How (Not) To Revive A Show: Arrested Development vs. Community

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"I think a lot of people get into porn, they watch porn because they're, you know, they're sexually frustrated. But I've had so much tail in my life so I'm not sexually frustrated nor have I ever been. I mean, I've got hot tail throwing itself at me all the time and I have since I was in high school. And, therefore, I'm usually tired and my nut sack is so drained because I'm dumping my clip all the time--that's why I've never been into porn...I don't need it."--Michael Cera

👍︎︎ 9 👤︎︎ u/nouakchott1 📅︎︎ Sep 13 2018 🗫︎ replies

Arrested Development was the worst revival attempt ever! Scrubs a distant second.

👍︎︎ 10 👤︎︎ u/[deleted] 📅︎︎ Sep 12 2018 🗫︎ replies
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- [Narrator] A few months ago I made a video called, Efficiency in Comedy: The Office vs. Friends. In this video I took two shows that both hold a special place in my heart and compared them based on one metric, how many jokes are there per minute, a.k.a. which show in my eyes is more comedically efficient. While I'm very happy with the way this video turned out and the reception was mostly positive I think the biggest problem with this video despite just not being thorough enough with my data is that these two shows are just too different to compare head to head. Completely different styles of comedy made during two distinct areas of pop culture making this relationship too apples versus oranges to draw any real conclusions. So when I set out to revisit this format I made it my goal to only compare shows that are both apples, or both oranges, or both bananas, you get the idea. Two shows that are very similar. And when I made this my goal two shows immediately came to mind, Arrested Development and Community. The closer I started to compare these shows the more I realized how many elements between them are nearly identical. They each feature ensemble cast made up of a bunch of quirky weirdos and one straight man to react to their quirky weirdness. They're both very meta shows that repeatedly break the fourth wall in ways most other shows don't, and they both seem to have mastered the art of the callback with numerous jokes that span multiple seasons. - Shut up Leonard. - Her? - [Narrator] Hell each show even has one notorious asshole fuckface that has a history of making the people they work with feel unsafe. So we're really checking all the boxes here. But the biggest thing that ties these series together is their shared fate. These are both shows that were critically acclaimed but ultimately unsuccessful during their initial network runs and we're each given individual opportunities to come back to life but with underwhelming results. But while these two shows suffered eerily similar fates the path they each took to get there really couldn't have been more different. Arrested Development 2.0 was served on a silver platter and still managed to disappoint, while Community's attempted resurrection seemed doomed to fail from the start. Two shows each given a second chance at life but which one did a better job at fucking it up? And would they have been better off just quitting while they were ahead? (soft jazz music playing) So first let's do a quick history lesson that will never be taught in any school ever, starting with Arrested Development. The first season premiered in 2003 to initially high ratings that slowly dwindled over the next few months. Almost instantaneously Fox was ready to give up on Arrested Development despite the fact that they were literally winning awards immediately. They won five Emmys in 2004, and yet none of the cast was even sure if they were gonna be brought back for another season because the critical acclaim wasn't translating into broad enough popularity for Foxes liking. You see Arrested Development was always praised for its cleverness and originality during a time when simplistic formulaic sitcoms were being birthed left and right. Each episode weave together storylines and long running bits in such a carefully crafted way that just wasn't typically seen on television. In fact, the show was so jam packed with jokes that I think it was actually ahead of its time in a bad way. Because while Arrested Development has since earned a reputation as a show you sometimes have to pause and rewind, or re-watch episodes all together to catch subtle nuances you may not have noticed at first you couldn't really do that at the time. In 2003 if you sat down with your family to watch a show live on TV that you can't rewind, or pause, or anything like that and the show you're watching feels almost like an onslaught of punchlines and dialogue and information it's not necessarily going to satisfy the need that most people had when they watched television. Which was more or less to turn off your brain for an hour or two with easy laughs after a long day at work. And a lot of ways Arrested Development was made to be binged before that became the standard for television. The writers seem to have more foresight from the beginning than in any show I've ever seen. Certainly in any comedy I've ever seen, even small things like Buster getting his hand bitten off by a loose seal, but his love interest and mother, two separate characters I should say are both named Lucille. - Watch out for loose seal! - I don't care about Lucille! - [Narrator] And have been from the beginning, that's a small detail. But things like that make