Under "The Skin I Live In"

Spanish director Pedro Almodóvar is best known for making vibrant comedies and rich melodramas about complicated women and the men who love them. Over the course of his career, Almodóvar has certainly tackled his share of gender politics, twisted relationships, and mental instability, but I don't think anyone was expecting him to explore these themes by taking such a severe and unprecedented turn into genre territory the way that he does in his newest film, "The Skin I Live In."

In his best role in years, Antonio Banderas plays Robert Ledgard, a celebrated surgeon, who has invented a new artificial skin that is resistant to burns. He runs his experiments in a small private clinic in Toledo, currently occupied by a single patient, Vera (Elena Anaya). She serves as his reluctant test subject, secreted from the rest of the world. Under the care of the housekeeper, Marilia (Marisa Paredes), Vera's existence and relationship to Legard is a mystery. We don't know who she is, how she came to be at the clinic, and if her confinement is with her own consent or not. Information is revealed slowly, a piece at a time. We know that Legard had a beautiful wife, Gal, but something horrible happened to her. We know he also had a beautiful daughter, Norma (Blanca Suárez), but something horrible happened to her too. And to tell you much more than that would be spoiling things.

I think it's fair to call "The Skin I Live In" a horror movie, with its own mad scientist, its own monsters, and its own wonderfully pulpy moments of shock and revulsion and morbid curiosity. Surely the answer to the puzzle couldn't be what we think it is, could it? Surely Legard, who seems like a fairly reasonable man at the outset, wouldn't break so many taboos and cross so many ethical lines, would he? And at the same time, the movie fits right in Almodóvar's oeuvre, with its broken families, psychosexual and identity struggles, and lavish visuals. This is not an example of a director breaking from form, taking a jaunt into a different cinema universe to play with someone else's toys, but very much a natural extension of the ideas and concepts that Almodóvar has been exploring throughout his career.

I've always been drawn to cinema's few, rare female monsters, like the burn victim Cristiane from Georges Franju's "Eyes Without a Face," and Dren from "Splice," the child of a genetics experiment and two very imperfect parents. In almost all cases, aspects of their femininity become sources of horror. In "The Skin I Live In," this is no different. Vera, whose perfect skin is a product of science, is oppressed by her own body and all the accoutrements of womanhood to a certain extent. Almodóvar includes shot after shot of Elena Anaya's lovely figure in a black jumpsuit, attractive and sensual, yet also strange and alien. Men are inexorably drawn to Vera's beauty, which terrifies her until she comes to understand what a potent weapon her sexuality can be.

At first I was a little taken aback at how cold and clinical the film was toward its female characters. Then I realized it was reflecting the views of the male characters, constantly objectifying women's physical attributes and ignoring their individual personalities to the point where they view the female characters as interchangeable. Then you have the portrayal of of Vera, which I really can't get into without giving everything away. I'm sure Almodóvar's intentions were good, considering his treatment of similar themes in the past, but here he touches on some very delicate gender issues, and I couldn't shake the thought that Vera's story could really be taken the wrong way by certain people. At the same time, I was continually impressed by how bold and how startling the ideas were, and how well the director managed to navigate much of the tricky material.

Kudos must also go to the excellent cast, especially Elena Anaya in an extremely physically and psychologically demanding role. And it's so good to see Antonio Banderas in a part with some substance again after so many years of American kid's films. His Robert Legard is one of the creepier villains I've run across in a while, and I hope it leads to more interesting work. As for Pedro Almodóvar, I like that I have no idea what he's going to do next. I didn't know he had this movie in him, and it's such a delight to see him exploring new territory. Whatever he decides on, be it a return to his melodramas, or maybe conquering another genre like Westerns or film noir, I'll be watching.
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More on "Mad Men"

A series like "Mad Men" really deserves an episode-by-episode analysis, and I don't have the space or the time to give it one at this point. I've marathoned two seasons of the show so far, and I'm probably going to watch the rest by the time the fifth season premieres on AMC in a few weeks. That's how hooked I've gotten. I don't think this is the best way to watch the show, but at the end of each episode, I'm awfully glad to be able to move on to the next one. Trying to do any kind of meaningful analysis on the accelerated schedule, however, has gotten harder. I'm not keen on spending so much time recapping plot points and monitoring incremental developments, so I've decided to take a different tack. Today, since the last post was all about historical and social context, I'm going to devote this one to characters and performances. Spoilers up to the end of the second season.

