Noiseless Chatter Archive

Serving as the final installment of a 15-episode swirl of twists, plot-threads and exciting glimpses of…oh, to hell with it. I can’t even finish that sentence as a joke. Arrested Development season four was a mess. “Blockheads” is a mess. It might have seemed like somewhat less of a mess if it wasn’t the final episode, but as it stands its almost overt refusal to offer closure to even one of this season’s frustratingly aimless storylines makes it seem that much worse. There’s not much plot going on here, aside from the fact that Michael and George Michael realize they’re dating the same woman (which happens, of course, in the very last scene, because if we saw anything beyond that it might have taken some narrative effort), so I guess I might as well talk about Isla Fisher — who I’m not sure I’ve even mentioned yet — and the season as a whole. Talking about Isla Fisher will be easy, because there’s not much to say. Like all of the characters invented for season four,...

The previous two episodes, which centered around Maeby and George Michael, were great and very good, respectively. They represent exactly the late-season upswing I had been hoping for, and I’m overall quite happy with them. And there’s no reason “Off the Hook” couldn’t have been just as good. Instead, though, it’s a reversion to the bottom-rung material that’s hung like a smothering cloud over season four. Those two episodes were flukes, and “Off the Hook” wants to make sure we know it. By the way, I’m not just saying that this episode could have been as strong for rhetorical purposes. Buster, as a character, was very much in the same boat as Maeby and George Michael; he lives in the shadow of a parent, and while the fact that he’s an adult makes that somewhat more tragic, it was otherwise a great complement to the situations of the actual kids. Maeby lives under parents who don’t notice her, George Michael lives under a parent who doesn’t hear him, and Buster lives ...

“It Gets Better” really does live up to its name, serving as the second very good episode in a row, right after “Señoritis,” at a point when the season is running short on chances for redemption. Michael Cera’s obviously been busy enough in the Arrested Development downtime to hone his comedic chops, and fans of the show get a big payoff here as his focal episode manages to be funny, painful, and surprisingly insightful. It works as a character sketch and it also works as an exploration of how a young man finds his identity. It may also double as a sort of origin story, but we’ll get into that in a bit. It’s not quite on the level of “Señoritis,” though that’s mainly down to structural differences. Whereas that episode told a more or less complete story, “It Gets Better” doesn’t manage to wind itself to a conclusion. We just get a shot of Michael and Ron Howard hanging out next to a photo booth and that qualifies as an ending only because the “On the next…” title card...

Not a moment too soon — arguably around ten episodes too late — something genuinely incredible happens: we get a truly great episode of Arrested Development season four. If there was ever any doubt that Alia Shawkat was one of this show’s greatest assets (and seriously, if there was any, you and I need to have a serious talk), “Señoritis” should dispel that immediately. In fact, between this episode and the next (“It Gets Better”) I really started to hope that the concluding episodes of the season would retroactively make what came earlier play that much better. They’re both very good, though I think this one edges “It Gets Better” out, and particularly in this case it does a great job of filling in gaps and layering new details onto what we’ve already seen. Sadly, as with just about anything good in season four, it’s an exception. But it’s an exception I will happily take, and it’s the one episode from this mess that I think might be able to stand next to the classic...

“Colony Collapse” was a flawed piece of television, but it worked well enough as a character sketch…as a method of plumbing what we knew of GOB Bluth and filling in some aspects of his humanity. It was also, overall at least, pretty funny, which is why it qualifies as a genuine highlight of season four. “A New Attitude” seems dead-set on making up for that accidental success, and giving us a poorer, stupider episode about GOB that fits much more in line with the rest of the season. One thing I’m noticing is that the second episode about each character is significantly worse than the first. “Flight of the Phoenix” was very much about the two most important things in Michael’s life (his son and his Sudden Valley project) and what it means when he botches them both, but “The B. Team” was about him being a movie producer and the straight man to some self-indulgent jokes about Ron Howard. (Wasn’t there also some simmering feud with Kitty, which was never mentioned again? B...

