Over the past decade, Arrested Development has stolen a piece of most young Americans' hearts. It's quirky and bizarre characters and hysterical, spot-on writing interweave and feed off each other in such a masterful way that its creator, Mitchell Hurwitz, could be called the Picasso of screenplay writing. That's why it came as a surprise when the show was cancelled after its third season in 2006 due to its low ratings.
Arrested Development was simply one of those shows that was ahead its time. Its popularity grew tenfold once it was taken off air and cultivated a high demand for more. So, Hurwitz and the producers decided to bring it back for a fourth season. The fourth and final season will air solely on Netflix and will serve as a precursor to a subsequent full-length film.
Jason Bateman, who plays the protagonist in the series, went into a bit more detail about the upcoming fourth season during an interview on Larry King Now.
"There's a big story that the show runner wants to tell; this guy Mitch Hurwitz. This smart guy," Bateman said. "And the story was too big to kind of... every time he'd try to fit it all in one movie, it wouldn't work.
"So he decided to put sort of the first third of it in these episodes we have shot that are going to be on Netflix in May, and act two and act three will be inside a movie that we will do later.
"All the episodes are released on the same day, like you would an album," he added. "You can listen to whatever song in whatever order, and in this case you can watch any episode in whatever order," due to their non-linear structure. "Depending on the order in which you watch them, certain things will be revealed to you or not. It's pretty complicated."
It seems like the best way to understand the overly anticipated fourth season is by watching all the episodes multiple times, each time in a different order. That shouldn't be too much of a problem considering most Arrested Development fans have grown accustomed to watching each episode tens of times, always hankering for more, and now there finally will be.
Check out Bateman on Larry King Now here