Please don't bring “Arrested Development” back

Ed here: I reluctantly agree with this piece. Man, I loved this show. Bought all the DVDs and watched them over and over. But the odds against producing new ones that would do justice to the originals...Plus I agree that in the last season and a half some of the story arcs were pretty lame. Even some of the performance felt tired.

Please don't bring “Arrested Development” back FROM SALON
Once again, rumors of a movie are swirling. Can't we leave a great show alone?

BY MARY ELIZABETH WILLIAMS

TOPICS:ARRESTED DEVELOPMENT
Anyone who’s ever watched a zombie movie — or either of the “Sex and the City” features — knows that bringing something once-beloved back from the dead rarely works out well. Why then, nearly six years after it left the air, do wekeep getting our hopes up about bringing back “Arrested Development“?

The justly beloved Fox sitcom recalibrated America’s “cult classic” meter virtually from the moment it debuted in 2003. Though it was never a ratings success, the farcical tribulations of the once-wealthy Bluth family scooped up Emmys and Golden Globes, launched Will Arnett and Michael Cera, made Jason Bateman a bona fide leading man, and gave that kid from “Happy Days” a nice narrating gig for a while there. Its cancellation in 2006 was both inevitable and a total heartbreaker. And when it happened, viewers, perhaps spoiled by “Buffy” — a show so violently adored that it survived its final two seasons on a different network – hoped for a similar fate. Surely some other savvy network would pick up one of the slyest, most original television series ever aired? Showtime? HBO? Anybody? How about a movie, then?

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But not enough. Some things only come along once in a while for a reason. “Arrested Development” existed in a particular moment in pop culture, and the exploits of its family remain comfortably frozen in a time when Bush was president and Michael Cera was a gawky teen. And let’s just say it, fellow diehards, that last season, with the whole Charlize Theron stuff and the confusion over adoptions and long-lost family members, was pretty scattershot. It’s not that Hurwitz and company couldn’t still spin gold from their characters. But after an absence of what would be at least seven years, would audiences really want to know what Buster and Tobias were up to?


for the rest go here: http://entertainment.salon.com/2011/10/04/arrested_development_movie_new_series/singleton/

Mary Elizabeth Williams is a staff writer for Salon and the author of "Gimme Shelter: My Three Years Searching for the American Dream." Follow her on Twitter: @embeedub.More Mary Elizabeth Williams