Fox may have buried the final...
Fox may have buried the final (and some of the finest) hours of
Arrested Development against Friday's Opening Ceremonies of the (yawn along with me) Winter Olympics, but the show's devoted core fan base got a gold-medal treat.
To the very last moment — an inspired cameo by exec producer (and heretofore never-seen narrator) Ron Howard, saying, "I don't see it as a series. Maybe a movie." — Arrested never compromised its extravagantly peculiar vision, its dense narrative style or its twisted sense of humor. The last four episodes, bundled together and thrown away by a network that had finally given up the good fight, were deliriously funny for those precious few with a taste for such inspired absurdity.
Just a partial list of things you'd never find anywhere else: A ventriloquist puppet wearing a "George Bush Doesn't Care About Black Puppets" T-shirt. A fake wedding turned fake bar mitzvah, because the audience of Alzheimer's patients won't mind. Judge Reinhold and Bud Cort (I did not see the latter coming) as mock TV judges. A nurse with a coma fetish. A model house in Iraq filled with Saddam Hussein look-alikes (and one who might be the real thing). Too many incest and ambiguous-sexuality/gay jokes to count (like Lucille, I couldn't help laughing at every "Nelly" reference). Wonderful cameos by Justine Bateman (as a hooker), Ed Begley Jr. (wearing alpaca hairpieces) and Richard Belzer (as a "Professor" Munch who teaches scrapbooking).
The insanity of Arrested Development was its strong suit, but also its Achilles heel. It tested the limits of how far a cult comedy could go on network TV, while testing the patience of a network that loved the show but wished in vain for its audience to grow larger than a cult. That is why Showtime is the only venue that now makes sense for any future of Arrested. But given how the finale brought the show full circle, I'd be satisfied for the whole enterprise to stop now.
Watching these episodes was bittersweet, to be sure, and as I sat back and laughed, I couldn't help but be reminded of what a cruel year 2006 has already been to shows that attempted something a little different. NBC's controversial The Book of Daniel was shelved after four weeks (though NBC has made other episodes available for viewing on its website). CBS' quirky Love Monkey was yanked after three episodes (though I'm cautiously optimistic CBS will give it another chance).
It would all be too depressing if I hadn't had an actual breakthough hit to look forward to all weekend. And once again, Grey's Anatomy didn't disappoint. This gripping two-parter, started after the Super Bowl, may well mark the turning point for the show, which for the first time earned a higher rating for a regular episode than its much more uneven lead-in, Desperate Housewives.
While I wouldn't argue that the bomb-in-the-chest story line was way over the top, the way it played out was breathtakingly suspenseful (regardless of how obvious it was that Meredith would survive). The scene where bomb-squad leader Kyle Chandler brought the bomb to the hallway, the blast knocking Meredith onto her back in a rain of ash and fire, made me gasp both times I played it back. (And how effective for Meredith's two gal pals, Izzie and Cristina, to help her shower off the bloody debris, an artful bookend to George's erotic shower fantasy, which opened the two-parter the Sunday before.) Meredith's final scene with McDreamy, recalling the kiss neither one of them had imagined was their last, was perfectly poignant.
And George! What a payoff for him and Bailey, as he finally broke through her trauma and grief and forced her to let him help her deliver her son (whose middle name is, appropriately, George). Wrenching and hilarious (when she screamed at him to "stop looking at my va-jay-jay"), and schmaltz or not, I couldn't have been more relieved that Bailey's husband pulled through the brain surgery.
With all the disappointments TV has been handing us lately, it's a relief when a show like Grey's Anatomy lives up to even Super Bowl-level hype. Melodrama aside, the show is pure entertainment: It makes you laugh, cry and care. If there's a downside to that, I guess I'm just in denial.
Chalk it up to my own arrested development.
