House Arrest

Jeffrey Tambor plays George Bluth Sr. and Jessica Walter plays Lucille Bluth in Arrested Development. Courtesy Fox Home Entertainment.

This just in – former Mötley Crüe stickman Tommy Lee has a new reality show, Tommy Lee Goes to College, due on NBC this summer. I can’t help wondering how many sitcoms the drummer/celebrity/ex-husband is going to kill.

In 1997, the Nielsen people found 62 comedies on American TV. There is more programming out there today; networks have implemented full summer schedules. Still, only 35 sitcoms made it on to a recent survey. What replaced them? Relatively cheap reality shows. Sitcoms are simply too difficult to grow these days.

Consider Fox’s bad luck with smart, upmarket sitcoms. In 1999, the network created Action, a deep-dish, critically acclaimed satire of Hollywood. The series lasted exactly a month. Four seasons later, the network produced what is generally held to be the most accomplished sitcom pilot in memory: Arrested Development began with Michael Bluth (Jason Bateman) at the bow of the family yacht, an American flag snapping in the wind at his side. Around him slouched his very rich, quite dysfunctional family, including frequently overmedicated sister Lindsay Bluth Fünke, seen in a recent episode combing her hair with a phone. Then there were the three George Bluths: Michael’s multimillionaire father, George Bluth Sr., committed “light treason” developing properties for Saddam in Iraq; eldest son George Oscar Bluth II (Gob) is a magician whose best trick thus far is making the family fortune disappear; finally, we have young grandson, George Michael Bluth, who's as confused as a squirrel crossing a busy highway. The pilot ended with the Feds storming the yacht with search warrants, and Bluth Sr. (Jeffrey “Hey Now!” Tambor) cupping his hand over a telephone, hoarsely whispering to his mistress-secretary, “Shred it! shred it! … shred no-no, save it!”

All those George Bluths, not to mention the corporate kleptocracy angle, made Arrested Development seem a comedy natural for the Age of Enron. TV pundits agreed, delighting in Bateman’s star turn. As the series progressed and Michael took control of the Bluth family fortunes, the former teen star (Silver Spoons) came to display an absolute mastery of small-screen comedy, giving the show’s chorus line of sidekicks ample room to manoeuver, then nailing down every gag with an expressive double take.

Jason Bateman as Michael Bluth. Courtesy Fox Home Entertainment.

And if you want laugh-out-loud water cooler moments, how about the Iraq war spoof last season where Gob climbed aboard a crane for a ribbon-cutting ceremony? Dangling under a “Mission Accomplished” sign, he celebrated the completion of another rickety Bluth Co. estate by announcing, “My brother wasn’t optimistic it could be done, but I wouldn’t take ‘not optimistic it could be done’ for an answer!”

Arrested Development garnered seven Emmy nominations its first season, winning five awards, including prizes for Outstanding Comedy Series and Outstanding Writing for a Comedy Series. Fox promoted the hell out of the show last fall, giving Bateman and Tambor dugout seat exposure during the Yanks-Red Sox baseball playoffs.

Given all that, a look at recent Nielsen ratings makes glum reading for Development and TV comedy fans. Late last December, the series finished 74th, well behind JAG and the millionth re-run of It’s a Wonderful Life. (Who knew JAG was still on?) Even UPN’s WWE: Smackdown in Iraq threw the Emmy champ to the canvas.

What went wrong? How come the funniest show on “free TV” will probably be gone when the 2005 fall season begins?

Well, for one thing, playwright George S. Kaufman was again proven right: “satire is what closes on Saturday night.” It could be argued all sitcoms have a satirical edge, but Cheers and Seinfeld were affectionate appreciations of neighbourhood eccentrics. By comparison, Arrested Development is genuinely corrosive satire. It also airs on 8:30 Sunday night – family TV time. Could be the show never really had a chance.

The more disturbing explanation for the show’s failure, however, is that not only is Arrested Development on the wrong day, it’s also on the wrong end of the TV dial. With roaming hand-held cameras, a quasi-documentary look and no laugh track, the show is reminiscent of The Office and Curb Your Enthusiasm – programs that succeed by reaching a niche audience willing to pay for more sophisticated programming.

I do not believe in two-tier television any more than two-tier health-care or education systems, if such formulas result in loss of service to the general public. Yet that is what is happening on TV today. HBO recently picked up the most Golden Globe Awards for the sixth year in a row. That’s the network with the motto, “It’s not television, it’s HBO.”

Do we really want to believe that “television” is a pejorative?

If Arrested Development can’t make it on free TV, maybe no smart, challenging comedy can. That would be a shame, for network sitcoms have served television well from the beginning. Everybody had a sitcom best friend growing up. And we all enjoyed dinner with Mary Richards, Sam Malone or Jerry Seinfeld upon moving into our first apartment.

That sitcoms remain syndication favourites makes the genre appear healthier than it is. We have comedy networks, nostalgia networks. Friends and Seinfeld are on at least twice every night. But really, these shows are like the dead stars from distant galaxies that our high school science teachers told us about. We can still see their light on TV, but the shows aren’t really there anymore.

The worst story here is that a majority of viewers no longer seem curious about sitcoms. Nothing is as good as what once was, is the prevailing wisdom. Maybe the best analogy is to rock ’n’ roll, where cult bands flourish on fringe FM stations, while popular networks broadcast an endless medley of golden oldies.

Maybe Arrested Development is the last great sitcom we’ll get for free.

Stephen Cole writes about television for CBC.ca.

Letters:

Good piece on the dearth of smart, funny television. It's not exactly a new trend, though: look at Newsradio, which managed to eke out five years despite being jerked around like a puppet by NBC, or Scrubs, which seems to be undergoing the same treatment. Then there was Aaron Sorkin's late, lamented Sports Night: he turned his conflicts with ABC and their disastrous decision-making into actual storylines for the show, especially in the 2nd season.

I don't watch Arrested Development because the hand-held camera work makes me nauseous, but its fate does seem to bear out your theory about satire. The only really successful satire on U.S. TV these days is The Daily Show, and it's so successful Jon Stewart's name is being touted as a replacement for Ted Koppel - people have forgotten he's making fun of the news. It appears as though smart, funny shows are either flukes, or found on cable. note:

Deirdre Swain
Toronto