Arrested Development was an award-winning comedy series, but if you look at the list of awards and nominations the show earned, almost all of them were awarded when the series aired on Fox. For some reason, the beloved comedy struggled a bit when it was revived as a Netflix series, and it’s a popular opinion that it never quite reached the same level of quality as the original run. Michael Cera, who was along on the show’s ride from beginning to end, believes he knows a potential reason why the final seasons were so disappointing.
Michael Cera has moved on from playing George Michael, though he’s still celebrated for reviving that character’s classic awkwardness in other roles – such as Ken’s best friend Alan in the Barbie movie. Cera was recently interviewed by British GQ about his latest role, and he was also asked about the reception of the network run of Arrested Development vs. the Netflix run. The actor explained that he felt one difference between the two was the way the show was shot in the transition between network television and streaming. The latter caused some confusion for him and the rest of the cast. Said Cera,
It got a little, honestly, confusing. Because we were working on the scripts as we were shooting them, so the scripts were changing as we were shooting. Nobody could really keep the whole thing in their head.
Another factor that Michael Cera didn’t touch on was the increased celebrity of the cast in the Netflix era compared to when it was on Fox. Cera, for example, went from a young actor in a breakout role to a star with quite a few notable movies like Superbad and Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World.
It seemed like a lot of the cast had other things going on during Season 4 in particular, which presumably made it more challenging to build scripts around schedules. In any case, Michael Cera was confused while working on those seasons, and he wasn’t alone in that confusion, as creator Mitchell Hurwitz was eventually encouraged to “remix” the episodes.
Readers can judge the quality of Arrested Development Seasons 4 and 5 for themselves, provided they have a Netflix subscription. It was thought earlier this year that the streamer was removing it from its content library. Fortunately, the news of removal was only a temporary measure until the two parties could work out a licensing deal. I’m glad it’s still there, mainly because I want to see how far Michael Cera has come as an actor and compare his earliest appearances to some of his latest in Barbie and Black Mirror.
Barbie is currently in theaters, and, as mentioned, Netflix subscribers can check out Arrested Development right now and remember a time when they might’ve had their own version of the “chicken dance.”
