STAYING IN: Is Arrested Development Series 4 A Victim Of Its Own Success?

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http://www.badhaven.com/tv/staying-i...s-four-review/

By Abby Chandler

Regularly topping ‘unfairly cancelled’ lists, Arrested Development is the ultimate hipster show. Unless you painstakingly tracked it down across the schedules when it first aired, you aren’t a real fan. Despite that, its fame has only grown over the seven years since Fox cancelled it as the cast went on to become major stars and more and more people discovered it on DVD. It is, undeniably, one of the greatest sitcoms ever made. Bringing it back for series four is the biggest coup Netflix has made since its inception (and kudos to their excellent advertising campaign – tagline: ‘We’ve unmade a huge mistake’). But, after seven years of near-misses and anticipation, was it any good? Spoilers for series four follow, obviously.

http://www.badhaven.com/tv/staying-i...four-review/2/

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http://whatculture.com/tv/how-critic...t-season-4.php

After a brief wait before being able to dive into the Phoenix-like return of Arrested Development, which two weeks ago released its fourth season over the streaming service Netflix, I have now finally made my way through the labyrinthine genius of this wondrous, multifaceted behemoth, and have been scrambling to try and unpack its splendor in words. What emerged was a sprawling, punishingly-long treatise that – if you hate yourself profoundly – you can read here (spoiler alert: it involves me droning on and on about how much I love this new season, trying to explain the ostriches and bees and ‘love each others’), but for now I want to speak briefly to the mystifying backlash this season seems to have received from a selection of critics in the first few days after its release.

To those who actually did bother to watch each of the new episodes, who got to see what the show was intricately building, experienced its breadth, but nonetheless felt that the show was lackluster: well to them I will say that although I respectfully (vehemently) disagree, at least they were diligent in their duty as critics. (…But I cannot restrain myself from suggesting that they might want to give it another watch without the press of a crushing, arbitrary review deadline hanging over them – just to give the show space to breathe a little).

However.

To all of the ‘professional’ critics that stayed up until three in the morning on the day the show went live, who watched only a handful of episodes and then hurriedly bashed out snide copy that dismissed the show as a poor shadow of its former glory in order to fish for search hits on the morning of release, they have every right – indeed, if they take their occupation seriously, the responsibility – to feel ashamed of themselves. To those critics, who despite now having plenty of time to familiarize themselves with the whole series, still write speculation about the entire season based on only slivers of the tale, they too continue to embarrass themselves.

Read more at http://whatculture.com/tv/how-critic...P9vXmW1pSlM.99