This post was written by Hatchet contributing culture editor Allison Kowalski.
Hatchet reporters woke up at 3 a.m. on the East Coast to binge-watch Season 4 of Arrested Development, released May 26, and chronicle one of the 15 new episodes every day.
Episode 3: “Indian Takers”
“The Office” cast cameos: 1
Number of shaman-turned-ostriches: 1
Best one-liner: “At least I was able to turn my Queen Mary around.” – Lucille Bluth to Lindsay Bluth-Fünke
Centered around: Lindsay Bluth-Fünke
Lindsay (Portia de Rossi) has never been the star of the show, but usually her misguided sexual flirtations or reflections of a verbally abusive mother provide some solid joke setups.
So maybe it was her finally (sort of) succeeding at a fling, or maybe it was the separation from her strong cast of siblings that finally showed how weak her character is as a standalone, making this episode fall flat.
“Indian Takers” sees the same familiar story retold: Lindsay and husband Tobias (David Cross) break up, then reunite, then she abandons him and her daughter for another man. The sparse moments of humor came from Tobias, who mistakes a Methadone Clinic as “Methad One Acting Clinic,” and attempts to poorly improvise next to addicts confessing at a podium. It’s like the writers can’t seem to develop any fresh or interesting story arcs for Lindsay and have to tag her along someone else’s adventure to make her watchable.
Worse, this season seems to be full of purposely racist throwaway lines and scenes, like when Lindsay’s bus on her spiritual journey in India hits a person and a passenger says, “Don’t worry, he’s not a cow.” I’m sorry, since when was this show written by a 13-year-old boy?
In earlier episodes, the “racist joke” trope is at least acknowledged as offensive by other characters, like when George Sr. refuses to tip African Americans and Michael points out how generally awful it is, but the Indian cow remark is just casually tossed in. Hopefully all this awfulness ends with this episode while we wait patiently for fan favorites like Buster to remind us why we woke up so early.