you think, whoa, did they map out the entire show from day one? Is that why those characters were named Lucille in the first place all to lead up to this one moment in season two? Like I said that's one small detail, but just one of many examples of the writing on the show indicating an unprecedented level of foresight. Arrested Development sets a standard for how a show can be written but you have to zoom out and look at the entire picture as a whole before you can fully appreciate it. An option only available in hindsight and not to the viewers who at the time were only able to watch one episode a week. It's for that reason that I think the shows cult following didn't fully establish until a few years after it ended. As a result Arrested Development suffered right out of the gate failing to match the ratings of comparable sitcoms at the time like, Will & Grace, Two and a Half Men, Everybody Loves Raymond, each of which proved to be more accessible to mainstream audiences. The first major blow was dealt to the show runners when their second season which began in 2004 was cut back to 18 episodes from its originally scheduled 22. Ratings dropped ever so slightly over the span of the second season but it was enough to cause Fox to wanna move the show from Sunday nights to Monday. In general when an underperforming show moves to a different night altogether it's usually a pretty solid indication that cancellation is imminent. This proved to be the case for Arrested Development when after an even more significant ratings drop to begin their third season Fox who was quick to step in and deliberate, you know what, I think we're done here. Giving the show only 13 episodes to finish its final season. But although Fox felt they had seen enough of Arrested Development, the show wasn't in the water just yet, or I guess I should say, dead in a police boat in the water, like in the show Its a reference to the show. Anyway, both Showtime and ABC were originally in task of taking Arrested Development on, with Showtime actually offering Mitch Hurwitz, the show's creator, two seasons spanning 24 episodes, which he eventually declined stating the show had reached its end creatively as a series. However we now know that that is not the case because in October, 2011, over five years after the last episode aired, it was announced by Mitch Hurwitz on a panel at the New Yorker Festival, that there would be a fourth season to serve as a quote, "limited run TV series which would lead into a movie." Four seasons and a movie sounds familiar if you're a fan of Community but I'm getting ahead of myself. Now of course what really happened to Arrested Development is that we got a season four released on Netflix in 2013 to mixed reviews. At that point it had been over seven years since the show's hiatus began and it ultimately proved to be too long of a time to not do something before attempting to do it again. Despite years of fan anticipation and excitement for the new rendition of the show, season four didn't receive nearly the same praise of its original network run with several factors potentially to blame. For one, due to schedule restrictions with the now absurdly famous cast episodes had to be split up to focus on only one or two characters at a time which made the plot move along in a palpably awkward way. Another one of my personal complaints was that each episode is just too long. Rather than a nice compact 22 minutes, every episode seemed to drag on with none of the fat trim simply I think because there was no network anymore forcing them to trim it. And yes there are some incredible moments in season four. And I personally think that the episode where Will Arnett and Ben Stiller are both under the impression that the other wants to have sex with them but actually neither of them do, it's probably the funniest thing I've ever seen in my life seriously. But aside from moments like that which are unfortunately few and far between too much of the season is just, eh. When Arrested Development had built its reputation on being this joke-filled powerhouse of a comedy, Arrested Development continues to live on today with a fifth season now on Netflix which might actually be news to you because it was to me. I wasn't even aware of it until I started writing this video. But even as the show lives on fan reception seems to be pretty unanimous in deciding that Arrested Development 2.0 just doesn't hold a candle to the original. And while the reception and audience both continue to decline it feels like it's only a matter of time before Arrested Development is gone for good, perhaps even ruining their own reputation on the way out. - I have made a huge mistake. (soft music playing) - [Narrator] So now let's transition over to Community. A show with a similar story but a sadder, weirder, darkest timeline kind of a story. Community premiered his first episode on NBC in September, 2009 with what would end up being a series high of just under 8 million viewers. As tends to happen with television the show started off a little wonky but seemed to find its footing throughout its first season which culminated in a fantastic and highly rated final episode, modern warfare. The first of many paintball related season finales to come. At the time Community was unlike anything else on TV with the exception of maybe 30 Rock. Because where most shows have a very simplistic and safe format that they rarely stray away from Community seem to pride itself in its boldness. Community wasn't so much a