‘Arrested Development’ Season 5 Could Be A (Partial) Prequel
There has been talk ofArrested Developmentseason 5 sincethe day after season four debuted on Netflixin 2013, which means that we’ve been writing stories about how another batch of episodes is on the way foraboutfouryearsnow. Remember when it wasdefinitely going to happen in 2016?And then it wasn’t? Earlier this month, we were told that season five wasonly a few weeks away from some kind of breakthrough.
And maybe they were serious this time? Because a new story about the basic structure of a potential fifth season of the beloved comedy series has hit the internet and it makes enough sense to feel true.
According to a story over atTV Line,Arrested Developmentseason 5 will feature a number of flashbacks, with the scenes in the past comprising up to half of the season. These scenes will feature younger actors taking on the spoiled, selfish members of the Bluth clan, with the regular cast members reuniting for the storylines set in the present. Naturally, this is all in flux and could change.
And while this is a major creative shake-up, it’s also a practical decision. In the years sinceArrested Developmentwas originally cancelled on Fox, the cast has scattered and found success all over the place. You can’t blink without seeingJason BatemanandWill Arnettpop up in movies and on television.Jeffrey TamborandTony Halehave been scooping up Emmy Awards as cast members onTransparentandVeep.Michael Cera,Alia Shawkat,Jessica Walter,Portia de Rossi, andDavid Crosshave kept busy, too. So getting all of these people in the same room to film a new season of television is like trying to herd cats. Cast with a dozen separate responsibilities and places to be.
The divisive fourth season ofArrested Developmentgot around these scheduling issues by isolating the actors into their own plots, using a humorously complex structure to jump through time, with punchlines to jokes arriving hours before the the set-up and disparate storylines bouncing off each other in unexpected ways. It was ambitious, but it didn’t always work, revealing how much of the original show’s mighty comic energy came from this entire cast sharing the screen at the same time. With this new set-up, as TV Line’s source says, “More of the episodes can now include all of the original cast together, with lots of big group family scenes.”
The plot ofArrested Developmentseason 5 remains unknown, but season 4 ended with a few lingering cliffhangers that will provide ample reasons for this dysfunctional crew to reunite. If the partial prequel idea moves forward, casting will be key – if the younger versions of these characters don’t have the same chemistry, what’s the point?
