Arrested Development finally gets the Succession-style opening credits it so rightly deserves
Listen. Almost any show can be Succession with the right attitude. Game Of Thrones? Why, that’s just Succession with Dungeons & Dragons (and incest—arguably a very rewarding addition). The Righteous Gemstones is basically Hee-Haw Succession. The Deuce is Succession for the pornography industry, in which the patriarch is Fucking On Camera For Fun And Profit, and the vying siblings are various emerging media formats and also a handful of swinging dongs. And then there’s Arrested Development, which is like Succession before Succession, but in a half-hour comedy format with Ron Howard voiceover and a father character played by an actor we’d rather not talk about very much anymore because his actions have made loving this show uncomfortable. Moving on! It was a mash-up just waiting to happen, but the wait is over:
Of all the Succession pretenders, Arrested Development is probably the closest televisual relative: There’s the stubborn, greedy patriarch who maintains conservative interests, executes business maneuvers largely based on petty personal interests and financial gain, and pits his senselessly loyal children against one another for his favor. There’s his wife, always with a drink in her hand and just barely putting up with said patriarch’s bullshit. Gob, the hilarious dummy who’s always mucking it up but very much wants daddy to love him (Roman Roy); Michael, who means well, has all the makings of a CEO, wants nothing more than to inherit his father’s business, and is consistently kept under dad’s thumb (Kendall); and Lindsey, whose superficially liberal exterior is little more than a rebellion against her family’s conservative interests and who is ultimately the most conniving of them all (Shiv, naturally). Tobias is clearly Tom, and George Michael is extremely obviously Cousin Greg; together, their interactions make for a wildly entertaining show-within-a-show.
The science speaks for itself, folks.