Pete Campbell (Vincent Kartheiser) - My favorite character on the show. Pete's a weasel, an immature brat, and there's just something about him that rubs the wrong way. Vincent Kartheiser was a child actor, and he does a great job of using that lingering superficiality that child actors radiate, channeling it into Pete, the eager-to-please but utterly self-centered jerk whose weak smiles easily dissolve into sulking scowls. And yet you pity him for his ambitions, for trying to live up to the image of Don Draper that the show reveals to be a beautiful lie every week. I don't know where "Mad Men" is going with him either. Will he continue to play the antagonist? Now that he's had his hopes dashed by Peggy, is he in for his own emotional freefall?

Peggy Olson (Elizabeth Moss) - The ascent of Peggy, from Don's secretary to burgeoning copywriter has been fun to follow. I really like Elizabeth Moss here, another former child star who didn't grow up to look like a supermodel, but has such an interesting face, and clearly has the acting chops for both Peggy's fresh-faced go-getter exterior, and the more morally ambiguous side of her that I hope we'll see more of in later seasons. Peggy is the most sympathetic character in "Mad Men" by far, despite a few bad decisions, but I worry a little that she's too sympathetic sometimes. It's nice to root for Peggy to get ahead at the office, but she's more interesting outside of it, where her success is clearly taking a toll in other areas of her life.

Betty Draper (January Jones) - I didn't like January Jones in the last "X-men" movie, but she's a great fit for Betty. It's becoming more and more clear how damaged this woman is, raised to be obsessed with perfection as a wife and homemaker, to the point where much of her self-worth is wrapped up in maintaining the shallow image. Yet she's cold as a mother, self-deluding when it comes to her husband, and her few flirtations with rebellion go nowhere. However, clearly something is building up in Betty Draper, and it'll be interesting to see where her dissatisfaction will lead her, after the diversion of the new baby is gone and her options open up. I don't think for a minute that she's forgiven Don, or that their marriage will ever be the same again.

Don Draper (Jon Hamm) - The most intriguing storyline of the first season was learning that Don Draper wasn't really Don Draper, but an imposter named Dick Whitman. He's been struggling with his identity ever since, and operating under the increased pressure of his separation from Betty. By the end of the second season, during his trip to California, a new possibility emerges - why not just chuck Don Draper and all the baggage and start over? Jon Hamm's performance as Don is much more impressive when you see him playing Dick when he's not wearing the facade of Don. I also love the new wrinkle of the real Mrs. Draper, who he's ironically much closer to than his own wife. How much longer can he be satisfied with the current status quo?

Joan Holloway (Christina Hendricks) - The show's signature redhead seems to be on the path to being another Betty Draper, with an impending marriage built on very shaky foundations. However, she's also had a taste of Peggy's career-oriented life in the second season, filling in briefly at the media department. Joan has quietly become one of "Mad Men's" most solid players, thanks in no small part to the solid work of Christina Hendricks. You can see the character starting to struggle against traditional expectations, realizing she's been sold a false bill of goods. Joan has proven that she's smarter and tougher than Peggy and Betty put together, and I wouldn't be the least bit surprised if she ends up being the one who gets to have it both ways.

Roger Sterling (John Slattery) - Oh Roger. That's what I find myself saying more often than not about Sterling Cooper's most notorious skirt-chaser. He's had two heart attacks, the second resulting in a graphic event in the agency's lobby. He's left his wife to take up with a pretty young secretary, Jane (Peyton List), after a lengthy affair with Joan in the first season. And he's frequently the source of the best one-liners, the most inappropriate jokes, and worst examples of good-old-boy corporate culture. And John Slattery is so charming, you can't help but love him for it. However, I also suspect Roger's the one closest to the precipice, who isn't going to make it through the cultural upheaval of the 60s without some serious wounds, if he survives at all.
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At the Found Footage Floodgates

The first few weeks of 2012 have been good to Hollywood. Audiences have been turning out regularly, and the box office returns have been healthy, up about 20% from last year. We already have two $100 million grossing pictures, "The Vow" and "Safe House." After bringing in over $70 million last weekend, "The Lorax" will be the third. However, it's the other box office winner this weekend that has really been turning heads. The found-footage teen comedy "Project X," had an opening weekend of $21 million, already recouping its $12 million budget. It's the latest of a string of new found footage films that have been storming the box office.

