This post was written by Hatchet reporters Allison Kowalski and Kelsey Renz.
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 5: “A New Start”
Number of double entendre license plates: 1
Best one-liner: “I’m sorry mother, it’s just that I’ve got a stick up my bunghole on what I’ve now found is a running joke about me.” -Tobias Fünke, accusing Lucille Bluth of suggesting he is gay.
Centered around: Tobias Fünke
In what turns out to just be the better half of the Lindsay episode, “A New Start” follows Tobias as he unknowingly takes the same vacation to India that we painfully followed Lindsay through.
Luckily we don’t stay there long, because that “not a cow” Lindsay’s bus hit? That was Tobias, who spent the rest of his sojourn in the hospital before returning home.
In one of her first scenes, Tobias’ new friend DeBrie (Maria Bamford) is spreading butter all over her face, a sure sign she’ll be more interesting than Lindsay’s lame activist boyfriend. Though schizophrenic and aloof, we learn DeBrie has a law degree, yet Tobias advises her “not to settle” on a profession in law and drags her along as his partner-in-atrocious-acting crime. He becomes obsessed with her former role as Invisible Girl in a low-budget “Fantastic Four” film, and pairs up with her in costume as street photo-op characters.
While no line may ever top “I just blue myself,” Tobias’ scenes and innuendos hold strong, and his character is probably the most satisfyingly consistent thus far. No other television character could ever be falsely accused as a sex offender and make you confident for his future. It’s hard not to finish the episode without taking away some of his relentless optimism and insistence that everything was meant to be a certain way, seeing as it’s not too far from most viewers pushing through some of the slower parts of these episodes knowing it just has to get better from here. Being able to see Lindsay’s episode from a different side helped brighten things up, and hopefully the eloquence of the India plot is translated into future episodes.
