For some reason, I was thinking the reception to Season 5 was positive, like a step up from mixed bag Season 4. But I kept wondering, "Why isn't this doing anything for me?" while watching it. Thought I was going crazy. But it sounds like a lot of other people are down on it too.
I don't even think it's a mixed bag. Season 5 has been straight-up bad so far. It's like they're just moving around deck chairs at this point, trying to find a plot. Just moving characters around, pairing them with random different people, sending people to Mexico for whatever reason. Arrested Development was always a little like this... A lot of the fun was just how convoluted everything would get with its callbacks. But they would always seem to escalate into this big explosion, this big climax where all the plot elements run into each other. This season puts Michael, George Sr, George Michael, and their lawyer all following each other to Mexico... Only for, like, nothing interesting actually happening. They just see each other, explain stuff, and follow George Michael back.
Then you have poor David Cross desperately trying to find something to do now that his character's wife is out of the picture, or George Michael basically stuck in Rebel Alley limbo. There's weirdly little movement... They're just all kinda frozen in place spinning in circles. Did you guys hear that George Sr. was doing estrogen? It's especially weird how aimless it is, given that they basically handed us a Season 5 plot with the "Who Killed Lucille 2?" thing. I kind of like the humor of downplaying it in a weird way like it doesn't matter. But the stuff they're doing instead is so boring and aimless, I kind of only care about finding out what happened with Lucille 2. She's probably either going to be alive, or someone like Sally Sitwell killed her.
Easily the biggest highlight has been Alia Shawkat, who was actually given a funny scenario to do something with. I'm not even sure exactly what the point of her story is, but her performance is just so funny and offbeat. G.O.B.'s story has been decent, I guess, also. It just lacks the energy we got from his past escapades.
