First airdate: 13 March, 2005
Written by Mitchell Hurwitz & Jim Vallely
Directed by Joe Russo
Man, “Motherboy XXX” is just good. That’s really not proper criticism, obviously, but sometimes critical faculties don’t work. As when, for example, you’re put face-to-face with “Motherboy XXX”. Which is just good. As good an episode of Arrested Development as was ever made, frankly.
Part of that is, for me, because it’s when the show finally goes over the edge, and shifts from being a TV show about quirky, sometimes deeply awful people behaving in basically human though feverishly inhumane ways, to a TV show about the semiotics of TV shows. It’s still an excuse to spend 22 minutes with the Bluths going through another one of their daft adventures, of course, but what I love about the show most – why I love Season 3 more than the other two, I might add, in the full knowledge that it’s something of a dubious opinion – is when it’s playing the most aggressive meta-narrative gags. That started way back in the pilot, and never really went away, but “Motherboy XXX” is where it becomes totally insane. And I can even pinpoint the two moments where it happens.
“Motherboy XXX”, you see, was the episode where Fox swung a deal to promote Burger King, thereby getting some extra money out of its perpetually underperforming critical darling. Obviously, given what the show was, they were going to do that in a mocking way, and the first scene where the product placement shows up is, though entirely funny, somewhat obvious in its approach of “no, it’s okay that we’re doing product placement, because we’re being ironic about it, like when Tobias mentions keeping product placement tasteful, and then there’s a pointless cut to the exterior of the building”. Hilarious, not so much innovative; but the scene’s button is simply astonishing. Hearing the penny-pinching Carl Weathers extol the joys of free drink refills, Tobias joyfully proclaims “What a great restaurant!” at which the narrator chimes in with a voice that plainly speaks to a big, forced smile on his face, “It sure is!” And this is impressive less because it furthers the product placement joke, than because it’s the first time, 35 episodes in, that the narrator adopts a tone of voice very actively far away from the authoritative recitation he traditionally uses, and immediately returns to. Oh, he’s been sarcastic and snarky before, but he’s never acted before. In fact, this whole episode represents a seismic shift in the narrator’s personality: idly reflect that Lucille must have been awake in the “3:00, 3:30 area”, and numerous places where he calls the Bluths out on their bullshit: most especially the epochal “Both things [Gob] just said were lies”, a joke that combines character comedy with formal play in one gloriously unexpected laugh line that is easily my favorite narrator joke of the first two seasons, and one of my favorite AD jokes overall.
The even more impressive moment comes later, at the dock, when Barry Zuckerkorn gives the Bluths the kiss-off by announcing his intention to go to Burger King, hopping over a dead shark and running off. This is one of the densest jokes anywhere in AD, involving:
-A continuation of the “obvious product placement is funny” running gag
-Our knowledge that the phrase “jumping the shark” is a thing, and it refers to the episode when a TV show has hit the point of no return, and will only get worse for the rest of its run
-So we’re meant to figure out that AD selling out by going for product placement is what causes the show to jump the shark.
-And we’re also hopefully already aware that the phrase “jump the shark” originated with an episode of Happy Days, where Fonzie water-skis over a shark; and that Fonzie and Barry are both played by Henry Winkler.
-It helps to know as well Henry Winkler co-starred on Happy Days with AD‘s producer and narrator, Ron Howard
It’s not the first Happy Days joke, certainly: indeed, in and of itself, this isn’t an out-of-character joke at all. But it is the joke positioned at the transition point, when such humor goes from being an occasional spice to a baked-in, constant presence in Arrested Development. It’s also one of the most clever.
What makes “Motherboy XXX” brilliant isn’t merely its alarmingly dense meta-humor, but that it manages to cram all of that in while also being one of the best character-based stories on the whole second season, an episode that recalls the highlights of Season 1 in terms of how much it explores who the Bluths are and how they interact. The big new development here is, obviously Buster’s new hook, and the way in which so many of his family members don’t quite grasp how to deal with it: sympathy, acting like it’s not their, barely-contained disgust? This being AD, of course most of them go for “disgust”, but the way the episode builds a story of how family members try to support each other even in the throes of revulsion is marvelous character writing (great Gob moment: attempting to soften the blow of his terrified “monster!” with a kinder, almost laughing and sweet pronunciation of “monster!”).
The show’s beloved theme of unbearable parents being awful to their dysfunctional children is richly expressed in the titular Motherboy ball itself, one of the most creepy and alarming inventions in the show’s run, one of the few things in the AD universe so grotesque that even the characters shudder at it (the “take me with you” child is both hilarious and heartbreaking). Naturally, this gives Buster a great chance to show off, and his icky relationship with his mother is never more complex and deep than in this very episode.
Plus, it’s just so, so funny. Some personal favorites: George Sr.’s demented relationship with the dolls in the attic, especially “I don’t. Let them tell me what to do”; Gob’s barely audible “sonsummated” in the “On the next…”; the callback to pumps and the foreshadowing of Nellie; and what might, if I really stop and think about it, be my favorite joke of the entire damn show. I won’t say it is; there are a lot of great jokes in Arrested Development. But few are as attuned to characters, witty, and nasty, as this Maeby/Michael dialogue: “Do you guyes know where I can get one of those gold necklaces with a ‘T’ on it?” “That’s a cross”. “Across from where?”
What a wonderful show!