I love Arrested Development: the particularity of its absurdity is sharp and richly detailed, rendering its satire on American values, the idle rich, the formerly idle rich, the formerly rich but still idle, and intra-family relationships telling as well as hilarious.
The critics and the industry love the show as well - unfortunately, the one thing it doesn't have is the one thing it most needs to survive: an audience. The show should do an episode about the situation - it would be funny.
The NY Times looks at the situation and talks to the creator Mitchell Hurwitz:
- TWO weeks ago, the little-watched Fox sitcom "Arrested Development" pulled off a remarkable Emmy coup: it walked away with seven nominations, including best comedy series, best writing and best direction. Just a few nights later, the show took top honors from the Television Critics Association for best new program and best comedy. "It's been a crazy period of approbation," said Mitchell Hurwitz, the show's creator and one of its executive producers.
....The series — which stars Jason Bateman as the only sane member of an Orange County family that loses its real estate fortune in an Enron-type scandal — finished its first season as only the 120th most popular show (88th among viewers 18 to 49), with a meager average weekly audience of 6.2 million people. And despite Fox's efforts to cultivate new fans by broadcasting reruns this summer on Sundays at 8:30 p.m., "Arrested Development" consistently loses about a quarter of the audience from "The Simpsons," which precedes it. "An Emmy would be nice," Mr. Hurwitz said, sighing, "but I'd settle for an audience."
....It's in this era of long odds that Fox has decided to roll the dice on "Arrested Development." After a tense couple of months last spring when the show faced cancellation, the network has declared its full support, not only picking the show up for a full 22-episode season that starts Nov. 7 but moving it from 9:30 p.m. to the plum time slot right after "The Simpsons." "Its creative integrity and groundbreaking nature are all things we look for on Fox," Gail Berman, Fox's entertainment president, told reporters at the network's annual presentation in New York. "We hope to see it build in the same vein as `Seinfeld' and `Everybody Loves Raymond' " — two hit shows that took a while to catch on.
Article comments
1 - Jim Carruthers
The depressing part of this article was the observation that shows like "Andy Richter Controls The Universe" and "Undeclared" got much higher ratings than AD, and got canned anyways. The only hope is that right now, aside from reality bumf, there's nothing else on.
2 - Eric Olsen
Yes, with all of the acclaim and award nominations, Fox looks like it's willing to make a stand on this - at least for a while.
3 - Kevin
A.D. likely got renewed because Fox has little else in the way of sitcoms on the sked, and nothing else in development. I doubt the critics' praise had anything to do with it. Gail Berman is just a lowly network exec, which means she can shovel it with the best of them.
4 - Eric Olsen
Really notable critical praise, especially in conjunction with lots of awards CAN make a difference, and I think this time did. It gives the network cover for hanging on longer.
5 - Pappy
I loved "The Jury" and it failed to get an audience due to being on the wrong network, let alone the wrong timeslot.
I take pleasure in seeing a show "Critics" enjoy utterly fail with audiences, i.e. Arrested Development. I find it amusing that comedy shows on broadcast (not cable) TV that do not have "laugh tracks" don't do too well, except for, to some extent, "Malcolm in the Middle." I know FOX never shows comedies/sitcoms that have laugh tracks, but apparently audiences who try tuning into A.D. don't laugh.
Perhaps it's better suited for HBO or Showtime.
6 - Bob A. Booey
The Jury was a horrible, boring show that no one watched and for good reason.
Arrested Development is one of the best comedies to ever make it to broadcast TV. It deserves its critical accolades and more, so taking delight in its failure is stupid when most of what passes for comedy on TV is so horrible (think the block of "average Joe with a hot wife" comedies on CBS/"Life With Jim" type shows or anything new that NBC has tried to slot on Thursday the past few years). Other than Scrubs and Arrested Development (shows as good as any on television), there is little intelligence to be found in network TV comedy. Undeclared was a good show (not quite Freaks and Geeks good, but still very good) and Andy Richter Controls the Universe was fairly decent as well, but Arrested Development is the far edgier, more interesting show.
Speaking of Andy Richter, it's really sad to see him in that horrible Quintuplets show that's a resurrection of the Married With Children/Unhappily Ever After genre. He's far too smart a guy to be acting out such low-brow material. Look, we've got a hot chick as one of the daughters just like that horrible 8 Simple Rules show! I guess Andy had to go for a safer bet and sell out a little bit since his last projects have bombed, but it just isn't a good show. Method and Red, however, is surprisingly good if you can get past the "smoke em and toke em" rap star image that's spoofed in the show. In some ways, it has a similar feel to Bernie Mac's consistently excellent show and gives Fox two strong black comedies with crossover appeal and has an excellent cast with good writing.
I could count the number of quality shows on network TV on my fingers (if not one hand), and even of those I can only think of a couple I regularly tape and try my best to watch. Summer's a whole different thing because your standards for viewing are lower and something like "Last Comic Standing" becomes palatable if there's not a game on.
That is all.
7 - Tom Johnson
Pappy, you're neglecting the success of Scrubs, which is sans laugh-track, as is the Simpsons and, as you mention, Malcom In The Middle. If shows don't do well without a laughtrack, it's because the general public is too stupid to know actual humor anymore - they've been so bombarded by whatever the exact opposite of humor would be for so long that they don't even know how to react to genuine humor.
I have no doubt that Arrested Dev is hands-down the best show on TV right now. Nothing continues to surprise and entertain the way this show does week after week. I can't imagine how they can keep this up, but everytime I think they writers have finally peaked they find some way to yet again surprise me. This is some of the most witty, intelligent writing I've ever seen on network TV, and if you can't find humor or entertainment in it then I'm very sad for you.
8 - Jim Carruthers
There are so few comedies on teevee, that the idea of us getting the ha-ha from the reality show "I'm My Own Grandpa" is just sickening.