Reviving dead series risks tarnishing draw of original
Pop culture has never been good at letting things go.
It’s always been about hammering reliable formulas into the ground, but in a world of fan fundraisers and online forums, we’re starting to see a new kind of recycling system at work: the resuscitation of long-dead television series inspired by pure cultish devotion.
Examples abound: the feature film adaptation of the sci-fi show “Firefly,” the upcoming Kickstarter-funded revival of “Veronica Mars.” And now, along comes “Arrested Development,” which released 15 new episodes through Netflix’s online streaming service on Memorial Day weekend, seven years after it was canceled by the Fox network after three seasons.
The show was a critical darling but a ratings disaster, and it gathered up a rabid fanbase on DVD, where its complicated story structure and penchant for blink-and-you’ll- miss-them visual gags could be better appreciated upon repeat viewings.
Created by Mitchell Hurtwitz, “Arrested” follows the high jinks of the wealthy, vapid Bluth family whose assets are frozen following their patriarch’s imprisonment for sketchy financial practices. The new episodes pick up where the old ones left off and follow the Bluths into the present day, duplicating the labyrinthine, narration-heavy template of the previous seasons.
This revamped “Arrested Development” represents two of the most rampant audience trends: our thirst for nostalgia and our desire for instant gratification.
“AD 2.0” is an entirely different beast than its original model. The 15 episodes are essentially interlocking chapters in the same overarching story: Plotlines weave into one another and double back on themselves, and elaborate jokes are set up in one episode to be paid off hours later in another.
Its breakneck style not only requires you to watch the season from beginning to end in a short amount of time (designed specifically for several nights of Netflix binge-watching), but also for you to have seen the preceding three seasons, preferably more than once. The plot twists come fast and thick, and Hurwitz and his writers expect you to recognize the callbacks and references without explanation.
It’s really just a long-delayed reward to the show’s most diehard fans. Count me among them: I’ve seen the original run of “Arrested Development” countless times and have committed much of it to memory, and the notion of revisiting the Bluth clan was such an enticing one that I started the new episodes as soon as they became available online.
And while I can’t say I was let down (the cynic in me was, frankly, prepared for disaster), there’s something about “AD 2.0” that’s … I don’t know, off . Sure, there are moments that reach the heights of the original series, but there are others when everything seems to be a couple beats behind.
Maybe it’s the show’s new format, which devotes each episode to an individual character – and doesn’t always work. Maybe it’s all the self-referential winking, which grows a little tiresome. Or maybe it’s the fact that capturing the novelty of the original series is an impossibility, and that it’s tough for audience members to be impartial to the new when the old is still so fresh in their collective minds.
As much as I love “Arrested Development,” and as much as I enjoyed the new episodes as a character reunion, I hope that the practice of resurrecting corpses from the pop culture graveyard remains an uncommon one. The show may be universally adored now, but some of that might have to do with the fact that it never wore out its welcome.
It can be hard to let go, but maybe it’s time to realize that sometimes things end for a reason. That’s the curse of nostalgia, which rekindles our fond memories, converts them into unrealistic expectations, and usually ends in disappointment.