Netflix is releasing the much-anticipated season four of "Arrested Development" tonight at midnight, or more accurately 12:01 am tomorrow, May 26. Assuming rabid fans don't crash Netflix's servers - or the entire internet - tonight, they'll all be taking in the entire new season in one huge gorge-fest, the way Netflix intended. Before you do that, though, check out this web app guaranteed to refresh your "Arrested Development" knowledge.
Judging from the season four preview trailer above, Mitch Hurwitz and company plan on continuing the series with a lot of the same humor as the previous seasons - and we have no problem with that. But "Arrested Development" is a comedy series so intricate, with so many running gags and in-jokes - not to mention all of the characters, story arcs, and guest spots - it's hard to recollect them all, in order to get the full effect.
The obvious solution is to watch all three seasons on Netflix before the big release. But, come on! Some fans may have had lots of time to watch the series years ago, but are too busy now to invest the more than 19 hours required for a refresher.
Sure, you could watch some clips online. Here's a top 10 rundown of Arrested Development running gags.
But true fans already know the most prominent running jokes. What we need is to get into the minutia of the show. There has to be a way to track all of the jokes in a quick, efficient, and refreshing overview.
Huzzah!
NPR's data journalists have come to the rescue. They've obsessively tracked seemingly all of "Arrested Development"'s jokes, like the "Christmastime Is Here" Peanuts references, Buster's back rubs, Lucille's weird winking, and even all of the appearances of the Aztec Tomb.
They've separated the jokes by character and tracked them by season. Each dot represents an occurrence of a gag, and the dots are color-coded. Orange dots indicate a clear, obvious joke, yellow dots are coded for "Arrested Development"'s ever-present background gags, and white dots with yellow margins signify foreshadowing of a running joke. Dots are sometimes connected by lines, to show which jokes are combined with others, which, of course, happens a lot in the series.
Here's a peak at just a few small sections of NPR's "Arrested Development" app (Warning! Seasons one through three spoilers ahead, obviously). It kind of looks like a logic diagram for a circuit, or an old-time operator's switchboard, which is only appropriate given the intricacies of Hurwitz's humor and narrative style.
If you mouse over a dot, a popup card will give you the name of the episode where it appears, the season and episode number, along with a quick overview of what the gag was and any related jokes that occur. Clicking on the dot takes you to another page, where you get a synopsis of the episode, just in case you don't remember the joke's context, and a list of all of the jokes for that episode below.
The best part about this data visualization app - besides the detailed logical flow of the graphics - is the extensive work that went into it. This is a web app by "Arrested Development" fanatics, for "Arrested Development" fanatics, and it's so impressive, you'll have to forgive the little quibbles you might have, like the fact that some jokes might be categorized under "meta," while a similarly meta-joke is classified as a "pointed narration" joke. (It's not a huge mistake.)
That said, there's a lot to remember about the series. And you might even realize some things that you missed the first time around - like Buster foreshadowing his permanent "loose seal" repercussions when he says "This party is going to be off the hook!"
Head on over to NPR's "Arrested Development" web app, cleverly called "previously, on Arrested Development," to check out this masterpiece - data journalism at it's finest! And get ready for season four Arrested Development, and remember to check it out again after Netflix releases the new season, because they've promised to incorporate season four as well.
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