After a rare $33 million opening weekend in January, horror film "The Devil Inside" has grossed $53 million from a tiny $1 million budget. Science fiction film "Chronicle," released in February, has grossed $60 million so far on a $12 million budget. The studios have been taking notice. They're currently in a cost-cutting mood, after a lousy 2011 where too many expensive films fell flat. With found footage films, the financial risks are significantly lower with tiny budgets, minimal production values, and no stars. Even a very modest performer like last summer's "Apollo 18" made its money back, grossing $17 million from a $5 million budget. Also, found footage films are great at attracting the young adult demographic that Hollywood likes best.

So it's no wonder that the news came down a few days ago that Universal's "Ouija," one of the Hasbro board game movies they had in development, which was originally conceived as a $100 million supernatural thriller, has now been retooled to be a $5 million found footage film. It's on track to reach theaters in 2013. There aren't that many found footage films scheduled for the rest of 2012 right now - "Paranormal Activity 4" is due in October, and Oren Peli's "Chernobyl Diaries" recently landed a Memorial Day release - but there are a lot of other projects on the horizon. There's even a found-footage television show airing on one of the major networks, ABC's "The River," about a documentary film crew braving the Amazon rainforest.

Found footage has been around for a while, popularized by "The Blair Witch Project," "REC," and the "Paranormal Activity" films, but with "Chronicle" and "Project X," this is the first time we've seen filmmakers branching out into action and comedy, and the good returns suggest that we're going to see them expand into even more diverse subject matter. Even though the quality of these films has been very hit or miss, with "Project X" garnering some of the most vehemently angry critical diatribes I've had the pleasure of reading this year, I like that the genre seems to be growing and evolving before our eyes. There's so much potential for creativity here, and the back-to-basics, do-it-yourself nature of the filmmaking really appeals to me.

Vertiginous shakeycams aside, I tend to like found footage horror films better than the slickly produced, higher budgeted ones, because they're much more effective at actually scaring me. I've seen every possible variation of CGI demonspawn and over-the-top psycho killer, but a found footage film requires a certain veneer of realism, that lends well to tension building and atmospheric unease. Well, the good ones anyway. The big danger with the rising popularity of these low risk, low budget films is that we're going to be inundated with mediocre schlock trying to hop on the new found footage bandwagon over the next few years. With budgets so small, anyone can make one of these films. But then, that's one of the good points too. Lower barriers to entry means more chances for talented newcomers to make their mark.

A bigger worry is that the cheaper found footage films are displacing financially riskier, more ambitious projects. Universal is the studio that cancelled Guillermo Del Toro's "At the Mountains of Madness" last year, the R-rated horror epic based on the work of H,P. Lovecraft. And they also quashed Ron Howard's "Dark Tower" project a few months later. A big budget doesn't determine quality of course, and Hollywood has been plagued by some awfully bloated would-be blockbusters lately, but the studios seem increasingly unwilling to find any middle ground between big budget and microbudget. And the more Hollywood turns to cheaper options like found footage films, the less likely we're going to see riskier material that really needs a decent sized budget to fully realize.

But then, I don't see found footage films becoming really pervasive. They tend to be extremely gimmick-dependant, and if there are too many flooding the multiplexes, audiences are going to get tired of them quickly. Sure, they're cheap enough that they'll regularly make money, and we'll probably see them crowding release slates for a long time to come, but they're not going to be the panacea that some studios seem to be hoping for. "The Devil Inside" may have reaped big financial returns, but it also earned a rare F from CinemaScore audience polling, resulting in disappointed, warier audience members who may avoid similar pictures in the future. The novelty of found footage is finite, and the really strong, memorable films that have used it have been few and far between so far.

Then again, found footage is still a fairly new genre. In a couple more years, with more studio backing and attention, who knows?
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Wide Eyed for "Awake"

One of the most buzzed about pilots of the season has been the one for NBC's new police drama, "Awake." it's been circulating online for a few weeks now and premiered on Thursday, but I didn't get a look at it until this past weekend.

