For all that’s great in each episode individually and as a combined unit, “Out on a Limb”/”Hand to God” is above all else where Buster Bluth loses his hand to a mammal-eating seal in a yellow bow tie. And the episode that introduced “You’re high!” “You’re drunk!” into the AD lexicon will always have a very special place in my heart.īut enough dancing around the elephant in the room. There are the expected bits of character jokes for the characters who don’t get a huge role to play – Gob gets some foreshadowing for a plot yet to come with his long-forgotten wife, and the scene where he fails to recall her name is a tremendous mixture of wordplay and in-jokes and great performance details the way that Will Arnett pounces on “Crindy” as the (non-) name of his spouse is comedy genius. “It was weird” flatly states the narrator, who becomes hugely present in these episodes, including what I believe to be his first ever first-person statement warming us up perhaps for the radical extension of his personality in the last run of episodes in the season. And boy are these cynical episodes: even the most consistently decent character in the series, George-Michael, is given to sneaky, passive-aggressive behavior to shed himself of a wearying relationship with Ann.Īnyway, though the A-plot is good, it’s the details lying around that really elevate these episodes, as is so often the case: I’m particularly fond of the rare glimpse of Lindsay and Tobias’s marriage in a happy, healthy place, as they cheerfully share each other’s company and have fun, though being Bluths, it’s no surprise that their shared joy lies in breaking into a woman’s house and then insulting her wardrobe. The nugget of the A-plot is a little overfamiliar, and Michael’s problems with women are typically my least favorite of all possible stories for the show (there’s a nice little throwaway gag where George-Michael apparently agrees with me, promising that Michael doesn’t need to keep vetting his girlfriends with his son), but when it’s played with such zest, and such unbridled cynicism about the human capacity to lie (the obvious overriding theme of the dyad, as reflected in the title of the second episode – ironically, “Hand to God” is far and away less concerned with God than “Out on a Limb” is), it’s only pleasurable to watch it play out. These are the episodes that I wanted “Altar Egos” and “Justice Is Blind” to have been: certainly, Julia Louis-Dreyfus’s Maggie Lizer is a hell of a lot funnier as an established character than a gimmicky joke, and though the shtick over the course of the two episodes is immensely repetitive – she and Michael cross swords, he accuses her of lying, she gets defensive, he feels guilty, and then she turns out to have actually been lying – Louis-Dreyfus and Jason Bateman have such terrific chemistry that it never gets the least bit old. I like not having that”, she with the bit about getting drunk on virgin Bloody Marys. I meant ‘her?'”), Michael Cera and Alia Shawkat blowing it out of the water: he with the sad-sack neuroticism of the excellent line “I like not having fun. Don’t order the Skip’s Scramble!Įverything that’s great about Arrested Development is crammed in as tightly as possible: prop-based visual jokes, ironic editing (Michael’s breezy assertion that he and his son keep no secrets, to George-Michael’s terror at being caught skipping work), passive aggressive parenting (“if you want to keep it open an extra hour…”), some top-notch Michael-dismisses-Ann humor (“Didn’t mean ‘who’. And just like that, “Ready, Aim, Marry Me” and “Burning Love” have become less than a hazy memory, because both halves are pretty fantastic all around: “Hand to God” gets my vote for being just a little bit better (mostly because it’s odder), but the show is fully back in top form from the very first (and hugely wonderful) scene of “Out on a Limb”, which introduces us to the popular Sunday brunch spot Skip Church’s (not to be confused with Friday night watering hole Miss Temple’s), and the everything-on-the-menu-in-a-skillet Skip’s Scramble. The longest protracted period of weakness in the history of Arrested Development came to its swift end with the series’ third, last, and best two-part episode, “Out on a Limb” and “Hand to God”. Written by Mitchell Hurwitz & Chuck Martin
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