[9.1/10] Oh man, another stone cold classic. There’s just so many good laughs and so much fun plotting in this one. Let’s start with something that’s never not funny -- GOB trying to be a puppeteer. His efforts to use the upcoming mock trial to get work for him and Franklin split my sides in every scene. I just love him trying to use the “My Name Is Judge” talking magazines to shore up his act, and then resorting to stealing a doctor’s dictaphone tape to try to make it work when he runs out of those. The fact that his lips keep moving a bit anyway, and his continued propensity to misuse elaborate words like “tri-cycling” got big laughs out of me Plus, Michael using the tape recorder to box in the real prosecutor is a great payoff.
I also just enjoy the whole mock trial setup. Willaim Hung is such a dated reference these days, but even apart from the context of 2006, it makes for a quirky choice that fits in with Arrested Development’s usual collection of pop culture curios. Speaking of which, bringing in Judge Rheinhold for a courtroom show is an inspired bit of ridiculous. There's even some commentary about the overlap between justice and entertainment and how the one perverts the other here. Lucille “saving the good stuff” for the real trial, or testimony being subject to the interpretation of “the presiding judge or the executive producer” is a nice way to poke fun at the artificiality of all of this.
And hey, I will never not enjoy Michael fancying himself a lawyer after his performance in his Peter Pan school play. The throughline of George Sr. questioning his ability to lead their defense, with Michael wanting to show his father up, despite the guise of the family needing to “stick together” works as a spine to hang the other proceedings around.
Speaking of which, this is a fantastic outing for Ron Howard as the narrator. The immediate contradictions of things the characters say and do is superb here. Michael telling his dad that he wanted to show George Sr. he could handle the responsibility of the defense before turning his evience over to the grand jury, while the Narrator reveals that Michael had no idea that’s what he was supposed to do made me laugh big time. George Michael trying to quote the Torah after his fake bar mitzvah, only to have the narrator say, “that’s not in the Torah” was another great laugh line. And Maeby noting that the secret compartment with Tobias’s “bodybuilding magazines” was her dad’s workout room, only for the Narrator to say, “For all her worldliness, in many ways Maeby was still a child,” was the best line in the episode.
Honorable mention goes to Lindsay’s “Let’s leave the fruits with the vegetables” line, which is dark as hell, but also very clever. The show wrings a lot of comedy from the various goings on at the hospital. Lindsay trying to bluntly woo someone with a comatose relative is undercooked, but leads to some amusing lines about “letting Buster go” despite the fact that his coma is more of a “light nap.” Speaking of which, I love Buster faking a coma to avoid testifying, replete with a loud declaration of “coooooooma!” after yelling at Tobias and Lindsay to just “fake it.” In that vein, Tobias’s description of all the time he spends “making love on his wife” with the “clatter of her breasts” was uproariously funny.
The kids accidentally getting married is, again, a weird direction to take things, but that’s this show! The fact that they end up doing the runaway bride cliché in all of it is a fun way to go, though. And George Sr. caring more about shrimp fest than his youngest son, along with random bits of humor like Judge Rheinhold’s slim-fitting judicial robe is the icing on the cake.
On the whole, there’s just so much great humor, great dialogue, and wonderfully ridiculous plotting packed into Arrested Development’s swan song. It really makes me wish we could have gotten more in its prime, though maybe having to wrap everything up early just gave us extra concentrated brilliance in this final quartet of episodes.
Review by Andrew BloomVIP 9BlockedParentSpoilers2021-05-15T14:58:08Z
[9.1/10] Oh man, another stone cold classic. There’s just so many good laughs and so much fun plotting in this one. Let’s start with something that’s never not funny -- GOB trying to be a puppeteer. His efforts to use the upcoming mock trial to get work for him and Franklin split my sides in every scene. I just love him trying to use the “My Name Is Judge” talking magazines to shore up his act, and then resorting to stealing a doctor’s dictaphone tape to try to make it work when he runs out of those. The fact that his lips keep moving a bit anyway, and his continued propensity to misuse elaborate words like “tri-cycling” got big laughs out of me Plus, Michael using the tape recorder to box in the real prosecutor is a great payoff.
I also just enjoy the whole mock trial setup. Willaim Hung is such a dated reference these days, but even apart from the context of 2006, it makes for a quirky choice that fits in with Arrested Development’s usual collection of pop culture curios. Speaking of which, bringing in Judge Rheinhold for a courtroom show is an inspired bit of ridiculous. There's even some commentary about the overlap between justice and entertainment and how the one perverts the other here. Lucille “saving the good stuff” for the real trial, or testimony being subject to the interpretation of “the presiding judge or the executive producer” is a nice way to poke fun at the artificiality of all of this.
And hey, I will never not enjoy Michael fancying himself a lawyer after his performance in his Peter Pan school play. The throughline of George Sr. questioning his ability to lead their defense, with Michael wanting to show his father up, despite the guise of the family needing to “stick together” works as a spine to hang the other proceedings around.
Speaking of which, this is a fantastic outing for Ron Howard as the narrator. The immediate contradictions of things the characters say and do is superb here. Michael telling his dad that he wanted to show George Sr. he could handle the responsibility of the defense before turning his evience over to the grand jury, while the Narrator reveals that Michael had no idea that’s what he was supposed to do made me laugh big time. George Michael trying to quote the Torah after his fake bar mitzvah, only to have the narrator say, “that’s not in the Torah” was another great laugh line. And Maeby noting that the secret compartment with Tobias’s “bodybuilding magazines” was her dad’s workout room, only for the Narrator to say, “For all her worldliness, in many ways Maeby was still a child,” was the best line in the episode.
Honorable mention goes to Lindsay’s “Let’s leave the fruits with the vegetables” line, which is dark as hell, but also very clever. The show wrings a lot of comedy from the various goings on at the hospital. Lindsay trying to bluntly woo someone with a comatose relative is undercooked, but leads to some amusing lines about “letting Buster go” despite the fact that his coma is more of a “light nap.” Speaking of which, I love Buster faking a coma to avoid testifying, replete with a loud declaration of “coooooooma!” after yelling at Tobias and Lindsay to just “fake it.” In that vein, Tobias’s description of all the time he spends “making love on his wife” with the “clatter of her breasts” was uproariously funny.
The kids accidentally getting married is, again, a weird direction to take things, but that’s this show! The fact that they end up doing the runaway bride cliché in all of it is a fun way to go, though. And George Sr. caring more about shrimp fest than his youngest son, along with random bits of humor like Judge Rheinhold’s slim-fitting judicial robe is the icing on the cake.
On the whole, there’s just so much great humor, great dialogue, and wonderfully ridiculous plotting packed into Arrested Development’s swan song. It really makes me wish we could have gotten more in its prime, though maybe having to wrap everything up early just gave us extra concentrated brilliance in this final quartet of episodes.