Board 8 > Season 5 of Arrested Development is up.

(+) Yeah! (+)

Michael Cera looks both older and not older and it's weird.
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anyone given it a shot?

i powered my way through season 4 but it was bad
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I started re-watching the series last week to be prepared and I'm only halfway through S3 right now, so it'll be a while but I'm excited.

I'm also excited to see the remix of S4.
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I'm in the middle of a series rewatch, on season 3 now

I'm quite disappointed with the whole controversy that happened, Tambor is kind of a shit person but I still want to see it
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Seen 4 episodes of the new season... pretty good! A lot better than 4, overall, though 4 had some of the funniest moments of the series.

Tag for later.

I watched the S4 remix to prepare. It wasn't bad but I feel like it's a downgrade from the original. It smoothed everything out for sure, but it wasn't worth all the recapping and joke explaining. After that, I'm looking forward to a "normal" season that was intended to be shown that way from the start!
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The in-episode recaps definitely got too overbearing by the end, yeah.
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What's the season 4 remix?

I watched like 4 or 5 episodes of S4 and got bored with it
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I was hyped until they released the recut of season 4 and it was somehow worse than the original season 4. Not a second went by without his narration. Apprently the first couple episodes of season 5 are similarly Ron Howard heavy. I just don't care.
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The first few episodes are just kinda "dealing" with Season 4 and getting the characters back into a position where they're all together again, so yeah, there's a lot of Ron Howard in the process.
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Johnbobb posted...

What's the season 4 remix?

I watched like 4 or 5 episodes of S4 and got bored with it

I think all the episodes are shown in chronological order or something like that
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The remix is still not totally linear. There's still a ton of jumping around, but it's "mostly" chronological. The main draw is giving the characters more even screentime within episodes so some of the slower plotlines (read: George Sr.) aren't as much of a slog. As much as I'll defend the original cut, the pacing is a huge problem and a ton of people drop it before the second half when it really picks up. Give the remix a shot if that sounds more appealing.
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Yeah the remix basically reorders the show in chronological order instead of the character-focused episodes of the original season 4. I liked it, but it definitely is not perfect. They had to add a lot more narration to stitch things together, and the recapping gets kinda relentless towards the end of the season.
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Man, there are a lot of cheap looking backgrounds in this.

It's understandable because of the budget, but it's still really distracting considering how the show is supposed to be set up like a documentary.
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oh my god, Michael Cera aging five years in the same scene is the funniest thing I've ever seen
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Lindsay's green screening is pretty noticeable
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I just finished it. My most pressing question: where the hell did tobias's Son plot come from? That seem to come out of nowhere
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wait I take it back, the Shoedini joke is the funniest thing
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GANON1025 posted...

Lindsay's green screening is pretty noticeable

it's so weird

why is she the only one who couldn't show up? What is she even doing?
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first two episodes were pretty disappointing. spent way too much time recapping all of season 4 which itself was told in a really lame way with a ton of recaps.

guys we are all here because we WATCHED THE SHOW. we didn't accidentally start on season 5 without having seen anything else. give the audience some credit, netflix.

I'll probably continue watching more later but I'm not super enthusiastic about it.
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Just finished episode 5 and it's great. The rest up until it were alright, but 5 was super funny.
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just got an email that the new Kimmy Schmidt episodes are out now

why would they put these shows out so close to each other? I'm barely done binging this.
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i didn't like S4 and the first two of S5 have been... not good

part of it is just seeing how old the actors are, which is just depressing. part of it comes i'm sure from unfamiliarity with the characters now - i like old AD episodes more on rewatch. butba lot of it just feels like a big focus on telling a contrived story that isn't very funny.
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I've only seen three episodes so far, but episode 3 was way better than the first two.
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S4 was kind of brutal and when they realized they couldn't pull it off, it should have been canned. The remix is OK for the first half of episodes but then they just rely on narration and flashbacks and previouslys. And the material just wasn't really suited for the new snappier format, anyway. I really liked the first handful of episodes, though I was worried that we got through Lindsey and Tobias without also handling Maeby.

I guess I find the overall storylines and structure of S4 clever and amusing, but the actual shows just aren't fun to watch. I've seen S4 twice and the remix once and kind of struggle to think of hilarious moments. I guess anything Michael/P Hound and some of Buster's antics and "the roofie cycle".

I liked episode 1 of S5 but yeah half of it felt like recap. I watched it with someone who hasn't really seen much Arrested Development, and she was curious why they spent so much time on recaps and they didn't really help her understand what was going on or any of the jokes. They should have just released a S4 recap "episode" for people that watched in 2013 and didn't want to have to slog through it again, I dunno.
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they *did* release a S4 recap. it was like 2 minutes long.

but i haven't seen it in forever and still couldn't follow the plot. there were a lot of intricacies to the rebel alley situation that were unclear.

jokes like george sr having low testosterone and GOB being gay just aren't very funny to me. and michael simply doesn't work when he's not playing off other cast members. george michael and maeby just seem really weird to me now - like they've aged past this role (and the role is different from what they used to be, too)

GANON1025 posted...

