Arrested Development

If you enjoy seeing wealthy, petty people get their deserved comeuppance, this is the show for you. If you enjoy laughing, this is definitely the show for you - the funniest new comedy of the season by a wide margin...For a show about dumb, unfocused people, Arrested Development is wickedly smart and quick, willing to go anywhere for a good gag. [31 Oct 2003, p.49]

There are moments in Arrested Development, Fox's new sitcom, that are pants-wettingly funny. There are jokes and scenarios that bend you over in gleeful agony. All of a sudden, with this last new fall series offering -- hope having been beaten out of all of us -- we get one of the most hysterically ridiculous half hours on television.

Arrested Development is very animated but it is not a cartoon. Cartoonish, perhaps, but it is filled with real actors playing surreal people, all of whom have frighteningly identifiable traits and tics. Together they are the Bluths, the latest and at this moment greatest of TV's dysfunctional families. Dysfunctionalism has rarely been as ingratiating or, certainly, as hilarious.

Generous with the laughs. A wonderfully quirky and stylish series from a creative team headed by director-producer Ron Howard, this isn't merely the best new comedy of the season. It's the best new show of any kind.[2 Nov 2003, p.J1]

The best new sitcom to come along in years. [2 Nov 2003, p.C4]

Nobody tries to be funny here, so they're more hysterical than the folks falling all over themselves elsewhere. They're simply hopeless specimens of spoiled humanity who haven't a clue how to operate in the real world. [2 Nov 2003, p.04]

News bulletin: We've finally found the weapons of mass destruction, or at least one of them. The jokes fly like shrapnel in Fox's dangerously hilarious new sitcom Arrested Development, and, like shrapnel, they often draw blood...A scathingly, unnervingly comic riff on stupidity and greed in the corporate world, Arrested Development is something like a National Lampoon's Wall Street Vacation, painting its targets variously as buffoonish or malefic, but always hitting them dead-center. [2 Nov 2003, p.3M]

A smart, tart, daring comedy in a season that could really use one. Arrested Development and Mr. Bateman both deserve a long and prosperous run. What a nice, bracing development that would be. [2 Nov 2003, p.3]

The season's best new comedy - we're talking laugh-out-loud funny. [2 Nov 2003, p.F-14]

The one truly original new show this season and certainly the funniest comedy. It is outrageous. It is odd. It is fresh. It is smart. And, given the track record of such refreshingly sophisticated comedies on network TV, it will be lucky to last three episodes. [31 Oct 2003, p.9E]

With faith in its own inspired goofiness, the net's newest Sunday entry reinvents what works --- and mocks what doesn't --- within the confines of the undernourished sitcom world. Critics and viewers clamoring for something unique since the sesh began back in August finally have something to champion ... and boy, is it funny.

Arrested Development has been hyped to the clouds in a number of ads, all piling on critical encomiums from all over the country. This time they're telling the truth. [31 Oct 2003, p.E1]

For all its willful outrageousness, Arrested Development is sort of gripping -- a continuing story that one actually wants to see continue, which is more than can be said of most of the new dramas the season produced. [31 Oct 2003, p.E1]

Bateman is a revelation -- the ex-child star is great in this show. The rest of the cast is also very good, the writing is sharp, the humor level is high and it succeeds in creating a different comedy look and style. [31 Oct 2003, p.C08]

This is compelling in both the broad strokes and the little details. The funny thing is, even at its most absurd, it feels almost realistic, because Hurwitz so precisely sketches his characters and their setting. [1 Nov 2003, p.27]

It's the season's best new series, period.

As you might expect from an experimental show that is doing its best to misbehave, there are times when Arrested goes too far. I could live without George Michael's crush on his first cousin, a story given more prominence in a future episode when it really needs less. But for now, I'd say stick with the Bluths, even when their behavior is more alarming than arresting. At least they're not dull. And this season, that's a development worth encouraging.

The funniest, hippest and most imaginative new comedy on any network this fall. [31 Oct 2003, p.E-11]

I haven't the slightest idea what the heck I'm watching, but I've seen two of 'em now, and all I know is that two of 'em weren't enough. I wanted to watch a bunch more.

The Bluth heirs are eccentric and warped, but they are not hothouse child prodigies like the Tenenbaum siblings. They are nouveau riche misfits, the Ewings of "Dallas" as seen by Bunuel. And they are quite amusing.

With its depiction of a warped, absurd family, Arrested Development is worth watching for fans of out-there comedy. [2 Nov 2003, p.TV-5]

Arrested Development is one of those increasingly rare network comedy series that dares to assume there might be intelligent life out there watching, viewers who actually know when to laugh. Bless you, Fox. [31 Oct 2003, p.1H]

What a dazzling bunch of jerks. Yet, somehow, they are family and you can't help but laugh at them. Arrested Development is so dopey - but slick dopey. [2 Nov 2003, p.39]

Despite some amusing bits involving the parents, there's a major problem: Arrested Development isn't especially funny. That's the one asset every successful sitcom must have. [2 Nov 2003, p.4]