This may be a little off-topic for me, but I’m a big fan of Arrested Development and Jon Chait explained today why there’s an important political angle to the show.
In one episode, a photograph emerges that the authorities believe shows secret bunkers in Iraq. The Army — whose manpower shortages have forced it to accept the enlistment of comically unprepared mama’s boy Buster Bluth — immediately deploys a new brigade to the region. A Fox News anchor announces, “Weapons of mass destruction found in Iraq! What does it mean for your weekend?” Unsurprisingly, the photograph turns out not to show weapons of mass destruction.
Some of the show’s humor goes after the left. In one show from last year, various characters enmesh themselves in webs of comic deceit and treachery and, at the end, a teenage son tells his father: “It’s just so hard to know what the right thing to do is.” The father replies: “I know it. It’s not like there’s some list of rules handed down to us from on high.” Meanwhile, unnoticed by both of them, a tablet of the Ten Commandments — which his liberal activist sister has successfully crusaded to remove from a courthouse — is dangling over their heads, suspended from a crane.
But the show’s overall ideological thrust is plain. In another recent episode, idiot son George Oscar Bluth II (“G.O.B.”) takes over the family housing development business and decides to clear the company name by building a new model home. G.O.B. insists, against the protestations of his brother, Michael, that he can build the new house in just two weeks. To meet his hasty deadline, G.O.B. builds the shaky facade of a house. He later appears at the ribbon-cutting with a “Mission Accomplished” banner draped across his chest and triumphantly declares, “My brother wasn’t optimistic it could be done, but I wouldn’t take ‘not optimistic it could be done’ for an answer!” G.O.B. then unveils the new company motto, “Solid as a Rock,” the last two words of which he pronounces “Iraq.” Of course, the house immediately collapses.
In fact, the Bluth family shares a great deal in common with the Bush family and has many of the same vices — corruption, heartlessness, arrogance, a self-destructive tendency to try to impress the father, etc. Is it a coincidence that the Bushes have one of the boys make a name out of his initials (“Jeb” stands for “John Ellis Bush”) just like the Bluths have Gob? For that matter, I am the only one who thinks Buster bears some resemblance to George W.?
Of course, there’s the one downside: on TV, it’s hilarious; in the real White House, it’s depressing. Still, if you’re not watching, you’re missing out.