Arrested Development Season 5 - Partially A Prequel???

[Enrico Palazzo]

I'm not sure what's going on with Will Arnett, but it feels like he's completely forgotten how to play GOB.

I think he's drunk.

[RenegadeScrew]

I finished all the episodes a few days ago and I enjoyed it.  Like others have said the recap near the start was a bit pointless and annoying.  It may just be my idiocy but I found the timeline a bit difficult to follow. 

Apologies if already mentioned but isn't Lucille's new boyfriend Marky Bark?

Too many great bits to remember, just rewatched the first episode and even it has loads after a slow slow start. Buster's skeleton hand, the rapist and murderer island, George-Michael's "bored" to end Maebe's sentence "you'd just sacked me and I was mad", the slow closing lift doors and Michael's "love you" callback

[DrGreggles]

Yep, plenty of really funny stuff.

Today at work something brought Tobias' overlong sung "Paraaaaaaaaaaaaade" to mind and I started giggling.

That's the AD effect!

[rasta-spouse]

I'm not sure what's going on with Will Arnett, but it feels like he's completely forgotten how to play GOB.

I thought that too. at first, this season and then I remembered that the character is confused about his sexuality, and Arnett is just doing acting. But damn does he look totally unhinged and ruddy doing it.

Gob doing the bro handshake with Buster's black hand in the final ep is hilarious. I find a lot of stuff in this show annoying but little moments that the actors pull out of the bag when you least expect it make it great.

[olliebean]

Do we know when the decision was taken to do the remix of S4? I suspect S5 was already in the bag, or at least close to finished.

[Led Souptin]

Definitely not as enjoyable as peak A.D, but yeah some really great moments and I'm glad it exists.

As mentioned upthread, it really does suffer from the huge gaps in time between seasons and no core writing team. I think doing seasons 1 - 3 in the space of 3 years really enabled the writers to get those callbacks / callforwards tight and just be more cohesive in general. It's all about those long set ups and rewarding pay offs.

Also, it's hard to judge A.D on just one viewing, a lot of the joy in season 1-3 comes from noticing new things in a rewatch. So I'm looking forward to rewatching s5 soon to see if theres any more funny to wring out of it.

[RenegadeScrew]

Apologies if already mentioned but isn't Lucille's new boyfriend Marky Bark?

Anyone care to comment on how clearly stupid/clever I am?

I rewatched til halfway and I am even more convinced/idiotic than I was when I wrote that yesterday.  I realise it is supposed to be a new actor but I think it is part of some double bluff..

Anyone?

[up_the_hampipe]

I'm not seeing a problem with Will Arnett's performance. It's always been a bit over the top. He still seems very natural as Gob. Some of the other performances feel forced, namely Tobias.

[VelourSpirit]

I loved Tobias trying his hardest not to say yes to selling his son into slavery. Tambor was really good too to be honest, made it easy to not think about his real life behaviour.

[DrGreggles]

I'm not seeing a problem with Will Arnett's performance. It's always been a bit over the top. He still seems very natural as Gob.

Likewise. The only lacklustre performance in s5 is Portia's, and that's for obvious reasons.
Everyone else is on great form IMHO.

[ASFTSN]

I hated that rule Michael.  I hated both of those rules!

[RenegadeScrew]

What a lovely family you've stolen!

[ajsmith2]

Just been rewatching Series 3 in the lead up to 5 and honestly how out of place and weak is the MR F stuff compared to what came before and after? It's like it turns into this completely different much broader show for 4-5 episodes. What's particularly poor about it is how it turns into The Michael Show with all the other casts plots sidelined. What was going on there?

[remedial_gash]

Just been rewatching Series 3 in the lead up to 5 and honestly how out of place and weak is the MR F stuff compared to what came before and after? It's like it turns into this completely different much broader show for 4-5 episodes. What's particularly poor about it is how it turns into The Michael Show with all the other casts plots sidelined. What was going on there?

You'll be delighted to hear that there is a tiny call-back to that during 5.

I have a problem with michael and to a lesser extent his son, as they seem to me at least being the most objectionable, and for a comedy the least amusing characters. S4 absolutely lost me on fakeblock and the Isla Fisher shit - just dreadful, unfunny shit.

*edit*

Which was pretty much the entire season, and it still stinks up 5.

[Dog Botherer]

Yeah the Fakeblock and love triangle stuff is absolute gash. It was a half season side plot at best that somehow became the main plot for basically 2 seasons now. There was no reason to bring it into Season 5 but here we are, I guess.

