Mon, January 12, 2004

Oh, you people are sad. A three-way tie at one vote? The voting is free, people. Jesus, this voter apathy is an epidemic. No wonder Schwarzenegger got elected. I'm going to have to do something to incentivize the use of this site's cute feedback features. If I have to offer free porn with every vote, so be it; I've got spare time.

All right, enough whining from me. I'm enormously gratified that so many of you read through all the unfinished raw product in the first place, which just goes to show that taking a month off really whips up the appetite of my readership for new material. The immediate future doesn't look good for a lot of free writing time, but I promise to try to do better. In the meantime, we're floating deep into the Digression Zone, because I've been out of the writing game for a while and it's been a weird couple of days. Ordinarily, I work hard to make sure that at least the columns in the Reviews section pretty well stand on their own, since realistically there's at least some chance that someone may approach them at a future date and need an objective (ha! me, objective!) viewpoint on a movie or TV show without the context of the other columns that went out that week. In this case, that's already shot all to hell, so nevermind. If you came wondering whether or not Arrested Development is frickin' awesome, you shouldn't need me to tell you. It is. If you've seen it, you already know! And the reviews I write about things I like usually suck anyway, so it's better for me to stay over here in the DZ for as long as I can. (Although I have to say, my review of Down with Love wasn't half bad, and I still think my Out of Order review is one of the best – and least appreciated – columns I've churned out.)

Another reason for all the digressing. (I'm tempted to make a really obscure reference to a Canadian high-school soap opera, but instead I'll just make an obscure reference to such a reference. I'm back, baby!!) Anyway, another reason for all the digressing is that I've been working around under the hood of the site a bit for the past couple of days and as a result I've had a number of forgotten columns pulled up from the archives and shoved under my nose. And, man, a few of them are pretty good! I have no hope of approaching their quality tonight after so many weeks off, but at least it reminds me of why I got into all of this in the first place. And it reminds me how much I enjoy my style even though one of its chief identifying characteristics is that it borders on unreadable. The digressions and the vast, thundering herds of parenthetical clauses are all part of the fun, so forgive me if I indulge a little here in the early paragraphs.

So, you're asking, if there's a three way tie at 1, how is a clear winner decided? Well, the backup plan had always been for me to just pick my favorite, but I assumed that even if there weren't many votes there would at least be a majority. However, I decided to weight Kathryn's vote 101% for a couple of reasons. First, out of all of you, she's my favorite. Second, she went well beyond the call of duty and registered for a free (yes, free!) account, rather than just typing her name in a box. It's people like her, making that extra effort, that make online communities thrive. You can be sure she'll be getting a nice wedding present from me! Of course, I figured that tiny additional value attached to her vote wouldn't amount to much, because surely a clear majority would emerge. But in a battle between 1.01 and 1.00 and 1.00, 1.01 is a landslide! Congratulations, Kat!

So, a review of Arrested Development it is. (Don't worry, most of the other columns will eventually get written, too – along with that one about the NFL uniforms that I know 40% of you are busting at the seams to get your hands on.) The thing about Arrested Development is that it's an amazingly great show. Funny and good, which is quite a feat by 21st century network television standards. Color us all very surprised that Fox (Fox!) mustered the perspicacity to pick it up for a whole season. There's not a whole lot more to say about it than it's awesome.

It begins with smart comedy. Smart comedy is the most lasting type of comedy because it doesn't depend on shock (like gross comedy) to get a laugh. Shock is something which diminishes with repeated viewing. It also doesn't depend on something our film school professors would refer to as "extra-cinematic context." You can watch a good episode of Cheers today, and it's still funny even though it's 20 years old. Smart comedy is timeless comedy. And it's also versatile. It can pick and choose between different styles and emotions without losing its distinctive tone. All the tricks in the comedy arsenal are yours if you're working in smart comedy. And Arrested Development is all over the map. Character-based laughs, situational laughs, pratfalls, wisecracks, you name it. These are all pulled together by a consistent tone that is almost imperceptible because it is a tone of casual anarchy. When the through-line of the show is chaos, it can feel like there is no unifying element, but the craziness is what holds it together. And the genius here is that the chaos is used to tap into that other building block of great comedy: timing.

