Arrested to Arrested Development: 108 - My Mother, The Car
"We're brothers, mom... And we kinda like each other."
By hinting that she wants a surprise birthday party by telling everyone she wants a surprise birthday party, Lucille shows her most self-centered side yet as she doops a short-term Michael into believing he caused her car accident.
Being deemed Fox's "World's Worst Driver," Lucille complains sitting in the passenger's seat due to Buster's giant rock found at an archaeological site (that has no logical way of being transported out of the car) being a nuisance behind her, as Michael drives her to her expected surprise party with no family having shown up.
The show begins with seemingly irrelevant events that would later cap off a good old fashioned who-dun-it mystery as Lucille has trouble lifting a grocery care package for George Michael sr. in prison.
"What do you got in there ma, gold bars?
"Protein bars."
While Lindsay takes her turn to visit father Bluth for the first time, she prides herself on the idea that she'll be ogled by her father's fellow inmates, progressively dressing sluttier so that she'll be noticed since her looks are about the only thing she's got going for her, something the writers clearly realize.
"Michael's got the brains, Gob's got the charm, Buster's got the..."
"...High-fastening pants."
To which the clever plot twist is revealed that the protein bars delivered to GM Sr. were in fact gold bars wrapped in protein bar-wrapping, so that Papa Bluth could pay off the fellow inmates to not harass his daughter;
"to keep me from getting strangled in the shower, or worse..."
"...Stabbed!"
"...In a way."
And while Maeby and George Michael sneak into an R-rated movie only to catch a preview for a movie in which two cousins have an affair, Buster finally gets honest with Lucille 2, realizing at first he didn't mean to lead her on but then that it wasn't about she or him... or he... but about them.
The highlight of the episode for me was Michael being treated for his head trauma with "children's aspirin" by the doctor who is called in to treat Buster's head trauma the next room over, whom after beginning a speech about Lucille 2 giving him confidence, then having seen the sight of Lucille 1, jumped through the nearest, closed glass window.
The fact that such absurdity is revealed "one minute earlier" after Michael hears a crash the next room over, is nothing short of brilliance.
And finally, Gob and Michael, Lucille's third and fourth least favorite children, join forces in solving the mystery of the car accident, having some of the best on-screen chemistry in this show.
- "An idiot on a scooter at night? It's gotta be Gob... let's give him a scare," Lucille plots, as Michael never would because Lucille is out to get Gob, not Michael (It wasn't Gob on the scooter).
- Lucille couldn't have lifted Michael into the driver's seat after the crash to make it look like he was responsible because she couldn't even lift a bag of protein bars.
- But as Lindsay pointed out, they weren't protein bars at all, but inevitably gold bars wrapped in protein bar-wrapping.
- And finally, Michael's injury was on the back of his head which had to be due to Buster's rock, which means he must have been sitting in the passenger's seat.
With one of the more memorable episodes of the show's first season, it is with these events that point out just how crafty these writers are with situational indifferences all connecting by the "next Arrested Development" preview. It is why I compare these guys to Larry David. It takes a true criminal mastermind to write such devious comedy.