While “Queen B.” might not be the worst episode of season four, it’s certainly the most disappointing. A character like Lucille doesn’t come along very often; she’s entertaining by default. A glare or a glower is enough to get a laugh, and she has a brilliant way of delivering her lines that turns the most innocuous sentiment into a cutting insult. She’s a great character in a show full of great characters, and has always been one of my favorites. So of course they don’t know what to do with her, and mash her into the fuckin’ Fantastic Four musical. Did we really need three episodes about that stupid thing? I don’t think the lack of direction in this season is any clearer than when we spend 1/5 of our time circling back to this god forsaken plot thread, and the fact that we now rope Lucille — unquestionably the Bluth least likely to give a shit — into the thing just shows us once again that they have no idea who their characters are. Of course it’s probably worth menti...

I’ll say this much for “Smashed”: having rewatched it, it’s not as wall-to-wall bad as I remembered it being. Of course that’s faint praise, especially since that’s due to the fact that I forgot all about the scene with Tobias and Michael in Ron Howard’s office, which plays to the oblivious strengths of two of my favorite characters. It’s a great sequence that actually uses miscommunication in an interesting way, and the elevator ride back to the lobby serves as excellent punctuation to one of the strongest scenes in the entire season. But then it’s over, and we’re back to where we were before this very welcome interlude: the Fantastic Four musical. The Fantastic Four musical. Arrested Development is devoting an entire, extra-long episode to watching one character attempt to stage a Fantastic Four musical. I can type variations on that sentence over and over again, and it’ll never make a lick of sense to me. I think it’s safe to say that whatever story Mitch Hurwitz inte...

We’re now more than halfway through the season so I think it’s fair to pose a question: is this bad Arrested Development , or is this bad television? The easiest way to answer that is to strip away the title and the names of the characters. If I’m left with everything that happens here, every written line and editing choice, but it’s not attached to the name Arrested Development , do I like it? I don’t. In fact, my fondness for the original three seasons isn’t working against this batch of aimless, meandering tales; it’s making me work harder to like it. I don’t want to admit the fact that they’re not very good, because I want Arrested Development to be above that. Above this. If I were to stumble on this exact season of episodes on television (or Netflix, I guess) and it had no attachment to this show, I’d probably feel like it was made by some cynical executive somewhere who wanted to cash in on the popularity of Arrested Development but didn’t have any sense of wh...

I’ve noticed that this episode tends to get singled out, by both commenters here and reviewers elsewhere, as a highlight of season four. And, really, that’s no surprise. As messy as these episodes have been and will continue to be, “Colony Collapse” is downright masterful by comparison. Of course, that’s only by comparison. Even so, it’s nice to finally see one installment of this splintered narrative that functions as a complete and moderately insightful character sketch. We get to explore an aspect of GOB’s character that had always been left unspoken, see it through a variety of external lenses, and then close on a killer punchline. (And I mean that; barring the “On the next…” sequence, GOB’s final line is brilliant punctuation to everything we just saw.) It has its own issues, of course, and we’ll deal with those, but “Colony Collapse” serves as an illustration of what season four should have been. Its focus is tighter, its themes well chosen, and its central c...

If The Venture Bros. isn’t the best show on television right now, I’d love to know what is. That isn’t to say that it doesn’t stumble, or broadcast episodes that disappoint, but it is to say that through four seasons and change I have yet to feel like the show has done anything overtly wrong . Even my favorite shows tend to go through patches that seem to suggest a fundamental misunderstanding of who their characters are, or they lose track of their own “voice” and start to write episodes that might still be good, but just don’t feel right. The Venture Bros. hasn’t had that issue. Any unwelcome detour has remained true to its characters, and at least felt like part of a sustained vision. “Venture Libre” might never be the episode that I point to when I want to convince somebody that the show is great, but it would be an example of why the show is great: this far along, in the fifth season, we’re still watching our main characters grow. This is especially impressive ...

Disappointed by season four so far? Don’t worry Arrested Development fans! This show knows exactly how to get you back on board: a series of interlocking episodes focused around the political aspirations of a minor character we’ve never heard of before! I’ll probably have more to say about this when we get to the final episode, but the most puzzling thing about this season is how much importance it gives to certain events and characters that have literally no impact on anything and that go absolutely nowhere. Here we meet Herbert Love, but we don’t learn anything about him except that he’s not a good character and not particularly funny. Evidently he’s prone to gaffes and saying inappropriate things, but none of this is presented in a funny enough way to make it worth having in a sitcom, nor is it clever enough to serve as political commentary. He’s just a guy in a suit and some glasses, and that’s apparently what passes for character development at this stage in the...