or; death of a great, great show
It's a real shame that tripe like "Will and Grace" lasted for as long as it has. Or shows like "That 70's Show" (which was funny for its first couple of seasons, but I just don't find humorous at all anymore) and "Yes, Dear" survive for as long as they do, and "Arrested Development" only lasted two and a half seaons.
Like a shooting star, "Arrested Development" has left us, but thank goodness for DVDs.
I don't know how many of you were able to get into the show, but I have found it to be the single funniest show I've ever had the luck of seeing. Its characters were (often at the exact same moment) loveable and reprehensible, its humor a combination of over-the-top slapstick and witty, wonderful satire (often in the same scene, or even the same sentence), and its storylines amazingly overblown but to a very sick point believable.
It was the perfect show! The cast was absolutely splendid; they meshed so well, and seemed like a real family, full of all the love and resentment that a real family posesses. Even the younger teen actors in the series were able to act so well. There was an almost tangible chemistry among the family members.
We wept and laughed simultaneously as we watched these poor (yet deserving) people have the worst things happen to them. We ache for Michael to finally have something in his life go right, but chuckle with relish as relationship after relationship blows up in his face, and we enjoy the perverse yet understandable attraction between George Michael and Maeby, cousins with crushes on each other. (But we eventually find out they're not blood-related, thank goodness.) We chortle at the androgynous and sexually-confused Tobias, who keeps trying to break up his marriage to be with another man while being simply unable to do so. Should we like these people? With the exception of the kids, no.
But do we? Yes, oh hell yes.
I finally got the truncated 2-disc season three. Its final swansong. And what a season it was. Better than the last two, as unimaginable as that was to me. It bugs me that the show couldn't find a better audience, and that none of the cable stations felt they could give this impeccable show a home.
So good bye, Bluth family. I'll miss your adventures in the staircar, your altercations with the neighbors, women, magicians, and celebrities. I'll miss your model home, your quirky relationships, your demoness mother, everything.
Man, America's taste sucks when a show like this doesn't last and "Hope and Grace" lasts for five seasons.