“Arrested Development” & Its Influence on Modern TV

Arrested Development originally aired in 2003 and undoubtedly pioneered the mockumentary style of TV. While I have never seen this show before, I have watched shows that are similar such as The Office, and more recently created, Abbott Elementary. What makes this style of TV so intriguing and so popular is that it takes an ordinary situation/dynamic and turns it into comedic entertainment. It is essentially a reflection of everyday people exposing themselves to people just like them (us, the audience), as a way to act on the desperation of routine life to be exciting. When you take away the situational comedy, the audience is watching just a family with a real estate business (Arrested Development), just people working at a paper company (The Office), and just teachers working in a school (Abbott Elementary), etc. – nothing about that would seem exciting on paper. However, when you add in a camera and different character tropes, it becomes easier to make something so ordinary into something so amusing. Even though I’ve only seen the first two episodes of Arrested Development, the show does really well with situational comedy. Nick Cannata-Bowman for Showbiz CheatSheet writes, “But then along came Arrested Development, showing us that the single-camera comedy sans a laugh-track was more than a viable alternative: It was the future.” The lack of a laugh track allows for the joke and the line delivery to be funny on its own. Compared to if there was a laugh track, there would be an obligation to laugh even if the audience didn’t necessarily know what was funny in the first place. This new style of TV that Arrested Development brought where it wasn’t filmed in front of a “live” studio audience, made TV more authentic and more relatable. In comparison, while Friends, a typical TV sitcom with a live studio audience and laugh track, had relatable storylines, it still felt like a show and made the audience feel like an outsider. It was evident that while watching Friends, the audience was watching Friends. There is no immersion into the Friends world. A lot of that has to do with production techniques. It was clear that it was filmed on a studio set, with proper lighting, stabilized cameras, lack of creativity with camera angles, fake backdrops/greenscreens, clear fade-ins/fade-outs, etc. that it always reminds you that you are watching a show. Opposite that, Arrested Development makes the audience comfortable. Apart from the shaky camera, “natural” lighting is used to mimic reality TV. The audience can tell that the show’s main focus isn’t on presenting itself with over-the-top, expensive studio lights. Additionally, the occasional zoom-ins/outs for emphasis on a character’s facial expressions and for comedic effect solidify the show’s style of a mockumentary. The camera isn’t also just stationary, it moves around with the characters as if the audience is trailing behind them. As for camera angles, certain scenes are shot further back from a character, as a way to make it seem like the audience shouldn’t be there. While Arrested Development doesn’t have confessionals like The Office or Abbott Elementary, it does have a narrator. Since this is in the style of a mockumentary, that doesn’t always let the audience know what a character is thinking or what their background is. That’s where having a narrator is not only helpful but funny in how it is used to move the plot/episode forward. I found my first viewing of Arrested Development to be very enjoyable, obviously because I’ve watched shows that are similar and because it has a strong cast. Despite that, creating Arrested Development was a risk but proved to be successful, shown from its genuity, as it was the blueprint for many shows to come.