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Gob's speech was priceless. The frequent lengthy bleeping and the way the shots were composed to obscure Gob's lips, I think, made it funnier than an outright torrent of unexpurgated filth would have been. Full marks too for the expression on the female office worker's face as Gob said "so many people in this office are begging for it".
I think what I like so much about this show is that it has moments of utterly mortifying embarrassment, like the aforementioned karaoke scene, that are on a par with anything out of The Office or Curb Your Enthusiasm, but, unlike those shows, those moments aren't the sole focus of the humour. There's always a sight gag or a choice bit of dialogue that immediately follows to smooth over the audience's cringe, which is why I can watch episodes of this show back-to-back in a way that would be unthinkable with Curb.
Another amazing thing about this episode was the deft structuring: catching the end of Gob's dialogue as he handed over the cart of drinks to his underling ("...sixty-three-hundred dollar suit!"), then flashing back later to him wheeling the cart away from Lucille's house, then cutting back to the first scene again ("No, I wanna spill booze all over my sixty-three-hundred dollar suit!"), and then flashing back to Lucille's again to catch Buster meeting Gob in the hallway with an armful of stuffed toys, thus combining information about location and timing of events without a single line of expository dialogue and getting gags in there too. God, it's just dazzling how well put-together this show is.
MrKismet hit it straight-on with what he said upthread about Ron Howard's narration. I'd add that the first episode would have died on its arse without the narration, as it set up the characters and their complicated relationships perfectly right off the bat, allowing the audience to understand what's going on and immediately start laughing so hard that milk comes out of our noses. Usually narration cheeses me off, but often there's so much going on in this show that it helps to have a framing narration. Howard's dry delivery is adept at smuggling in jokes under the radar: "the word George Michael was looking for was creepy" being this episode's highlight, I think.
I could talk forever about how great Arrested Development is. I'll just leave it by saying that Oscar's "Maybe I'll put it in her brownie" made me weep with laughter. Weep! |
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