[7.0/10] Was this amazing? Absolutely not. Was it as good as the original run of Arrested Development? Not even close. But after the doldrums of season 4, I’m ready to accept mere competence from this show as a reason to celebrate.
The real hindrance here is having to shake off the cobwebs of the last season. The poor narrator has to do exposition overtime in a vain attempt to clarify the convoluted events from the last batch of episodes and connect them to this one. But once that throat-clearing is out of the way, business picks up.
Maeby and George Michael reminiscing about Lucille’s terrible sayings got a good laugh out of me. Michael badly fibbing his way through a conversation with a police officer felt like the awkward comedy from the show’s past. And hey! Every character from the show was in the same episode! That shouldn’t be cause for excitement, but after the prior bout of disjointed affairs, it’s a welcome change.
As season premieres inevitably do, “Family Leave” does a lot of table-setting and clean-up, creating pairings and planting the seeds for misadventures. Some of them, like Tobias and Lucille, are promising. Others, like GOB and George Sr., could go either way. But this first episode of the new season lays groundwork for the story to come, and despite the over-narration of the story, the decks are cleared for a new set of plots to keep us entertained.
I’m damning “Family Leave” with faint praise, but as the beginning of season 5, the episode at least plays like a competent outing for Arrested Development that remembers some of the show’s most amusing veins of humor and seems like its reach doesn’t exceed its grasp. The glory years of the original run may be over with, but I’m apt to take that as a win after the ambitious faceplant of the show’s 2013 revival.
Review by Andrew BloomVIP 9BlockedParentSpoilers2021-06-22T04:08:49Z
[7.0/10] Was this amazing? Absolutely not. Was it as good as the original run of Arrested Development? Not even close. But after the doldrums of season 4, I’m ready to accept mere competence from this show as a reason to celebrate.
The real hindrance here is having to shake off the cobwebs of the last season. The poor narrator has to do exposition overtime in a vain attempt to clarify the convoluted events from the last batch of episodes and connect them to this one. But once that throat-clearing is out of the way, business picks up.
Maeby and George Michael reminiscing about Lucille’s terrible sayings got a good laugh out of me. Michael badly fibbing his way through a conversation with a police officer felt like the awkward comedy from the show’s past. And hey! Every character from the show was in the same episode! That shouldn’t be cause for excitement, but after the prior bout of disjointed affairs, it’s a welcome change.
As season premieres inevitably do, “Family Leave” does a lot of table-setting and clean-up, creating pairings and planting the seeds for misadventures. Some of them, like Tobias and Lucille, are promising. Others, like GOB and George Sr., could go either way. But this first episode of the new season lays groundwork for the story to come, and despite the over-narration of the story, the decks are cleared for a new set of plots to keep us entertained.
I’m damning “Family Leave” with faint praise, but as the beginning of season 5, the episode at least plays like a competent outing for Arrested Development that remembers some of the show’s most amusing veins of humor and seems like its reach doesn’t exceed its grasp. The glory years of the original run may be over with, but I’m apt to take that as a win after the ambitious faceplant of the show’s 2013 revival.