Weekend Update

I was pretty freakin' lazy this past weekend. Friday night I met up with some friends at The Boathouse to hear some live music. Unfortunately, the live music was absolutely terrible, so I left early and was on my couch by 10:30. So I curled up with a laptop and got reacquainted with the Bluth Family.

Arrested Development is easily in my top five comedies of all time. It is "smart comedy", although while it aired I felt that the writers/producers of the show were going after the "idiot demographic." While it's true that a pet monkey could watch the show and find humor, I think the funniest moments were the subtle smacks at FOX, other shows in its time slot, etc. For instance, Season Two was shortened from 22 episodes to 18. So, in one particular episode, Michael Bluth (Jason Bateman) is seen on the phone with a client complaining about an order of 22 homes being cut down to 18. There was also an episode in which the narrator (Ron Howard) talks about "shoddy narrating", a subtle middle finger to another narration-driven show Desperate Housewives, which aired in the same time slot on another network. At the end of that episode, the narrator says, "...and that's how you narrate a show."

But perhaps one of my favorite lines of narration came in Season One. Jessie, the short-lived Bluth Family P.R. specialist, calls George-Michael "Opie", to which the narrator (Ron Howard) replies, "Jessie was pushing her luck, and she'd better watch herself." I thought this was brilliant!

So in short, I wound up watching two seasons of Arrested Development from Friday to Monday. After that, I went to visit my folks and grilled some hot dogs and brats. And I shouldn't fail to mention that my folks started Season One of LOST and they're already halfway through it! I'll keep you posted on their progress, but they seem to be knocking out the DVDs right and left. I'm so proud of them...