This episode was just all over the place and the timing was way off. Kept doing other things while watching it, definitely not engaging.
[5.4/10] Oof, that was a really unfunny half hour of television. There’s a smattering of laughs -- mostly the “Take to the sea” advice of young Barry Zuckercorn and the various maritime law gags -- but that’s about it. Giving us almost nothing but Jeffrey Tambor acting against himself for a whole episode makes this one feel samey and awkward.
I again fall back on Mitch Hurwitz’s ambitions for this one. There’s some gags that click into place when you know what happens down the line, but that still leaves this episode feeling incomplete and janky, like parts of other episodes stitched together rather than a unified whole. The big year-long jump between confident George Sr. and dopey Oscar and the two brothers having their personalities flipped feels jarring and out of nowhere.
I guess we at least get another George Sr. scam, in the vein of “caged wisdom.” HIs “sweat and squeeze” ploy isn’t the worst thing in the world. But except for Mary Lynn Rajskub’s mute Heartfire character (whose facial expressions and thought bubble gimmick are chuckle-worthy at worst) the hippie gang in the desert aren’t terribly funny. (Which, honestly, is almost impressive with John Slattery among them.)
The fake divorce and eventual estrangement from Lucille doesn’t do anything. The misadventures in the desert are largely laugh-free. And the show doesn't really find a new angle on the “George Sr. screws over his brother” routine. Watching them pal around in a sweat lodge comes off pretty dull.
The best you can say for the episode is that the “build a wall” shtick remains sadly salient, if anything more relevant now than it was when it aired, even if the plotting gets a little convoluted (something that can be forgiven for a show as ambitious as Arrested Development.) And we get a little more detail on how we got from the end of season 3 to the events of season 4. But the transition between the two is awkward and trying to do scenes from the 2006 version of the show with the 2013 version of the cast often has an uncanny valley feel, especially when they’re interspersed with flashbacks from prior episodes.
Overall, I’m struck that one of the beautiful things about the original run of Arrested Development is how clockwork everything felt in an episode. Disparate threads and running gags would all lock into place so elegants by the time the credits roll. “Borderline Personality” is the exact opposite, an episode that feels oddly-structured and out of sync the whole way through. Even this early in the season, the main pathologies of season 4 are pretty evident: the lack of the whole cast being available to play off one another and the absence of that sort of intricate storytelling and gagwork that characterized so many of the series’s best outings.
Shout by palharesfBlockedParent2022-03-30T22:51:51Z
Two episodes in and Maeby hasn't shown up, and Tobias Lindsay and George Michael have a combined 5 lines together. I have a feeling that if I stop now, it'll hurt less than if I keep trying to finish the series ....