FOX
It’s an Arrested Development reunion! According to The Hollywood Reporter, David Cross (formerly Dr. Tobias Fünke on AD) has been signed as a regular on the new Fox sitcom Running Wilde, starring his old castmate Will Arnett and produced by AD creator Mitch Hurwitz. Let’s just rename it “Running Bluth” and call it a day.
Critic Jace Lacob, of Televisionary and The Daily Beast, suggested the casting is a move to court “the Arrested Development fanbase.” Which seems likely, and yet what an odd strategy to launch a show: by courting a fanbase that was so small, you cancelled the original show four years ago.
Mind you, I’m not complaining about Fox’s cancelling of AD. I hated to see it go, but Fox gave it a great time slot and stuck with it long after most networks would have cancelled it. But maybe the mini-reunion is yet another sign of how times, and audiences, and expectations, have changed in TV in just a few years.
Every year, broadcast audiences get smaller, and the bar for staying on the air gets lower. Since AD went, Fox gave Dollhouse a second season with numbers that made AD look like Seinfeld. NBC has not just kept 30 Rock, but made it a centerpiece show, with essentially basic cable numbers. The fact is, if it had debuted a few years later, Arrested Development might still be on TV, and might be poised to stay on for years. But don’t be depressed: if AD had debuted a few years earlier, it might have been dead after one season.
In other news, last week yet another media outlet, this time GQ, reported that an Arrested Development movie is this close to happening. Which it has been, Zeno’s Paradox-style, since 2006. Don’t get me wrong: I would love to see it happen. But I’ve heard the news so many times, I will believe it only once I actually have my popcorn and am watching the credits roll. At which point I may still suspect it’s all a prank.