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One major spoiler ahead if you haven't seen season 4 of Arrested Development.
Ah yes, the "Who Killed [Insert Character]" plotline. Made notorious by Dallas, when its resident oil baron was shot down by...someone, then later parodied on The Simpsons, when Mr. Burns took a bullet in a two-part story (it turned out that the youngest of the Simpson household was responsible).
One of the more recent iterations of this storyline comes from season 4 of Arrested Development, which offed (at least seemingly) the character of "Lucille 2", as played by Liza Minnelli. Certainly, the show will have to answer the question of "Who Killed Lucille 2" in its upcoming season on Netflix, and Jason Bateman (a.k.a Michael Bluth) went on EW Radio on Wednesday to divulge some of the details. “The central spine of that story of is the death of Liza Minnelli’s character, and a bit of whodunit, who may have done it, who had something to do with it,” said Bateman, according to Entertainment Weekly. He added that this will be the throughline that brings together the bevy of tangents and non-sequiturs that Arrested Development is known for.
While Lucille 2's absence will be a major focal point, the show will also address a certain elephant in the room: fans have noted some similarities between the Bluth family and the Trumps. While the Bluths originally drew some inspiration from the Bush lineage, the comparisons with presidential families took a turn once Number 45 took office. Bateman told The Daily Beast on Wednesday that the show will jump back into the realm of political satire to address the comparisons. “None of that is lost on [creator] Mitch Hurwitz. He’s aware of all of that stuff,” Bateman said of the parallels between the Bluths and the Trumps. “And he and his writing staff have been in a cave for the last two or three months crafting these episodes, and they’re going to lean into a lot of that [Trump] stuff for sure. They can’t wait.”
While a murder-mystery (with extra political overtones) may add intrigue, it doesn't quite handle one of the central issues of season 4; it just felt very disjointed, even by the show's standards. The jokes came in spurts. Any momentum that was built was suddenly lost. It was a herky-jerky affair. It mostly stemmed from the fact that, due to scheduling conflicts, the show was unable to get the entire cast in the same room. The result was that the season was shot as a collage of vignettes. "Ultimately, editorially, it didn’t really come together as well as he wanted it to, and then he had to dictate an order of watching, and it ended up being a little bit more complicated than I think one intended," Bateman told EW Radio.
This won't be the case in season 5, as the entire original cast is expected to be on hand. “It’s an opportunity to see everyone else,” Will Arnett (Gob) told Business Insider. “It will be very rewarding.” This was seemingly reiterated when the show sent out a tweet saying that the "Bluths are all together":
This time the Bluths are all together. Whether they like it or not. pic.twitter.com/RrCvHiqOCa
— Arrested Development (@arresteddev) May 17, 2017
Has all of this whet your appetite for more Banana Stand? If so, you'll have to wait a bit longer. Shooting for season 5 will begin late this summer. And the show won't drop on Netflix until 2018; the exact date is still unknown....like the identity of Lucille 2's supposed murderer.
