately understand
how something so unique and insightful on a character level
actually made it to air on a network.
Ron Howard pitched the idea of a show shot
in the style of a documentary to series creator Mitch Hurwitz
because of the blossoming digital video
technology of the time.
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,
it wouldn't have been nearly as successful.
If they hadn't built characters that were so steeped in trauma,
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.
In many ways, the show developed its characters the way
a prestige drama would have.
It told long running stories of season-long arcs,
and it built wholly realized characters
that have depth, complexity, and flaws.
And it exploited those flaws for comedy gold.
I'll be your wingman.
Even if it means me taking a chubby, I will suck it up.
Well, that's enough family stuff for today.
Well, that's it for this episode.
What do you think?
Is there another sitcom that developed its characters
this well?
Comment down below, and as always,
like, comment, and subscribe for more videos just like this one.
[MUSIC PLAYING]