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[Catherine Rubeo]

Arrested Development follows the Bluths, a formerly wealthy, dysfunctional family. It is presented in a serialized format, incorporating handheld camera work, voice-over narration, archival photos, historical footage and maintains numerous running gags and catchphrases. Ron Howard served as both an executive producer and the omniscient narrator and, in later seasons, appears in the show as a fictionalized version of himself. Set in Newport Beach, California, the series was filmed primarily in Culver City and Marina del Rey.[3]

Arrested Development received critical acclaim. It won six Primetime Emmy Awards and a Golden Globe Award, and attracted a cult following.[4] It has been named one of the greatest TV shows of all time by publications including Rolling Stone,[5] Time,[6] Entertainment Weekly,[7] and IGN.[8] It influenced later single-camera comedy series such as 30 Rock and Community.[9]

Despite the positive critical response, Arrested Development received low ratings and viewership on Fox, which canceled the series in 2006. In 2011, Netflix licensed new episodes and distributed them on its streaming service.[10] These episodes were released in May 2013.[11] Netflix commissioned a fifth season of Arrested Development, the first half of which premiered in May 2018, and the second half in March 2019.[12][13][14] The show was due to be removed from Netflix in March 2023 but will remain on the service until 2026.[15]

Discussion that led to the creation of the series began in the summer of 2002. Ron Howard had the original idea to create a comedy series in the style of handheld cameras and reality television, but with an elaborate, highly comical script resulting from repeated rewritings and rehearsals. Howard met with David Nevins, the president of Imagine Television, Katie O'Connell, a senior vice president, and two writers, including Mitchell Hurwitz. In light of recent corporate accounting scandals, such as Enron and Adelphia, Hurwitz suggested a story about a "riches to rags" family. Howard and Imagine were interested in using this idea, and signed Hurwitz to write the show. The idea was pitched and sold in Q3 2002. There was a bidding war for the show between Fox and NBC, with the show ultimately selling to Fox as a put pilot with a six-figure penalty.[16]

Over the next few months, Hurwitz developed the characters and plot for the series. The script of the pilot episode was submitted in January 2003 and filmed in March 2003. It was submitted in late April to Fox and was added to the network's fall schedule that May.[17]

Alia Shawkat was the first cast in the series.[17] Michael Cera, Tony Hale, and Jessica Walter were cast from video tapes and flown in to audition for Fox.[17] Jason Bateman and Portia de Rossi both read and auditioned for the network and were immediately chosen.[17] The character of Gob was the most challenging to cast.[18] When Will Arnett auditioned, he played the character "like a guy who thought of himself as the chosen son, even though it was obvious to everyone else that he was the least favorite"; he was chosen immediately for his portrayal.[18] The characters of Tobias and George Sr. were originally going to have minor roles, but David Cross and Jeffrey Tambor's portrayals mixed well with the rest of the characters, and they were given more significant parts.[17] Howard provided the narration for the initial pilot, and his narrating meshed so well with the tone of the program that the decision was made to keep his voice.[19] Howard aided in the casting of "Lucille 2"; the producers told him that their dream actress for the role was Liza Minnelli but that they assumed no one of her stature would take the part.[20] She agreed when Ron Howard asked her himself, because they were old friends; she had been his babysitter when she was a teenager.[21]

Arrested Development uses several elements which were rare at the time for American live-action sitcoms. It was shot on location and in HD video (at 24 frames per second) with multiple cameras, parodying tactics often employed in documentary film and reality television, straying from the "fixed-set, studio audience, laugh track" style long dominant in comedy production.[22] The show makes heavy use of cutaway gags, supplementing the narrative with visual punchlines like security camera footage, Bluth family photos, website screenshots, archive films, and flashbacks.[22] An omniscient third-person narrator (producer Ron Howard) ties together the multiple plot threads running through each episode, while humorously undercutting and commenting on the characters.[23] Arrested Development developed self-referentiality through use of in-jokes that evolved over multiple episodes, which rewarded longtime viewership (and in turn may have discouraged new viewers and contributed to the show's ratings difficulties).[22]

Due to scheduling conflicts,[24][25] the fourth season used a different format with longer episodes focusing on one character.[26][27] The season was later re-edited to be more inline with the format of the other seasons.[27][28]

During the series' third season in 2006, despite months-long rumors of Arrested Development having been picked up by the cable television network Showtime,[29] creator Hurwitz declined to move the show to another network.[30] Hurwitz said, "I had taken it as far as I felt I could as a series. I told the story I wanted to tell, and we were getting to a point where I think a lot of the actors were ready to move on."[31] He said that he was "more worried about letting down the fans in terms of the quality of the show dropping" than he was about disappointing fans by not giving them more episodes. He also said, "If there's a way to continue this in a form that's not weekly episodic series television, I'd be up for it".