Timing is crucial to comedy, especially intelligent comedy. This is what makes Sports Night so great – the rapid timing. (In the case of Sports Night, the pace is dictated by the fact that the show is set in a newsroom – further evidence that Sorkin is a genius.) Good timing keeps the laughs flowing forward without slowing down and waiting for the audience the way laugh-track-based shows seem to these days. (For the extreme, observe Saturday Night Live, which absolutely grinds to a halt.) It flows all the way through the material, from the timing of delivery to the pacing of the story to the editing of beats in a scene. Because of the "mockumentary" style of Arrested Development, the timing is accelerated, and it makes everything sharper. The makers of Arrested Development aren't afraid to cut out of a scene abruptly, because they're just following the comedy to someplace funnier. In fact, they often use such cuts to their advantage in the same way that Family Guy or Scrubs might.

The single-camera sitcom is nothing new, and while the handheld camerawork adds to the chaos it certainly isn't the reason Arrested Development is hilariously funny. Even the characters and situations aren't that overwhelmingly original. The key is the editing and the commitment. The show always plays it straight, no matter how outlandish things get – and every week they spiral dangerously out of control. Even Buster's panic attacks and neurotic tics are played straight (compare to Kramer, who was physically hilarious but always sorta in on the joke). In fact, the situations themselves are reined in, as hard as it may be to believe after some of the misadventures we've seen. Despite the family's perpetual teetering on the edge of bankruptcy and imprisonment, nothing ever gets too depressing. A quarter of a million dollars in much needed cash is destroyed by some well intended arson, but the Banana Grabber cartoon character is bringing in money. The SEC is always on their heels, but so far the family and the company stay afloat. The riotous comedy wouldn't be as enjoyable without the real moments, like the growing bond between Michael and his twin sister Lindsay. They're at each other's throats but they really love each other and they're the only two with a pair of brain cells to rub together, so it's impossible not to root for them.

In addition, Arrested Development plays a little with the conventions of television. (The film profs would say "postmodern.") Episodes frequently end with a few scenes from "next week's show," but they're not actually from the next show – they're just concise little epilogues from the current show. Because the stories have been engineered so magnificently, there's room for a few four-second shots to be punch lines all on their own. Among the series' most rewindable moments to date: GOB dropping that dead bunny in the ocean without even attempting to hurl it seaward. Elements like these may seem small, but they expose the precision with which the show is put together. Each episode's disparate story lines inevitably meet at the end, no matter how impossible this would have seemed at the start. This is something pioneered (or at least popularized) by the later years of Seinfeld, and it's a testament to some fine writing indeed.

With its characters maddeningly unchanging yet ruthlessly unpredictable, its cheerily inappropriate banjo music, and its refusal to pull any punches, Arrested Development keeps me tuning in. Heck, it's made me a Liza Minnelli fan. It's amazing how one little thing can completely reverse your thinking, resulting in great respect for someone you'd previously never cared for; I've experienced the opposite so many times, I never thought it worked this way, too! Watching her slide to the ground, clutching at furniture, as her character undergoes another spell of vertigo, it's clear that she's able to laugh at herself, which is a very impressive thing. And, for some reason, I can't get enough of GOB's slacks flapping wildly as he zips around on his Segway.

***

Speaking of TV, am I the only one who has noticed that the guest stars on Ed feature an inordinate number of Back to the Future alums? It's gotten to the point where they're replacing other actors! Ed's ex-wife Liz, previously portrayed by Melissa Errico and Janeane Garofalo, is now Lea Thompson. All they need are Crispin Glover and Michael J. Fox (and maybe Billy Zane) to round out the group. What gives?

***

Also, the cover of my new "Entertainment Weekly" refers to Jessica Simpson and Nick Lachey as the smartest couple on TV – making the point that she plays dumb on the show because it's good for ratings; just remember, folks – you heard it here first.

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