How the Return of Netflix’s Arrested Development Will
Rewrite the New Rules of TV Watching
The landscape of television is changing, and for proof, you have to look no further
than the revival of Arrested Development on Netflix, where creator Mitch Hurwitz
has reunited the original cast to produce a parcel of new episodes coming next year.
Suddenly, a show that was incredibly low-rated on Fox is being touted as a game-
changer for an upstart streaming-video company. It’s a move that will surely have a
ripple effect on TV development, but the audience at home is going to find their
viewing habits tested, too, since Netflix head Ted Sarandos announced yesterday that
the ten new episodes of Arrested Development will all premiere on a single day. How
will recap culture cope? Here are four of the open questions raised by the
announcement.
Should you watch all the episodes in one sitting?
Arrested Development’s most avid superfans have been waiting for this day since the
show was canceled in 2006, but now they’ll be consuming an entire new season of
Arrested Development the way a johnny-come-lately would: all at once, like a person
stumbling upon the DVDs years after the show went off the air. Still, while a newbie
might take his time with Arrested Development, many longtime fans of the series will
feel pressure to rip through all the episodes in a single day, and is the show best
served by watching it that way? And what if the new Arrested episodes bow on a
weekday, God forbid? Would an entire demographic leave work for lunch and never
return?
How do you talk about it on Twitter?
The rise in DVRs and time-shifting have changed the way people watch TV, but savvy
fans know to avoid Twitter if they haven’t yet caught, say, the new episode of Mad
Men: The social-networking service explodes every Sunday night with viewers live-
tweeting, quoting, and discussing Don Draper or Fat Betty in depth. (Pity viewers on
the West Coast and abroad, who are in constant danger of being spoiled until they
can catch up.) If the new episodes of Arrested Development were debuting in weekly
installments on a network, Twitter users could assume some base level of communal
viewing and tweet freely, but with the new episodes bowing at the same time, how
can you be sure who’s watched what? Can you already start discussing episode ten
when your friends may be on episode seven, or even episode one?
Will this nip buzz in the bud?
We won’t shed many tears over Twitter users unable to spoil their favorite shows in
real time, but it’s worth noting that the plugged-in Twitter audience comprises
Arrested Development’s main demographic. To be sure, those fans will be hyping the
new AD episodes for weeks and months before the premiere (in fact, they already
are), but we wonder whether the thwarted tweeting may take a toll when the episodes
all debut at once. Which would Netflix prefer: ten weeks of fans obsessively
dissecting each episode and speculating about the next, or a jumbled few days when
the most ardent viewers speed-watch the whole season, then quickly move on to
discussing the week’s shocking new episode of Breaking Bad?
How will it affect the recapping craze?
The Wire creator David Simon recently groused about the explosive trend of online
episode recapping, suggesting that critics should evaluate the series as a whole and
not in weekly installments. Looks like he got his wish! It’s not going to be easy to
provide overnight reviews of each new Arrested Development episode when all ten
premiere on the same day, and TV viewers who’ve gotten used to watching an
episode and then reading a variety of online reactions to it will have to adjust: They’ll
now be able to burn through an entire season without weekly consultations of an
online echo chamber. When Fox canceled Arrested Development, they gave it what
was considered an ignominious end: burning through the last four episodes on a
single night (opposite the Olympics, no less) instead of letting fans savor the last few
weeks. Years later, that all-at-once strategy will be the show’s new normal. As GOB
might ponder: Are they making a huge mistake?
By Kyle Buchanan – 18 April 2012 – nymag.com