After the series cancellation, Fox Entertainment Group sold the initial 53-episode run for syndication. In a first for its kind, the syndication involved a three-year deal with Microsoft's nascent internet video streaming service MSN Video (now Bing Video) before the series would go on to cable channel G4.[32]

On October 2, 2011, the cast of Arrested Development reunited for a panel at The New Yorker Festival in New York.[33][34] At the panel, Hurwitz declared his intention of producing a truncated fourth season as a lead-in to a film adaptation.[35]

Six years after the series had been canceled by Fox, filming for a fourth season began on August 7, 2012.[36] Fifteen episodes of the show's revival season were released simultaneously on Netflix on May 26, 2013.[11] Although it received generally favorable reviews,[37] it was far less well-received than prior seasons, leading to Netflix to re-edit the season in 2018.[26] Netflix confirmed on May 17, 2017,[38] that a fifth season was expected to be released on their service in 2018, with filming taking place from August 2017 to November 2017.[39][40] Arrested Development was set to be removed from Netflix on March 15, 2023.[41] However, following a last minute deal, Netflix retained the streaming rights.[42]

The plot of Arrested Development revolves around the members of the Bluth family, a formerly wealthy family who continue to lead extravagant lifestyles despite their changed circumstances.[43][44] At the center of the show is Michael Bluth (Jason Bateman), the show's straight man, who strives to do the right thing and keep his family together, despite their materialism, selfishness, and manipulative natures.[43] Michael is a widowed single father.[45] His teenage son, George Michael (Michael Cera), has the same qualities of decency but feels a constant pressure to live up to his father's expectations and is often reluctant to follow his father's plans. He battles with a crush he has on cousin Mae "Maeby" Fnke (Alia Shawkat), which developed from a kiss she gave him as part of a prank.[43]

Michael's father, George Bluth Sr. (Jeffrey Tambor), is the patriarch of the family and a corrupt real estate developer who is arrested in the first episode. George goes to considerable lengths to manipulate and control his family in spite of his imprisonment, and makes numerous efforts to evade justice.[46] His wife, and Michael's mother, Lucille (Jessica Walter), is ruthlessly manipulative, materialistic, and hypercritical of every member of her family, and constantly drinks alcohol.[43] Her grip is tightest on her youngest son, Byron "Buster" Bluth (Tony Hale), who is overeducated on various random subjects but lacks emotional intelligence or common sense. Buster is also a mother's boy who has dependency issues and is prone to panic attacks.[43]

Michael's older brother is George Oscar Bluth II (Will Arnett), known by the acronym "Gob" (/dʒoʊb/).[43] An unsuccessful professional magician whose business and personal schemes usually fail or become tiresome and are quickly abandoned, Gob is competitive with Michael over women and bullies Buster.[43] Michael's twin sister Lindsay (Portia de Rossi) is spoiled and materialistic, continually seeking the center of attention and leaping on various social causes for the sake of vanity.[47] In the finale it is revealed that she and Lucille are sisters.[48] She is married to Tobias Fnke (David Cross), a discredited psychiatrist-turned-aspiring actor.[43] Tobias is a self-diagnosed "never-nude" (a disorder comparable to gymnophobia), whose language and behavior have heavily homosexual overtones to which he seems oblivious and which are the center of much tongue-in-cheek comedy throughout the series.[47][49] Their daughter Maeby is a rebellious teen with an opportunistic streak, who seeks to defy her parents for the sake of attention, and otherwise pursues boys and power, and furthers her complicated relationship with George Michael.[43]

George Bluth Sr., patriarch of the wealthy Bluth family, is the founder and former CEO of the successful Bluth Company which markets and builds mini-mansions among many other activities. His son Michael serves as manager of the company, and, after being passed over for a promotion, decides to leave both the company and his family. Just as he makes this decision, however, George Sr. is arrested by the Securities and Exchange Commission for defrauding investors and gross spending of the company's money for "personal expenses". His wife Lucille becomes CEO, and immediately names as the new president her extremely sheltered youngest son Buster, who proves ill-equipped, as his only experience with business is a class he took concerning 18th century agrarian business. Furious at being passed over again, Michael secures another job with a rival company and plans on leaving his family behind for good. Realizing that they need Michael, the family asks him to come back and run the company, which Michael scoffs at until he sees how much the family means to his teenaged son George Michael. To keep the family together, Michael asks his self-centered twin sister Lindsay, her husband Tobias and their daughter Maeby to live together in the Bluth model home with him and George Michael.[70]

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