The Great Wit Hope

By James Poniewozik/Los Angeles

As you drive onto the FOX studio lot in Century City, you are greeted by a massive banner congratulating Arrested Development for winning five Emmy awards. The banner could go on to say (but does not), "Sorry about that nearly-canceling-you-at-the-end-of-last-season business!" Being the funniest show on TV goes only so far, after all, when you're No. 116 in the 2003-04 broadcast ratings. So when Arrested's name was called out as Outstanding Comedy Series in September, besting contenders like Everybody Loves Raymond and Sex and the City, "it was like somebody punched us in the stomach," says cast member Tony Hale. "Punched in a good way."

America probably had a different reaction. Namely, Arrested what? It's not that the sitcom has lacked for publicity. The story of the eccentric, wealthy Bluth family, thrown into chaos when the sEC investigates the Bluth house-building business, was singled out by the New York Times as the show that might "save the sitcom." But all the plaudits may have convinced people only that the show was another critic's darling that would be too much work to watch. "People talk about it in such reverent terms," says Fox entertainment president Gail Berman. "I say it's just funny. Let's not make it sound like medicine."

Be it known, then, that Arrested Development (Sundays, 8:30 p.m. E.T., returns Nov. 7) is not too cerebral to make a good nudity joke. Today Jeffrey Tambor, who plays both imprisoned family patriarch George Bluth Sr. and George's hippie brother Oscar, is on set wearing an open robe with nothing underneath but flesh-colored briefs. (They'll be pixelated into a nude-looking blur.) Oscar is doing Tai Chi in the living room while George's acerbic wife Lucille (Jessica Walter) talks on the phone. As Oscar thrusts and lunges, Lucille icily hisses, "Oscar, close it! You look like the window of a butcher shop!"

Sharp jokes, nutty family: in that sense, there's no difference between Arrested Development and Raymond. But Arrested is different in other ways--and thank God, since sitcoms are in a years-long creative and ratings slump. Whereas most sitcoms are set in that familiar fake world of couches and canned laughter, Arrested Development looks real and spontaneous. It has no laugh track and is shot documentary style, in handheld digital video, with sober narration by Ron Howard (a partner in Imagine, the show's production company). Viewers often think the show is improvised (like HBO's Curb Your Enthusiasm), though it's meticulously scripted.

Using digital video allows the crew to set up quickly and shoot more scenes. Some of the funniest moments are fleeting flashbacks that wouldn't be practical on a traditionally shot sitcom. When spoiled Bluth daughter Lindsay (Portia de Rossi) tries to start a business, we get a quick glimpse of her last such scheme--Lindsay chasing a terrified dog that has been dyed half green out of a storefront with the sign DIP-A-PET. Other times, the cameraman is a sort of character, scurrying to catch up with the action. Or trying not to. In an upcoming episode, says creator Mitchell Hurwitz, Lucille starts making out with Oscar in an effort to make his brother jealous. "The cameraman starts to drift away, like he doesn't want to see it," Hurwitz says. "Then another character comes in, and he has to go back."

In looks and structure, Arrested Development is like a 30-min. drama, just a hilarious one. In most network sitcoms nowadays, the wisecracking characters are aware that they're being funny. The oblivious Bluths are funny despite themselves. "To these characters," says Jason Bateman, who stars as straight-arrow son Michael, "what's happened to them is an absolute tragedy. If they knew people were laughing, they'd be deeply offended."

So Hurwitz cast a brilliant group of character actors, such as Tambor (sidekick Hank Kingsley on HBO's Larry Sanders Show), David Cross (of HBO's Mr. Show) as George's fey doctor-turned-actor son-in-law Tobias Fuenke and Will Arnett, who steals his every scene as rebellious son Gob (pronounced like the biblical Job), a preening, self-absorbed magician. The most traditional sitcom actor is Bateman (Silver Spoons), whom Hurwitz was reluctant to cast for precisely that reason. "But he came in and gave this dry, confident performance," Hurwitz says. "There aren't many actors who will throw away those lines without giving you a big wink."

Granted, a lot of people have come to need the wink to tell them what to laugh at. And Arrested Development draws a dark picture of family relations: "What we have is not a family," Michael tells his son in the season-two opener. "It's a bunch of greedy, selfish people who have our nose." But the show is no more avant-garde than, say, Seinfeld, and it's less misanthropic. At some level, the Bluths need one another; they are the only ones who know what it is like to be Bluths. "We're not saying, No hugs, no lessons," says Hurwitz. "It's about people trying to grow as human beings but whose development has been arrested because they had money."

After all, people have happily watched a brainy, densely layered dysfunctional-family sitcom on Fox for 15 years: The Simpsons. With that in mind, Fox moved Arrested Development to the slot right after its cartoon powerhouse. The move, on top of the Emmy, should give TV's best comedy its best chance--and maybe its last. However much Emmy hardware Arrested Development wins, it ultimately needs to make money. "This is a business," says Arnett. "The Coke commercials are not filling the gap between our segments. We are filling in the gap between the Coke commercials." Back in the makeup trailer, Tambor (who has thankfully added a pair of shorts over his briefs) says the Emmy, by telling mainstream viewers it's "safe" to watch, will allow the sitcom to sell enough soda to survive. "We turned from the little engine that maybe could," he says, "into the little engine that could." Do yourself a favor and get on board.