Arrested Development: The Godfather of TV

It’s not often that the Internet culture can be so rocked by news that anyone over 40 couldn’t give two farts about. It’s also not often that a TV show deserving of a greater fate is created, ignored, canceled, immortalized and finally brought back to life and shoved on the air.

Lazarus’s heart took a break for a couple of days; Arrested Development has been stranded on millions of DVD shelves for the last six years. Message boards and the like have actually turned the show into some self-referential zombie. At this point, can Arrested Development’s new fourth season be better than what would have been the fourth season more than half a decade ago?

I’m here to say, to say to doubters and myself, that there is a way.

For some time, I have described Arrested Development as a comic TV version of The Godfather. They are both stories about a youngest son attempting to take over and legitimize his father’s, periodically-legal, business and empire. Specifically:

Michael is Michael Corleone
George Sr. is Vito Corleone
Lucille is Mama Corleone
GOB is Sonny
Buster is Fredo
Lindsey is Connie
Tobias is Carlo
Barry Zuckerkorn is Tom Hagen
J. Walter Weatherman is Clemenza
Stan Sitwell is Barzini
Tracey (Michael’s Wife) is Kay
Rita/Maggie/Marta/Sally is Apollonia

Now I’ve never heard show creator Mitch Hurwitz say anything remotely about The Godfather and I’m not about to go and “do research.” I just want to point out that the saga and the similarities can be continued. Expecting a sequel to the The Godfather would be a bit much, as well as the return of Arrested Development.

Simply then, the next season of Arrested Development should just be The Godfather: Part Two played out. Obviously the characters and their parallels don’t match up perfectly one-to-one (ex. GOB is alive, Sonny is dead). However, the dynamics are still there. And the betrayals! And murders! Murders? Probably.

With Community on the brink in a way that can only be properly described as “Arrested Development-esque” combined with my personal disinterest in watching more than one TV show at a time, I just know I’ve found myself excited by television for the first time in a long time.