Is there a show so rewarding of repeated viewings as Arrested Development? With so many callback jokes, tiny details, and meta-references stuffed into every scene, you could literally blink and miss something. If you still haven’t purchased the DVD sets yet (and…are you in a coma, perhaps?), lucky for you that IFC is bringing the show back to your TV screen this fall, with back-to-back episodes Sundays at 10PM.
Okay, readers - we’ve weeded out the weaklings, with almost every match-up a total blowout. While Judy Greer beat Zach Braff with the highest margin (she garnered an impressive 92%), Charlize Theron barely came out ahead of Scott Baio with a difference of one vote. Now it’s time for some hard decisions. Which crazy blond will reign supreme? Which pop-culture icon will come out on top? Let’s move on to round two.
Liza Minnelli vs. Henry Winkler
As the vertigo-suffering Lucille Two, Liza Minnelli channeled her own craziness into the best friend and rival of the Bluth matriarch, Lucille. Not only did she attempt to buy the company (first to help her friend, then to screw her over), she managed to seduce two of the Bluth brothers.
A far cry from the Fonze, Winkler’s Barry Zuckercorn was the family lawyer who had probably at least heard of the bar exam, though it didn’t seem like her was every personally acquainted with it. An ambulance chaser with a flair for obvious repressed homosexuality, he was as hapless and inefficient enough to seem like an actual Bluth.
Loading ...Judy Greer vs. Amy Poehler
Greer’s absolutely unbalanced secretary/mistress Kitty Sanchez, on the other hand, flashed her girls at the drop of a hat and mastered the art of giving the perfect crazy eye. A constant thorn in the side of much of the Bluth family, Kitty helped teach us that while you can sleep with it, you can never promise crazy a baby.
While they were actually married in real life, Amy Poehler and Will Arnett’s characters struggled to even remember each other’s names after a night of Vegas-inspired insanity (the best G.O.B. could do was “Usarmy,” after looking at her dog tags). Before convincing G.O.B. to consummate their marriage before divorce proceedings (with proof in the form of photos inspired by the Abu Ghraib scandal), she also lends him one of her trained seals - which eventually bites of Buster Bluth’s hand.
Loading ...Charlize Theron vs. Carl Weathers
Who was Rita, Charlize Theron’s mysterious, hilarious, and somehow inexplicable British bombshell? Was she actually a British spy, using cameras in her many ludicrous hats to spy on the Bluths for her handler, Mr. F? No, she was not: the woman Michael Bluth almost married was an heiress, but the “MRF” on bracelet wasn’t espionage code - it was short for “Mentally Retarded Female.”
Carl Weathers certainly deserves praise for so willingly skewering himself for the sake of the show. Appearing as Carl Weathers, he portrayed himself as incomparably stingy, willing to take advantage of Tobias Funke’s misguided dreams of becoming an actor, and perpetually obsessed with saving scraps of food with which he could make stew.
Loading ...James Lipton vs. Julia Louis-Dreyfus
It might seem hard to imagine the soft-spoken host of Inside the Actor’s Studio as a laid-back prison warden, but James Lipton pulled it off with a surprising air of menace and a love of writing screenplays. Despite his work getting rejected by everyone he sends it to, Warden Gentles does eventually get his Oz-like creation performed at an elementary school with the help of Lucille.
As Maggie Lizer (aka Maggie Lies-her-ass-off), Julia Louis-Dreyfus played a character who, for all her faults, may have been the perfect match for Michael Bluth. Sure, she lied for years about being blind (until the one say she was actually temporarily blind and Michael through a book at her face) and then pretended later to be pregnant (until she and Michael had a quick romp in a hospital and, you guessed it, she actually got pregnant), but Michael has his faults as well.
Loading ...
