Great TV shows never die

MANILA, Philippines - It seems appropriate that Arrested Development has been resurrected from the depths of TV network indifference. There have been other under-appreciated and short-lived cult shows before, such as one-season-wonders My So-Called Life, Freaks and Geeks, and Undeclared  all of which took the teen series trope to still-unmatched heights. Yet none of them have had as lasting an effect on its genre as Arrested Development. From the handheld, reality-TV aesthetic of Modern Family, to the torrential hyper-wit of the much-celebrated 30 Rock, and even the cartoonish absurdity of the lesser-known It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, the comedy DNA of Arrested Development is unmistakable.

Its recent Netflix reincarnation is truly a wondrous rarity. Now, I was never really a diehard fan of Arrested Development  I was a fan of other short-lived, underappreciated TV series like the three aforementioned teen shows, along with Party Down, Men of a Certain Age, and Enlightened. But I feel a vicarious thrill over the return of Arrested Development, the most venerated cult series of the 21st century. I’m rooting for it to succeed if only to keep the false hope that, someday, the pain left behind by my beloved, dearly departed shows will be assuaged as well.

This feeling is what binds all cults of prematurely deceased shows. The desire for one’s favorite defunct series to be resuscitated has been around since Brian Krakow watched Angela Chase get whisked away by Jordan Catalano for the last unresolved time in My So-Called Life  a cliffhanger that has forever been left hanging. Now that we’re seeing what Netflix can do to the Bluth family and Kickstarter to Veronica Mars, our once impossible dreams may come true after all.

Collective mourning

This collective mourning, this perceived betrayal, is a huge component of the cult follower experience. It raises the question: Do short-lived TV shows only become cult phenomena precisely because they were short-lived?

A week before Arrested Development made its sizzling return, its more enduring and “successful” bastard sibling had its fizzling finale. The Office, once the standard-bearer for American sitcom writing, finally bid its farewell last month in a final episode that was less a ceremonious funeral than a weary, clinical euthanasia.

Ironically, it was the The Office that seized the handheld, faux-reality throne from Arrested Development in 2006, as the latter’s demise coincided with the former’s growing popularity. Yet in the long run, The Office became the Bizarro Arrested Development: a former cult TV series that gradually lost its cult-ness as TV executives continued to milk its essence when there was nothing left to milk. Jim and Pam hooked up, got married, and had kids; Michael Scott found the love of his life and resigned, and still they hung around like a Death Cab For Cutie song that sounded awesome in 2005 but everybody denies ever liking in 2013. Because of NBC’s non-creative, purely business-driven mutilation of the show, the original UK series, in all its 14-episode glory, will now always be remembered as the real cult version, thanks to the BBC’s  and overall British  restraint.

It didn’t have to be this way. There was a time  somewhere between seasons 2 and 3  when the US version seemed to have surpassed its transatlantic forebear. It had the same modern ache of mid-level corporate futility and meaninglessness, only it felt warmer and no less real. Within the typical length of an American TV series, Jim, Pam and Michael had more space for their quiet defeat to settle into a beautiful communal grief, as with how Jim eventually learned to relate to Michael in ways that Tim from the British Office couldn’t towards his boss David.

Quit while ahead

Had NBC quit while they were ahead  when the Jim-Pam and Michael-Holly sexual tensions were finally resolved  then fans of The Office wouldn’t have been subjected to last month’s ultra-depressing finale that looked so sad because it wasn’t The Office anymore. It hadn’t been for a very long time.

Before TV critics could even begin to not care about The Office’s long-overdue end, Netflix suddenly revived Arrested Development and now fans are rushing to binge-watch all of its 15 new episodes so they can finally call it “disappointing.” The excitement of season four’s opening credits, that familiar Ron Howard voice over, and seeing Michael Bluth, still miserable after all these years  all of these eventually wear off. Watching new episodes of a cult classic in 2013 doesn’t have that same off-kilter surprise of watching it as an unassuming TV anomaly in 2003. Now it’s too Modern Family or not 30 Rock enough and just a little too pedestrian.

That the new incarnation is now garnering mixed reviews is not at all surprising. Of course, the new Arrested Development is disappointing: we no longer have its absence to reassure us of its immortality.

There is a certain luxury that short-lived cult classics can only afford, and that is the inability to disappoint. There will always be people who will insist that the later seasons of Cheers couldn’t live up to its Sam-and-Diane golden years and that The Simpsons are now just going through the motions of filling the inevitable void left by two-plus decades of groundbreaking social commentary. Yet diehard fans still get to wake up to a world where Brian Krakow remains transfixed on the dark street of Angela Chase’s confusion, where Enlightened’s Amy Jellicoe will never be allowed to change in their memories, and where Freaks and Geeks will forever be the paragon of pubescent pain and awkwardness because they were never granted another season to grow older.

A part of me still wants to watch a new episode of a beloved cancelled show, but I think it’s a feeling I’m better off feeling forever. The shared frustration that feeds any cult following is what cult shows need to keep harnessing because it is a bottomless well of something more important than persistence; and that is immortality. To remain an unimpeachable classic within the memories of your devoted cult for all time  that is the perfect fan-service.

I’m glad I was never an Arrested Development obsessive, because now there’s no way I can possibly be disappointed by its unnecessary return.

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