I saw a few episodes, and I found it to be nothing but vacuous hipster crap. I'm often more difficult to please than most, but I didn't see a single genuinely clever joke. Being a long-time David Cross fan, I had some hope that the show would be good, but I could not find a single redeeming factor.
"Oh, aren't we wacky, we're in an absurd situation and handling it with more nonchalant half-witticism." Frankly, the show epitomizes one of the grossest problems in modern comedy. It is so wrapped up in being hip, absurd, and postmodern, that it loses all semblance of character. Further, it is clearly a product of writers trying desperately to write characters that sound more intelligent than themselves. The show is derivative as shit, the characters are dull, and the banter is forced. It's like the bastard child of fan-fiction of Curb Your Enthusiasm, Gilmore Girls, Kevin Smith, Woody Allen, My So-Called Life and every lame-ass Apatow movie. Don't get me wrong, two of those influences are good products, but even if they were all decent, Arrested Development would still amount to nothing more than a hyperactive mix-tape of shitty cover songs.
The fans are among the worst aspect of the comedic abortion in that there's a certain pretension among many of them. Not all, by any means, but many of the fans seem to think that they're intelligent for liking a fucking network television show. They are the current iteration of people who thought that Donnie Darko and Boondock Saints were deep masterpieces (with a significant overlap). If people think that desperate pandering, self-reference and hackneyed writing is funny, that's fine. But the amount of elitism and hyperbolic praise surrounding what was essentially a live-action, self-serious Family Guy in terms of humor is just cute.
Log in to comment