CALIFORNIA SCHEMING.('Arrested Development' and 'Kid Notorious')(Television Program Review)

Publication: The New Yorker

Publication Date: 10-NOV-03

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COPYRIGHT 2003 All rights reserved. Reproduced by permission of The Condé Nast Publications Inc.

There's a sense of loopy serendipity about Fox's new half-hour comedy "Arrested Development," which premiered on November 2nd. It's the kind of show you want to tell everyone about and yet keep to yourself--if the network finds out how good it is, it may get cancelled. The show is about a family of misfits, ne'er-do-wells, and lawbreakers; the title refers both to the arrest of the patriarch, George Bluth (Jeffrey Tambor), a housing developer, at the beginning of the first episode, and to the stunted psyches of most of the family members. The arrest takes place on a party boat, where George's family is throwing him a retirement bash, and where the one "normal" person in the family, George's son Michael (Jason Bateman), expects to be told that he is being made head of the family business, partly because he, unlike his siblings, actually works there and partly because he's the only one who hasn't been ripping the company off. Set in Orange County, California--the show is suffused with the same moneyed sunshine and materialism that fuel the earnest, soapy Fox hit "The O.C.," and it, too, concerns a character who has engaged in large-scale financial fraud--"Arrested Development" has an energetic, seat-of-the-pants style, which gives its absurdities an air of realism. (It's not a one-camera show,...

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