After seven years of absence from the small screen, many a fan has rejoiced over the return of Arrested Development’s fourth season, airing exclusively on Netflix.

In the recent trend set by the start of Netflix’s original series, Arrested Development is one of the various other shows picked up to be an exclusive (or semi-exclusive in this case) series, along with House of Cards and Hemlock Grove to name a couple.

The show has been met with a tremendous amount of buzz, from all of the online publicity to the public events, such as the Bluth Frozen Banana stand, culminating in all 15 episodes of the fourth season to be released in one swift go, early Sunday morning. 12:01 am (PT) to be exact.

From the Huffington Post: 

“Typically, about a third of the entire Internet's bandwidth is devoted to Netflixstreaming on a given weeknight. The influx of devoted "Arrested Development" fans probably won't increase that share significantly, said Cam Cullen, the vice president of global marketing at Procera, a company that monitors networks and Internet service providers.

One industry expert says that more than 5 percent of Netflix bandwidth use at that time may consist of people watching the antics of the Bluth family.”

But what makes Arrested Development stand out so much from any other (presumably cancelled by Fox) show? 

To summarize, it’s a show about an atypical family that stretches the limits on how dysfunctional a group of people could possibly be towards each other and the people around them, all craftily narrated by the biting humor of Ron Howard. 

It’s a show that kick-started the careers of many actors who worked on it, including Michael Cera, Jason Bateman, and Will Arnett to only name a few. 

It’s a show that won six Emmy Awards in its three year run and has been dubbed “the greatest sitcom ever.” 

More importantly, however, is that it’s a show that changed the way sitcoms were made, viewed, and appreciated. In a time before the internet and streaming and DVRs, this was a show that relied on chronology and repeat viewing to see things that weren’t noticeable on the first viewing. It’s one of the first sitcoms to break away from a laugh-track (which is still generally abused from time to time) in order to provide more humor at a faster pace. Too fast, even, for a casual channel flipper to catch before moving to something with a shorter punch-line, which likely detracted from its mainstream appeal. Even to the point of scenes fading to white over the more traditional fade to black transitions, everything about Arrested Development was different than what people had come to expect.

It’s with all of this in mind that Netflix has taken to bringing the classic series back and meet the expectations of the many fans who have supported them, specifically by watching and re-watching the first three seasons streamed. 

With generally positive feedback so far, the entirety of Arrested Development’s season four is currently up and available for streaming, provided you have access to a Netflix account. But as the creator Mike Hurwitz advised on Vulture “It's a comedy! It's not like Lord of the Rings. Comedy takes a lot out of you. Don't feel obligated to watch it all at once.”

 

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