‘Arrested Development’ Creator Defends Season 4, Says It’s His “Best Work”

“Arrested Development” has been in and out of the press a lot recently and obviously not for all the best reasons. The shows fifth season is now streaming on Netflix following a lukewarm fourth season and subsequent remix. Through all of this, the show’s creator, Mitch Hurwitz, has been standing by the banana stand.

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In a recent interview with Deadline, Hurwitz divulges a lot that went on with season four and beyond. Discussing the behind the scenes drama at length, Hurwitz also talked about his ambitions for the show, where he’d like to see it go and how he actually felt about season four. The fourth season was a mixed bag, but the creator disagrees. Sort of. “Well, actually I did think it was my best work, but I did acknowledge that it was and it wasn’t,” he said. “The other thing that was interesting about it is that some articles will say ‘so-so reception.’ But it wasn’t so-so. It was, ‘This is great,’ or, ‘This is horrible.’ And even that is what you hope for. I mean, you don’t hope for, ‘This is horrible,’ but you do hope to do something that’s novel enough at a certain point in your career that people have strong reactions to it.”

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The polarized reaction was strong enough to compel Hurwitz to go back and give fans a remixed version of season four (one that Netflix seems to favor over the original version). Hurwitz discussed more of the preparation that went into season four, saying, “With Season 4, there was so much work that went into these ideas that I didn’t even know would get a laugh…What’s trippy right now is that all the rules have been broken. The fun of breaking rules isn’t as prominent because it isn’t as central to the process. You don’t have to bleep that joke, you can let them curse because it’s Netflix. Can we pretend we can’t curse? We have to have some rules so that we have rules to break.”

READ MORE: ‘Arrested Development Season 5’: Hilarious, But The Money In The Banana Stand Is Running Out [Review]

So much of the fun of “Arrested Development” is Hurwitz and his writing team’s ability to call things forward but still keep the original gags going (Steve Holt!). As for whether or not there’s money left in that banana stand, Hurwitz actually has no shortage of ideas and lamented that some of his incredibly ambitious ideas– doing a live show, going on the road with it– weren’t fulfilled. “I’m actually sort of heartbroken about all the things I didn’t do. We had a short time to shoot it in, and it came up so quickly…But those were the kinds of things where you realized there was still room for innovation. There’s still room to break the rules.”

“Arrested Development” Season Five is now streaming on Netflix.