Jessica Walter and Portia de Rossi had to get the hang of the new format. (
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The return of “Arrested Development,” which saw an entirely new 15-episode season appear on Netflix at 3:01 a.m., represents the triumph of TV’s era of the fan. A consistently low-rated show on Fox, where it ran from 2003-2006, “Arrested Development” gained new life via a growing cadre of viewers who discovered and obsessively rewatched the show on Netflix and DVD, marveling at the density and brilliance of its humor.
But its return represents something greater as well, as creator Mitch Hurwitz attempts a bold experiment.
When we left the show’s Bluth family in 2006, at a party aboard a cruise ship, matriarch Lucille (Jessica Walter) was about to be arrested by the SEC for financial improprieties, while son Michael (Jason Bateman) snuck out with his son, George-Michael (Michael Cera), on the family yacht — and, unbeknownst to them, Michael’s father, George Sr. (Jeffrey Tambor), who was also on the boat.
Each episode of the new season revolves around one character (six characters have two-parters), telling his or her story from that 2006 finale until today. The result is an anthology format that serves as a comedic “Rashomon,” telling stories from several perspectives and resulting in a season that can be watched in pretty much any order.
“Mitch has created this brand-new way of watching television which doesn’t follow a linear timeline,” says Portia de Rossi, who plays Lindsay Bluth Fünke. She calls the new season, “the ‘choose your own adventure’ of television.
“If you don’t see Episode 1, you will completely enjoy Episode 2 as a singular entity. [Actually, those two episodes constitute one two-parter.] You can skip around from Episode 15 to 7 to 5, and you’ll have a different experience of the show, depending on which order you watch,” she says.
This format made the actual filming an occasionally disorienting experience for the cast, as Hurwitz was figuring out some stories as he went along.
“Mitch had this definite idea, but because everything informs everything else, it would alter things,” says David Cross, who plays Lindsay’s husband, Tobias Fünke.
“He would shoot something and say, ‘Oh, we need to reshoot this scene, because I just realized that when George-Michael enters there, we should see Gob (Will Arnett) here, so we need to address that.’ The logic of it is really complicated, and as new information came in, it would create a domino effect. There were a lot of questions, and they were like, ‘Oh, we’re leaving it vague. We’ll fill that in later.’”
But if the actors had any apprehension, they were buoyed by the fact that there’s little question the show’s fans will be tuning in.
Since the show’s cancellation, the actors have watched “AD’s”fanbase grow with occasional disbelief.
“Most people discovered the show after it was over,” says Walter. “You can find new things every time you see an episode — things you didn’t see before. I live in New York and I’m out and about, and there’s not a day that goes by where some die-hard fan doesn’t talk to me about the show.”
Cross first realized the magnitude of fan admiration while performing stand-up in London in 2007.
“I did a month at the Soho Theater,” he says, “and people would come to my show because, ‘Oh, it’s the guy from ‘Arrested Development.’ On an almost daily basis, somebody would mention it in that fannish way. That’s where I really went, wow, this is crazy. I had no idea.”
As for the new season’s plot, the cast has been sworn to extreme secrecy.
“We’re not allowed to say anything,” says Walter. “I’m sorry, but my lips are sealed. I’ll get in big trouble. But you can see by the ads they’re putting out that [Lucille] has an ankle bracelet on.”
De Rossi did confirm that Lindsay and Tobias, possibly the most mismatched couple in TV history, largely because Tobias is deeply in the closet, are still together.
She’s asked why these two haven’t given up the ghost on this relationship.
“Well, here’s [mine and David’s] theory,” she says. “We think that Lindsay and Tobias are such pathetic individuals that they really can’t go out into the world on their own and thrive. So we stay together out of fear of discovering who we really are. We have a very dysfunctional marriage based on not love, but fear.”
We’ll know soon enough how fans feel about the new episodes. For the cast, while the circumstances were unusual, they’re confident that their visionary creator has constructed a season of television that will offer unprecedented rewards.
“By the third or fourth episode, people are going to start to realize what they’re watching and how to watch it,” says Cross, “and it’ll become a revelatory experience.”