When is a reunion series not a traditional reunion series? When it's 'Arrested Development'

Just before the New Year, 20^th Century Fox publicity (go here) published a release date for the revived late FOX series Arrested Development  on Netflix, its new home. The page said the show would be available for streaming beginning May 4^th. Also, it noted –and had been rumored- that the ten episodes ordered have become 14. But quicker than you can deny anyone in One Direction are gay, Fox pulled the posting, with Netflix adding that the May 4^th release date was wrong –though, oddly, they said nothing about the episode count.

A lot has been written about the return of Arrested Development, and most fans will assume the return would bring the entire cast back together. In a new USA Today interview, creator and writer Mitch Hurwitz has said that while Arrested Development is a reunion of the cast, it’s not going to roll out as some might’ve guessed. 

Each of 14 episodes will focus on a single character, and only Michael Bluth (Jason Bateman), the level-headed son who holds the clan together, will appear in all of them. And while the show is famous for its layered flashbacks, along with juggling multiple storylines and all connected by returning narrator Ron Howard, Hurwitz said they’ve had to adjust a different rhythm.

"Contractually, we couldn't use all the characters in every episode; they were not free to do as much television as they want," Hurwitz says. "The show will look very different," Hurwitz adds, mostly because of the availability issues of all the actors, and is being assembled like a "very, very complex puzzle" due to the fact that all the episodes were shot out of order over many months. 

As for the premise, it seems that the Bluth family has sort of fallen apart. "They all went their own way, without Michael holding them together, so they're left to their own devices, and they're not the most successful devices. Each individual (episode) kind of depicts what happens in 2006 as the Bluths fled from the law on the Queen Mary" in what was the series' finale on FOX, then the episodes explain what has happened to them since, ultimately leaving them in the present day. Only once did the entire cast reassemble, which was in the final episode of this new batch. And Hurwitz admits these episodes are really a "first act to what we eventually want to do, which is a big movie," though there's no guarantee it will ever get made. So, basically, we won’t “see them all together until you see the movie." But even apart he adds, "I can assure you that the characters are just as damaged, self-involved and self-righteous as ever."

Actor Jason Bateman reiterated Hurwitz's comments at today's TCA's in Pasadena, that these new episodes are “basically just the first act that we hope to complete in a movie, which will be acts 2 and 3. The episodes will set that up, and one will not work without the other.” But he adds "These will, however, provide a satisfying conclusion if for some unfortunate reason the movie doesn’t happen.” Mitch Hurwitz explained after the panel that what became a series originally was conceived as a movie. “We’d mapped this out as a movie and then worked backwards to do these shows. So it might not be a movie. It might be something else. I’d be happy with it as ColorForms at this point.”

One of the issues that Hurwitz likes about working with Netflix is the ability to have the creativity that working on broadcast TV seems not to welcome. "One of the reasons Arrested wasn't embraced at the time was it wasn't easy to get your head around it. It was a point of pride with me; I wanted to create a show that had surprises. But that's what they want to do (at Netflix). They want to take risks. They encouraged the complexity that had been discouraged before."