sitcom as it was a parody of a sitcom and it would alternate genres from week to week. You could watch five episodes of Community in a row and feel like you were watching a different show every time. It seemed to the goal with Community wasn't just to tell a story or to make people laugh but to transcend the genre that it was a part of and it did that successfully establishing itself as one of the most inventive shows on television. Unfortunately much like with Arrested Development this didn't necessarily result in commercial success. In fact, the shows genre hopping ambition probably had a negative effect on the general TV watching public most of whom would prefer to laugh at a show like, Virgin nerd guy say smart thing, or two hot girl do dumb job, because it's simple, it's easy, you know what you're gonna get every week and you don't have to think. The first season of Community average just short of 5 million viewers per episode, underperforming relative to similar shows airing at the time like, The Office, 30 Rock, and How I Met Your Mother. Each of which garnered nearly double the viewership of Community. Although the quality of the show only improved immensely over the first three seasons, especially in season three, if you haven't seen this show and you just wanna watch one episode, watch season three episode three, remedial chaos theory. I believe this episode was nominated for a Hugo Award and an Emmy, when you watch this episode and you just think like, how did they write this? How long did it take to conceptualize? It's fucking brilliant. But anyway even though the quality of the show continued to improve as time went on the ratings consistently were on the decline, and so NBC after three seasons felt like they needed to make a change. So in 2012, Dan Harmon, creator and writer of Community was without much explanation let go by Sony Pictures Television and replaced with David Guarascio and Moses port, who found success with their 90 sitcom, Just Shoot Me! Starring David spade. Their more recent body of work however includes a show so terrible and bizarre. You have to wonder how they were even considered for a job like this. The show in question is called, Aliens in America. And the basic synopsis is that this family ordered a foreign exchange kid from London to be like friends with their son because the son is a loser and they thought this would make people think he was cool if he had a friend from London, yeah, that's the real plot of the show guys but it gets even worse. You see, the family ends up being disappointed when they find out that the kid they ordered was actually from Pakistan and they wanted a white guy. - [Justin] It seemed impossible but somehow my life had just gotten worse. - [Narrator] It almost seems as if this whole show only exists to shit someone else's culture and is just full of racist undertones even by the slightly inflated 2008 standards. (dramatic music playing) - Allahu Akbar. - [Narrator] Aliens in America ran for, and you're not gonna believe this, but only one season. Crazy, right? On the CW. And all the episodes are on YouTube to my knowledge if you wanna see how bad this gets. But the point is, the masterminds behind this embarrassing travesty were given the keys to one of the most creative and unique shows in modern television history right at its peak. What could go wrong, right? Well, pretty much everything. Needless to say, the fourth season didn't go so well with the drop in quality immediately apparent to fans. In fact the season was so out of place and generally disliked that they even began the eventual season five by having Abed relate the previous year to that weird final season of Scrubs that nobody asked for and basically ruined the show. - See, he does a voice-over wrap-up at the end of every episode. - Wow! - cool. - [Narrator] Despite Dan Harmon eventually being brought back for that season five and I think reviving the show creatively it seemed that most of the damage done by the previous season was irreparable and the show never fully recovered with the ratings now at an all time low. Season five would end up being Community's final season on NBC. This slept a lot of fans confused due to Community's commonly used mantra, six seasons and a movie, which was interpreted as like the plan for the show. But NBC chairman, Bob Greenblatt came out and basically said, and I'm summarizing here, but basically said, no, that was their thing that had nothing to do with us. So NBC canceled the show in 2014 claiming it just didn't make sense for them to have another season with that level of an audience. And just like that Community like Arrested Development before it was dead in the water abandoned by their own network. In a desperate attempt to finish the show's creative arc and fulfill the self-imposed prophecy of six seasons and a movie, Dan Harmon was forced to do the unthinkable. In a last ditch effort to keep his show alive he turned somewhere few have even dared approach and none will ever approach again. And maybe you're thinking it can't be that bad. Who revived the show? Comedy central? No. Netflix? Not quite. Community's six season was picked up by none other than the world famous Yahoo! Screen. A streaming service so good it doesn't exist anymore. Yahoo sunk $42 million into Community's six season and as a result had monumental, I'd even say unrealistic expectations for the financial success of the show. As you can probably imagine advertisers didn't really have any interest in providing