Arrested Development is a TV series which originally aired 53 episodes on FOX between 2 November 2003 and 10 February 2006. More episodes are currently in production and will air on Netflix.
During Arrested Development's original run, ratings were never good but the show enjoyed lots of critical acclaim. In 2004, Arrested Development was nominated for seven Emmy Awards and won five. Also in 2004, the show received a TV Land award for "Future Classic," and in 2007, Time Magazine included Arrested Development on its list of 100 Best TV shows of all time.
The show centers around three generations of the Bluth family- George Sr. and Lucille, their children GOB (George Oscar Bluth), Michael, Lindsay (and her husband Tobias), and Buster, and their grandchildren, Michael's son George Michael and Lindsay's daughter Maeby.
The Bluth Company, the family business, mainly markets and builds McMansions, but the only profitable division of the company is the frozen banana stand.
George Sr. (Jeffrey Tambor) is the family patriarch and (original) CEO of the Bluth Company. The series begins with him passing on control of the company to his wife, Lucille, and promptly being arrested by the SEC for "using the company as his personal piggy-bank." While his children were growing up, they saw him as distant and difficult to please and are more concerned about how his imprisonment will affect their lifestyle than how it will affect them.
Lucille (Jessica Walter) is a highly-functioning alcoholic. She is manipulative, demanding, controlling, pampered, and emotionally abusive to her children and others under her control. As CEO, she first passes on control of the company to the child most under her thumb- Buster. Only after all the responsibility sends Buster to the hospital with a panic attack, does she asks the child most suited for the job, Michael.
GOB (Will Arnett) is George Sr. and Lucille's oldest child. He works as a magician and is the founder of The Magician's Alliance, a group which later kicked him out for revealing trade secrets. His parents openly admit to disliking and not respecting him, and his bitter rivalry with his younger brother Michael is often fueled by George Sr. and Lucille for their personal gain. His personality is bombastic, but his confidence is easily shattered and can quickly dissolve into self-loathing. He occasionally has problems with speaking English properly.
Michael (Jason Bateman) is the second oldest son and "twin" brother of Lindsay. He serves as the "straight man," introduced in the title sequence of every episode as "the one son who had no choice but to keep [the family] all together," but as the series continues, he increasingly seems as crazy as the rest of the family. His wife died two years prior to the pilot and his relationship with his son, George Michael, is almost uncomfortably close.
Lindsay (Portia de Rossi) is the self-described liberal member of the family. Lindsay sees herself as a dedicated activist for many causes, but she is really a shallow, superficial princess who supports these causes for status. The only money she ever "raises" comes from the Bluth Company. She married Tobias Funke as an act of youthful defiance and bitterly resents him. Lindsay has incredibly low self esteem, due to constant emotional abuse from her mother and Tobias' lack of interest in her. After she and Tobias decide to open their marriage, she has very little success with other men. She is often shown to be neglectful of her daughter, Maeby.
Buster (Tony Hale) is the youngest Bluth son. He never moved out of his parents' home. He has an unhealthy attachment to his mother, and Lucille has sheltered and controlled him so much that he is childlike, socially stunted and prone to panic attacks. He has spent much of his adult life completing graduate programs like cartography and 18th century agrarian business. Lucille enlists Buster in the Army because a Michael Moore-esque character antagonizes her, but his training is unsuccessful. He later loses his left hand to a "loose seal" and wears a hook, then a prosthetic hand, on his left arm.
Tobias Funke (David Cross) is Lindsay's husband, a sucessful analrapist (analyst and therapist) turned unsuccessful actor. He suffers from "never-nude" syndrome, a condition which is, as the series' narrator states, "exactly what it sounds like." He constantly wears a pair of denim cut-offs. One running joke of the series is the question of his sexuality, as well as his understudy position in the Blue Man Group (which he initially thought was a support group for depressed men). Like his wife, he is incredibly neglectful of his daughter, Maeby.
George Michael (Michael Cera) is Michael's only child. His mother died from ovarian cancer and he is very close to his father. In addition to attending high school, he runs the banana stand, the only profitable division of the Bluth Company. For much of the series, he has an intense crush on his cousin Maeby, even while he has a girlfriend.
Maeby (Alia Shawkat) is the daughter of Lindsay and Tobias. She is rebellious, fiercely independent, secretive, and great at coming up with schemes to improve her life (like pretending to have a mysterious illness called BS to get donations or working as a Hollywood studio executive). She doesn't quite realize the extent of George Michael's crush on her, and at one point accidentally marries him.
Manovich
Three commonly used terms explained
- language: Language is used instead of other terminology options to differentiate between this study and studies of new media and cyberculture which focus on sociology, economics and politics. This text focuses on emergent conventions, recurrent design patters, and key forms, studied in relation to other arts and media, computer technology, contemporary visual culture, and contemporary information culture.
- new media object: The term holds up for all digital media types (including but not limited to digital stills and video, 3D environments, a website or the Web as a whole). Object is a standard term in the computer industry. Russian constructivists and productivists in the 1920s referred to their works as objects. Manovich wants to invoke all those connotations because in new media, the line between art and design is fuzzy, and he would like to reactivate the concept from the '20s of laboratory experimentation.
- representation: New media objects are cultural objects and therefore represent and sometimes construct an outside referent (existing object, historical information, system of categories used by a culture or social group). Software interfaces of operating systems and software applications are also representations. Data organized in a particular way represents a worldview. Two key organizational system are
- hierarchical: assumes the world is a logical place and every object has a distinct and well-defined place (EX: GUI from 1984 Macintosh onward)
- "flat" network of hyperlinks: every object has the same importance and is or can be connected to everything else (EX: the World Wide Web from the 1990s onward)
Other concepts that may be important in my project:
- modularity
- automation
- variability (flashbacks)
- selection
- templates
