'Arrested Development' Returns: Family Business, Bluth-Style

It’s easy to forget that the Fox TV series Arrested Development, which ran from 2003 to 2006 and is about to be brought back to life by Netflix, wasn’t initially sold as a dense, self-referential, manic, brilliant meta-comedy. (Thank heavens—no network would have bought that.) The show’s original premise was simple: Corrupt chief executive officer is sent off to prison, and the rest of the family is left to pick up the pieces. The character of George Bluth, that CEO, wasn’t even supposed to last past the pilot. Show creator Mitchell Hurwitz wrote him back in once he learned that actor Jeffrey Tambor was interested in the role.

Arrested Development was born in the wake of Enron and Tyco—Bluth bears more than a passing resemblance to Dennis Kozlowski. But in hindsight, it’s hard to ignore that the plot is basically a comedic version of the Madoff family scandal, which happened two years after the show went off the air. Either out of naiveté (his son Michael) or spoiled, dumb indifference (every other Bluth), no one in the family knows anything about George’s corporate malfeasance—except his wife, Lucille, who may actually be behind the whole thing. After years of coasting on trust funds and country club buffets, the Bluths are completely lost after George is taken away to prison. Oldest son GOB’s a comically inept magician; daughter Lindsay only knows how to attend charity benefits; Lucille has been drunk since the ’60s; and poor baby Buster is afraid of everything, from sheep to seals to Franklin the puppet.