[DrGreggles]

Alternatively, the Fakeblock story and reveal was bloody brilliant.

Each to their own and that.

[olliebean]

Alternatively, the Fakeblock story and reveal was bloody brilliant.

It was in the original version, not so much in the remix. In fact not remotely in the remix.

[Hobo With A Shit Pun]

After the first couple of episodes in the season, we almost gave up and watched something else. And that despite those episodes the statistical likelihood that the final remaining murderer had been raped, and the excellent callback to that later.

Thankfully, however, we let Netflix keep on pumping it on the screen, and so were overjoyed as the frequency of great gags ramped up for the rest of the season. Rolled silently on the floor to the quietest marching band.  Roll on part two, in the hope that this momentum continues.

I found Shawkat disturbingly hot as a pseudopensioner.

[DrGreggles]

I found Shawkat disturbingly hot as a pseudopensioner.

Yep, definitely.
Actually I wasn't that disturbed by it.

[Bhazor]

Upto episode 5 and its bizarre. Like a fan edit where they remove half the episodes.

[pancreas]

Impenetrable guff. I don't know what more to say. Better than s4? I don't know. Both are so bad. So many non-sequiturs. How can anything so utterly random be funny?

[DrGreggles]

Looks like s5 is splitting opinion, like s4 did!

[Sexton Brackets Drugbust]

I've commented on season 5s confusingly sloppy structure and that it's far less tightly written than the original series, but the idea that it's utterly impenetrable baffles me.

[ajsmith2]

5 episodes in to series 5 and it seems as bad as everyone thinks series 4 is (But they are wrong). Looking forward to episodes 7 and 8 though when people say it starts getting good. But on my Beach Boys rating scale so far I'd rank em thusly;

Series 1-3: The Beach Boys Greatest Hits

Series 4: Pet Sounds

Series 5: Smiley Smile

[Small Man Big Horse]

David Cross has given an interview where he talks about the filming for this season being all a bit of a mess: https://news.avclub.com/it-sounds-like-filming-the-new-season-of-arrested-devel-1827007034

Earlier this month, Arrested Development creator Mitch Hurwitz addressed the on-set outburst that Jeffrey Tambor had at Jessica Walter while filming the show's new season—an incident that turned a New York Times interview with the cast into a complete disaster—with Hurwitz explaining that he didn't realize how awful Tambor's behavior was at the time because he wasn't on set when it happened. In fact, Hurwitz said he wasn't on set for a lot of the new season of Arrested Development, explaining that he fell into a bad habit of delivering scripts late and not being available to the cast. According to David Cross, though, that was an even bigger issue than Hurwitz was letting on.

Speaking with Jim Norton and Sam Roberts on their SiriusXM show this week (via IndieWire), Cross said filming the show this time around "wasn't an easy shoot" because of how often they were getting unfinished script pages. "You'd get something at night," he explained, "and it'd be fucking pages and pages of stuff, and then it would change later on that night." He said they'd get to set in the morning and there'd be even more pages of new stuff that they hadn't seen before. He said this "added to the tension" on set and that "people weren't able to do scenes correctly," suggesting that this frustrating climate is what drove Tambor to be so on edge in the first place.

That being said, Cross hopefully gets that the mess Hurwitz made with the scripts doesn't justify Tambor's behavior. Reflecting on that awful New York Times interview, which involves the men of the show climbing over each other to defend Tambor while Walter cried, Cross said on the SiriusXM show that "Nobody gives a shit about your context." He added that, "if there's a crying woman in the room—or whoever, if there's somebody crying—nobody cares about your 'well, buts.'" He also implied that he thinks there's some possibility Netflix will cancel the show after this PR shitshow, but so far no official announcements have been made.

[phantom_power]

I found this season (half season) enjoyable and funny but at the same time sloppy and with odd plotting and atmosphere. I am often left wondering about people's motivations (especially Michael's) but in the end there is enough funny stuff to keep me watching. It is certainly one of the most daring sitcoms around, consistently failing to play it safe at every turn.

[Bhazor]

Finished the season. Absolute cluster fuck.

[lankyguy95]

Looks like Alia Shawkat won't be coming back http://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-08-17/alia-shawkat-says-wont-return-to-arrested-development/10132342

[Small Man Big Horse]

Can't say I blame her, I enjoyed the most recent season overall but after this I hope they don't make anymore.

[bgmnts]

Alia Shawkat maeby the freckliest human on Earth.