We live in a world where a great deal of evil takes place every day. But it's hard to get too upset about humanity when, six years after the show was cancelled, a new season of "Arrested Development" is in production. Like, as we speak. It's been a long path to the revival of the cult favorite comedy, but creator Mitch Hurwitz has finally assembled his original cast for another season of the series (which, for the uninitiated, revolves around the privileged, eccentric Orange County family The Bluths), for a fourth season that will premiere on Netflix next year, before (hopefully) leading into a movie version. And it sounds like we might be getting even more than we originally hoped.
When first announced, the plan was for ten episodes, each focusing on a major character from the show, but in an interview with Rolling Stone, David Cross, who plays our favorite never-nude Tobias on the show, has revealed that the season seems to have extended to thirteen. The actor tells the magazine "I think it's going to be 13 episodes, not 10. There's too much story. Some characters will have two-parters. Everybody sort of participates, sometimes in a bigger way and sometimes in a tiny little thread that goes through everybody else's stories." Three more half-hours? Yeah, we don't have many issues with that…
Cross also thinks that the new structure — focusing on one character per episode, or indeed per two episodes — isn't going to mean that the show is giving up on the fiendish plotting and meta-humor that won it its fans in the first place. "It's so layered," the comic says. "It's really audacious and amazing. I think a lot of people will miss the work that is involved, the story, the Venn diagrams that are being created, the domino effect that characters have with each other in their various episodes. I know what he's doing, and this has never been done on a TV show like this. This makes Lost look like a Spalding Gray monologue. You'll have to watch each episode more than once."
There certainly doesn't appear to be any real interference, either, now that the show has moved to Netflix, with Cross suggesting this is the future of where TV is heading. "Netflix is great. They don't meddle at all. They know what they want. They're happy to have it. The idea of Fox and NBC and being kind of studio- or network-loyal is absurd. People don't give a shit. What is it? It's on the plane. It's on Netflix. It's on Hulu. It's on YouTube. It's on the Internet. That's how people watch TV." Production on Season 4 of "Arrested Development" is now underway, and it should be available to watch on Netflix sometime in 2013.
