IF I CAN'T GET 'ARRESTED' AT LEAST I CAN BE 'DEAD': 'Arrested Development' had its season -- and probably series -- finale tonight, and it was everything we've come to expect. For those who have been watching, it was unpredictable, subversive, wildly inappropriate, self-referential, and the kind of funny that only works with TiVo -- where you laugh so hard and the jokes come so fast that you have to keep stopping and backing up so that you don't miss anything. At its peak, the show's closest analogue is the first 45 minutes of South Park: Bigger, Longer, Uncut.
For those who haven't been watching, it was probably offensive and impenetrable. Which serves you right, because if you haven't been watching, I blame you.
Now, losing 'Arrested Development' hurts, but I'm here to say that for at least another five weeks, Sunday is still the best night of television. I didn't start watching Deadwood until I read the Milch article in the New Yorker. Then I tried it, and it is shockingly good television. Like the Sopranos at its best, Deadwood is built on a solid foundation of pervasively looming menace, on which complicated characters skirmish in shifting allegiances. The show's performances are almost an indictment of the mediocre fare that Hollywood makes -- you've seen most of the actors before, but each is such a revelation in these well-written roles that it becomes palpable that there are far more good actors than there are adequate parts. In particular, Garret Dillahunt (in three important but unrelated roles) and Powers Boothe (as a tooth-licking predator dandy) are amazing. Everything in production -- from the mud on the streets to the colors of Mrs. Garret's dress -- is employed in obsessive service to the story. The show is an opera, not an hour-long drama, and if you haven't watched it at all I highly recommend springing for the first-season DVD and trying to catch up.
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