Terrible People

I’m catching up on all the terrible articles on Arrested Development that my sheep-shearing has gotten in the way of my mocking.  First up: Alyssa Rosenberg.  

“They sound like terrible people!” George Michael Bluth (Michael Cera) tells Rebel Alley (Isla Fisher), the actress that he has been dating towards the end of the fourth season of Arrested Development after she describes attending a dinner party with a conservative politician (Terry Crews) who brought a prostitute to dinner.

Uh, oh.  I have a feeling I know where this is going.

To reiterate: the characters on Arrested Development are terrible people.  Funny, terrible people.  To the extent to which this past season was slightly disappointing, it’s because they’re not quite as funny as before, partially because of the adverse circumstances of the season’s filming.  It’s not because they’re terrible people.

Fortunately, Alyssa Rosenberg, long overdue for criticism on this blog, doesn’t just go in that bad direction.  No, there are so many others . . .

But first, a digression on Alyssa Rosenberg, who is responsible for one of the worst articles I have ever read, in which she criticizes Romeo and Juliet.  Not because it’s weaker than Shakespeare’s later plays, no.  Because it’s “full of terrible, deeply childish ideas about love.”  It’s true—why should a 13 year old character have childish ideas about love?  How inappropriate!  She should already have grown and changed into a better person, on her journey of life.

Let me include one other line from this Romeo and Juliet article, because it cuts to the core of all that’s vapid and misguided about the kind of criticism I so dearly enjoy mocking when my goat-shearing schedule permits me.  Take it away, Alyssa:

Why are the families fighting? What was the inciting incident?

Cause everything needs a backstory!  Everything’s got to be given a facile, reductive explanation.  Everyone’s got to be treated like they’re not a fictional creation.  Let’s apply Rosenberg’s critical method to other works of literature:

Why is Iago such a dick to Othello?  What was the inciting incident?

Why do James and Mr. Ramsay want to go to the lighthouse?  What was the inciting incident?

Why was Josef K. arrested?  What was the inciting incident?

Or, to put it another way, How Many Children Had Lady Macbeth?

Ok, back to Rosenberg on Arrested Development.

But the revived Arrested Development is an interesting experiment in what makes a comedy work, and how long privilege can be interesting to watch.

Uh oh.  Whenever I sense a TV writer trying to make a profound point, I grab my smelling salts. 

The classical definition of the forms means that in comedies, everyone will be all right—if by all right you mean hitched—by the end, while in dramas, things are destined to conclude poorly.

If you’re going to rehash sophomore year (not college, Alyssa—high school) definitions of comedy, you could at least get them right.  Let’s try this again: what’s the opposite of comedy?  That’s right.  Tragedy.  That’s where shit goes wrong.  Not drama.  It’s all drama. 

But the best sitcoms have a talent for tricking you into forgetting that their characters’ predestination [sic]. I have been utterly convinced by Cheers that Norm might permanently drop out of the workforce, by Community that Abed Nadir might not survive his encounters with the social rules of the wider world, by 30 Rock that Liz Lemon might be crushed by Jack Donaghy, and later that their friendship might not survive some of the obstacles flung in its path.

You are, therefore, a schmuck. A schmuck gobbling down the schmuck bait.   

But Arrested Development is a story about people who are privileged in the most basic sense: no matter what happens to them, and no matter the circumstances in which it happens, they’re always going to be all right.

So, in other words, they are characters in any sitcom ever. 

But marathoning the episodes on Tuesday and Wednesday, I felt a little overdosed on the Bluths’ blithe sociopathy, and the fact that they’re conning not just institutions, but each other.  Sometimes, that sociopathy works to good, pointed, ends.

Again, the “end” of comedy.  Remember that?  Comedy does not have ends.  Or, rather, one end.  Is it funny?  If their sociopathy is funny, then it’s good.  If not, not.  It doesn’t have to make the world a better place. Actually, laughing at a good joke does make the world a better place, at least out here with the livestock in the sub-zero plains states. Note the fucking name of this blog. 

When Buster finds out what he’s actually done, he suffers a breakdown and sabotages his own rehabilitation to avoid returning to combat, a conclusion far more poignant than the show has any time to linger on.

And why would it linger on that?  It’s not funny.  Also, at another point you criticize the show for not being political enough, but you’ve just described it launching a (funny) critique of drone warfare.  I should fucking hope it doesn’t undercut that with poignancy.

But wait, there’s still the dreaded specter of growth!

Tobias Fünke (David Cross), after mistaking a heroin addict for an actress, exacerbates her vulnerabilities, puts her in danger of legal prosecution, and ultimately puts her in a position to relapse.

Again, he’s not a good person.  There’s no doubt about that.  Your point?

“How could you do this to me?” he asks her as she’s overdosing in a trash heap. “Or did I do this to you?” But never fear, the moment of potential growth and responsibility passes instantaneously.

I should fucking hope so. We can thank our lucky stars for that. 

By the time the credits came up for the fifteenth time, I was thoroughly convinced that there was absolutely no situation the Bluths couldn’t scam, seduce, sell, or scheme their way out of. And I was all too ready for them to, in keeping with the advice of their lawyer, take to the sea, not so they could escape yet again, but in the sincere wish that at long last, the system would demonstrate a semblance of fairness, and that they’d sink.

I would prefer that my fictional characters stay alive, thank you very much.