I've only seen three episodes so far, but episode 3 was way better than the first two.

this is encouraging!
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S4 ended up being great by the end. I don't want to watch the remix and I mad they TOOK DOWN the original in exchange for that.

I watched the first 2 episodes of 5 and they we're realllyyyy slow. There we're some good jokes here and there but that's it. So diluted compared to even S4. I'll keep watching though I guess.
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The original Season 4 is still there, it's just in the "Trailers & More" section at the bottom.
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Weird
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MoogleKupo141 posted...

GANON1025 posted...

Lindsay's green screening is pretty noticeable

it's so weird

why is she the only one who couldn't show up? What is she even doing?

Apparently de Rossi has retired from acting so she's probably only there at all as a courtesy.
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I'm currently watching the remix of 4 now. I'm towards the end of the season and the recaps have lessened considerably compared to the earlier episodes imo. The whole remix has given me a weird deja vu feeling the whole time since it's been almost 5 years since I've seen the original season 4.
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A friend in need is no friend indeed.
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Oh I didn't realize they were releasing this season in halves like Kimmy. Just finished the eighth episode and was totally confused if that was it or not, lol.

Anyway, it got a lot better after the third episode when they were finished with the S4 recaps. Michael and George Michael awkwardly lying to each other is really getting overused though.
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The Mexican Romney reveal was planted back in Season 4

https://i.imgur.com/UhSLizp_d.webp?maxwidth=640&shape=thumb&fidelity=medium

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episode 3 was definitely better after having killed off most of the previous season's bad subplots by reuniting everyone
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SeabassDebeste posted...

episode 3 was definitely better after having killed off most of the previous season's bad subplots by reuniting everyone

They didn't actually though, it just feels much different because they managed to get most of the cast together.
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Watched episode 3 and it wasn't much better
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I feel like I need to be high to enjoy this season which definitely wasn't the case before
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finished watching the rest. it kinda goes like this...

episode 3: feels a little bit better almost immediately because they do move onto new material, but the way they did it was somewhat jarring. rushing this plotline by having michael appear at the loft and everyone is already there at the end of episode 2; then suddenly they spend over half of episode 3 on recaps explaining how everyone got there.

episodes 4-8: the show basically gets better from here on out but I still found it to be overall disappointing. almost nothing happens. the pacing is god awful. it's just awful. in true netflix original form they end the season without resolving any plot lines, after spending most of the season focusing too much on not resolving most of the stuff that didn't happen in season 4.

I honestly feel like they have covered maybe 3 episodes worth of material in the last two seasons combined. though apparently this is just season 5 part a. but that begs the question... why? why is it taking so long? why are they releasing a show that moves so slowly in broken up parts without ever moving the plot forward? everything about it is sloppy and unsatisfying.
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hello darkness my old friend
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lucille has basically lost all subtlety as a character and is much less funny.

tobias has basically lost all subtlety as a character and is much less funny.

buster's plotlines, to be fair, never really seemed to go anywhere. so him just sitting around doing nothing doesn't reflect too negatively against past seasons.

the rebel alley thing is just atrocious in terms of pacing, not even getting into the fact that I didn't find any of the content revolving around her to be too compelling. plot lines about bluth characters dating people used to last a few episodes and then end. this has been going on for two seasons.

on that note; the tony wonder thing has been going on for too long, too much of GOB's character now revolves around this, and it's not even funny. I can't believe it's 2018 and netflix is literally still using homosexuality as a punchline.

I hope lindsay doesn't come back and I mean that in the most positive way possible. if portia is really done with acting then please stop trying to build storylines around a character when the actor can't even reliably show up on set. I'm guessing this is part of the reason that production is so slow. I'd much rather have a show without lindsay than continue to have a show that moves at a snail's pace and releases new seasons every few years.
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Keep in mind that this is only half the season. If it feels like nothing's happened, that's probably why.

Honestly I care less about the overarching plot and more about the humor so I found this half-season plenty enjoyable.
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HeroDelTiempo17 posted...

Keep in mind that this is only half the season. If it feels like nothing's happened, that's probably why.

but plots in previous seasons used to resolve in 1-4 episodes.

this was 8 episodes long and didn't even fully cover one complete plotline.
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That's because it was back when the show was airing on TV years ago. Even then, it had the overarching plotline of the Bluth family and company as a whole and George Sr.'s crimes. Nowadays people are much more receptive to slow TV plotlines so they went ahead and made that the whole show.
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I really wish they weren't so focused on making every episode part of a big season-long plot. All the story stuff really slows down the jokes too much, and most of the best stuff in the original series came from one-off episodes anyway. More importantly, most of Season 5's plot is just boring so far.
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Yeah, the humor of the show is just worse now. The humorous continuity used to come from running jokes that came up in seemingly unrelated situations, not from repeatedly revisiting the same plot point (the Rebel situation has been awful)
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though "I'm just sliding in and out of Michael" was brilliant, classic Tobias
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He's "just not a straight man".
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The one positive for this half-season is the use of Michael constantly leaving the family.
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scarletspeed7 posted...

The one positive for this half-season is the use of Michael constantly leaving the family.

I just realized when he says he's leaving forever, he always comes back. When he says "I ain't going nowhere" that means, to him, that he's breaking things off for good.
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