funding for a show that failed on its own network and then move to a streaming service that nobody had ever heard of. Community's tumultuous six season would end up being its last with most of the cast out of their contracts and moving on to bigger and better things. A reputation basically destroyed by Yahoo and less fan support than ever. After years of riding a roller coaster that had far more downs than ups which actually sounds like a fun roller coaster, but not if you're describing the path of a television show, anyway, Community was finally and perhaps mercifully laid to rest. The weirdest thing about all of this and maybe even the saddest part is that the sixth season was actually pretty good. It was clever. It was ambitious. And it had the same charm that the show had for four of the previous five seasons. The problem wasn't that it was bad, the problem was that nobody watched it because it was on Yahoo! Fucking Screen. That sounds like a joke. That sounds like something ClickHole would come up with, like what's next, AOL go, the blockbuster app. What did this gift of a show do to deserve this fate besides try their best? Nothing. Because sometimes life just isn't fair. Especially when you're trying to make a television show. So you have to well-received shows that were murdered, brought back to life, and then murdered once more. Well, one of them hasn't been murdered quite yet but it feels inevitable. Most review websites have season five of Arrested Development rated even lower than the already disappointing season four. So it's safe to say that it's trending in the wrong direction. But you have two shows who both died twice, but which one died worse? At first glance it's easy to point at Community's almost comically explosive ending and say, well, it doesn't get much worse than that. To lose your show runner who was imperative to the voice of the show, to then get kicked off your own network only to be rescued by essentially a geriatric patient who then not only died while trying to save you but then blamed you for being the reason he died, how could it possibly get any worse than that? It doesn't. But how much of that was Community's fault? I mean, in spite of years of adversity, Community still delivered a relatively consistent product that continued to stretch the boundaries of television even by their own lofty standards. Arrested Development on the other hand had basically everything going for them when they came back for a season four. They had all the marketing in the world from an online global superpower entering peak of its worldwide dominance. They had years of buildup and hype and a cast that had more star power now than they did initially when the show was first on and they still fucked it up because they lost what made them so good in the first place. If this was a game of poker, Arrested Development was dealt a royal flush from the beginning, while Community was given a handful of that one card in the pack that has like the return policy on it or something. And also one UNO card that accidentally got shuffled into the deck and has like a weird stain on it. But even with two drastically different hands to play the game ended the same for both of them. They both folded their hands and walked out of the casino in shame probably wishing they had quit hours ago before arrogantly squandering away their winnings. I think the tragedy in all of this is how good both of these shows were at their peak and how a few missteps even if not through any fault of their own could cause the perceptions of these shows to be permanently altered in a negative way. Maybe the story can be a lesson to networks and streaming services out there who insist on pulling dead shows out of their grave to dance around for us one last time only to disappoint us when we realized that the corpse doesn't dance as well as it did when it was alive. Am I getting a little out of hand here with the analogies? I feel like I might be. But the point is, maybe it's okay to let something end, even if it's still good. Not every mildly successful movie needs 14 sequels, not every full house needs to get fuller. Sometimes it's okay to just let our memories be memories because we as humans suffer from recency bias, so we should do our best when we can to let our most recent memory of someone or something we love be a positive one. That's it for today's video guys. I really wanted to do a video like this again. I know it's been a while since I tackled something like this, but again I had a lot of fun making this. So if you liked it, let me know. If you didn't like it, don't let me know 'cause it'll hurt my feelings. And remember as always our goal with this video is to get 1 billion likes. So don't forget to smash that like button on the way out. Thank you guys so much for watching. Remember to like, subscribe, comment and do whatever else you feel is necessary to show support. Thanks again for watching and I'll see you guys next time. (soft jazz music playing)
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Channel: Drew Gooden
Views: 3,680,440
Rating: 4.9295149 out of 5
Keywords: drew gooden, comedy, funny, lol, commentary, reaction, vine, drew gooden vine, former viner, parody, original, video essay, arrested development, community, netflix, yahoo screen, cancelled, donald glover, dan harmon, michael cera, mitch hurwitz
Id: iKnR2pzb4Gg
Channel Id: undefined
Length: 20min 12sec (1212 seconds)
Published: Wed Sep 12 2018
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