Arrested to Arrested Development: 103 - Bringing Up Buster

"Maybe it was the eleven months he spent in the womb... Doctor said there were claw marks on the uterus... He was her miracle baby."


While the second episode gives mild to moderate character development to nearly everyone else in the family, it's fitting that an entire episode be devoted to that which is Buster Bluth.

What makes any show valuable are its characters and AD's characters are almost all valuable if not all likable. Buster is the unpredictable ingredient that needs to be thrown into the equation of any successful sitcom. While the other characters are sidelined, primarily Tobias poorly directing the school play adaptation of Much Ado switching gender roles in a failed attempt for George Michael and Maeby to share a kiss on stage ("Steve Holt!"), the spotlight is primarily on Buster and mother's pity that the poor bastard is left out of "family gatherings" AKA burning your arm on the pot over the stove, that and the fact that the man is a nuisance as we see him attempting to shoo out a bird, destroying his mother's chandelier.

We see the first few glimpses of what happens when you crawl under Buster's skin. His sporadic rants which usually end with vulgar, completely censored rants make up the possibility of turrets but Buster has that childlike innocence behind the empty head. Running jokes begin to incorporate themselves into the show, as Michael attempts to include Buster by taking him to work.
"Buster!... You can't do that in the snack room, pal?" ,while he takes apart his bicycle during one of Michael's board room meetings.

 It is the sweet nature which is that of a child or one with down syndrome which makes us smile at Buster's sheer stupidity. It's his backlash against his mother to his brothers and sisters (ending with another completely censored rant) that makes us laugh. But in the end, he does such to "fit in" with the family, ultimately making him a mama's boy in the end. But he was flying, for a moment... flying a little too close to the sun. But as mama Bluth puts in regards to Michael and his own son, "You better hope that bird flies back into your house, because they usually don't."

It is today we brought up Buster for the first time.

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