Fox

I may have been late to the rapidly growing bandwagon of admirers of the TV comedy Arrested Development, though it was kinda cool to see David Cross (Mr. Show) get onto a network show that would have appeared to been lucky to stay around for a whole season, in a sitcom where the main character was played by Jason Bateman. I mean, Jason Bateman! A guy who was known as Justine’s brother who bounced around from sitcom to sitcom and was virtually off the radar, playing bit parts in other harmless comedies. ...nd as it turns out, the product of a great ensemble cast, including Jeffrey Tambor (The Larry Sanders Show) and a very underrated Will Arnett, Arrested Development has grown into appointment television.

Bateman plays Michael Bluth, son of George (Tambor), the head of a company thrown in jail for stealing money from the company he started, and maybe committing some “light treason.” Michael is the responsible one, who works to try and get his father out of jail, for his mother (Walter) to produce some of the secrets of the company, for his older brother George Oscar Bluth (or GOB for short) to regain good standing in a magician’s alliance he founded, and for his twin sister Lindsay (Portia De Rossi, Ally McBeal) to stop spending so much money, and be a wife to her husband Tobias (Cross) and her daughter Maeby. What makes things ironic is that for all of Michael’s positioning on making himself the rock of the family while George is in prison, he also screws up pretty significantly from time to time when running the business, and he looks to his jailed dad for help.