Arrested Development: Seasons 1-3

We are enjoying watching Arrested Development and have just started season 2. It came highly recommended to us.
The product arrived in a timely manner in great shape. Thumbs up!

Always amusing, and often brilliantly funny, inventive, surreal series about a rich family gone terribly wrong, and the one
sane one trying to hold things together.

Sort of what you might have gotten if George Bernard Shaw, Kaufman and Hart and Monty Python had teamed up to do
a spin on a traditional sitcom.

The acting is terrific, from top to bottom. Even producer Ron Howard's narration is great.

Not every joke works, but as it gets weirder and weirder (and funnier and funnier), all I could think is "how the hell did
they ever get this on network TV? And thank god they did!"

On re-viewing, I found the first season a little less brilliant, a little more repetitious, but maybe that was because they had
to fill 30+ episodes. The second season, with only 18 episodes, goes through the roof much more often, with more clever
twists and ideas per episode, and more aggressive weirdness. And the third season is truly insane (occasionally over-the-top,
but usually successfully), with the addition of elements like Scott Baio's Bob Lawbla character, and self-referential episodes
like `Save Our Bluths' slyly commenting on the series' coming cancellation - one of the worst mistakes in the history
of television

While I did not buy this three-pack, I did buy all the seasons separately that's essentially what this amounts to. All three seasons, nothing unique about buying it this way. But you certainly should do everything you can to get this series on DVD, because it's brilliant.

Michael Bluth (Jason Bateman) is piecing together the remnants of the Bluth company, run into the ground by the criminal endeavors of his scheming (and hilarious) dad (Jeffrey Tambor). His biggest obstacles would be his mother and his siblings: the alcholic-in-denial Lucille (Jessica Walter), his brother George Oscar Bluth II better known as GOB (pronouced like the Biblical Job, Will Arnette), the materialistic Lindsay (Portia De Rossi) and the basket case mama's boy Buster (Tony Hale).

Michael's only friend is his son George Michael (a baby faced Michael Cera) as he is constantly surrounded by scheming, plots, and plans to pilfer the company's money.

All this is backed by the deadpan narraration of Ron Howard.

The cast of supportibg characters is rich and loaded with celebrity cameos. Lawyers like Bob Loblaw (say that real fast) (Scott Baio) and Barry Zuckercorn (Henry Winkler) are constants. You'll also meet Ben Stiller, Carl Weathers, Liza Minelli, Charlize Theron, and many more in recurring roles.

The show was brilliantly written and works on multiple levels. There's the obvious onscreen humour, and then there is the near-constant self-referencing back to previous episodes. Watching one episode out of context will only give you half the laughs. The show must be watched in order, with the viewer paying attention to everything happening on screen, and also the offscreen relationships of the actors. For example, Justine Bateman appears in an episode called "Family Ties" for an obvious joke.

Bonus features are ample with lots of deleted scenes and commentaries to delve into for a deeper look at the series. The fact that this series was cancelled says a lot about the sad tastes of the general public these days. It's a smart show, smarter than any of the competition, except perhaps some of the animated shows like Futurama.

5 stars. Watching this will not only make you laugh, but may in fact make you smarter!