Detective Michael Britten (Jason Isaacs) is in a car accident with his wife Hannah (Laura Allen) and his son Rex (Dylan Minnette). Since that night, he finds himself switching between two realities, one where his son died and his wife survived the accident, and one where his wife died and his son survived. He also has a different partner and is seeing a different psychiatrist in each version. In the reality where his wife is alive, he's been paired up with rookie Efrem Vega (Wilmer Valderrama) and is seeing Dr. Lee (BD Wong). In the reality where his son is alive, he's with his old partner Isaiah "Bird" Freeman (Steve Harris) and is seeing Dr. Evans (Cherry Jones). Every time Michael falls asleep, he wakes up to a different life. He can't tell which one is a dream and which is real, but he's unwilling to give up on either.

"Awake" is a great looking production. Each version of Michael's Britten's reality is shot differently, giving us a colder, green-toned world where his son is alive, and a warmer, rosier world with his wife. And if the camera filters don't clue you in, the detective wears a different colored rubber band around his wrist to help him keep his realities straight, red for his wife, and green for his son. There's never a moment of confusion about which reality we're looking at - unless the script means for us to be. The idea might seem gimmicky at first, but it's well executed and subtle enough that I think that it can survive long term usage.

Jason Isaacs is certainly up to the task of shouldering the series. "Awake" is a good showcase for his talents, though it is odd seeing him as the good guy here after playing so many baddies in recent movies. Detective Britten isn't a particularly interesting character at this point, but Isaacs does a fine job of convincing us that he's thoroughly invested in both of the show's central relationships, and of the toll that leading two lives at once is taking on him. His best moments are the ones of uncertainty, when he noticies similar details in both worlds, and one intense scene where he loses track of which he's woken up to.

It's too soon to say much about the supporting cast yet, but I like the inclusion of the two psychiatrists, who have different treatment styles and bring up a lot of different angles on the situation and possible concerns that wouldn't come up in the normal course of Detective Britten's everyday work otherwise. They drive the more cerebral struggles that are the show's most unique and intriguing feature. Has Britten created an elaborate fantasy for himself to keep from dealing with the trauma of the car accident that he can't remember the circumstances of? And how on earth will this scenario be resolved in the end?

Unfortunately, we're not going to find out for a very long time, because "Awake" is clearly going to be another police procedural, and just about everything else I'm watching this year is some kind of crime or mystery procedural. The least interesting parts of the pilot were two cases that Britten solves simultaneously, and police work is bound to take up the majority of future episodes. I don't know how long the show can keep up the conceit of solving two related cases in different realities, while all the really interesting conflicts dealing with Britten's psychological state and metaphysical conundrums take a back seat to the action.

I think "Awake" would have worked better as a feature film, or perhaps a more limited series. I'd be willing to hang in for the duration if I knew that "Awake" was only going to be six or even thirteen episodes with a definite ending, like the similarly high concept "Life on Mars." I already have my own theories as to how the story of Detective Britten might conclude. However, this is an open-ended crime procedural that NBC that will want to run as long as they can. So, there's a distinct possibility that the pilot is likely as good as "Awake" is going to get, unless the creators find a way to add more hooks to the premise.
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Trailers! Trailers! The Vintage Edition

The new trailer for "The Avengers" was released yesterday. Being on spoiler watch, I'm avoiding it. Trailers of the last few years have gotten too spoiler-filled and too pandering for my liking, especially the ones trying to capture as much of the general audience as possible. I do love movie trailers though, and putting one together is an art. So, to distract myself from the temptation of peeking at the trailers for this summer's blockbusters, I'm taking a look back instead, at older trailers. Here are a couple of my favorites. Links lead to Youtube and Trailer Addict:

The undisputed grand master of the trailer game was Stanley Kubrick, who always knew how to put together a provocative first look at his films. Here's the trailer for Dr. Strangelove, or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb. You still see the editing style referenced and parodied to his day, most recently in an FRS commercial with Lance Armstrong. And then there's the iconic one for The Shining. In usual Kubrick fashion, it was shot countless times to satisfy the director's notorious perfectionism, and the rumor is he only got the finished product past the censors by claiming that the tidal wave of blood wasn't really blood, but rusty water.

It's difficult to nail down who edited the trailers for many recent films. Sometimes the directors do it themselves, but more and more often it's people in marketing departments who had nothing to do with the production of the actual film. So, I'm honestly not sure who gets the credit for this gorgeous The Curious Case of Benjamin Button teaser, that turned out to be better than the movie it was promoting. Or this one for Where the Wild Things Are, which makes the Maurice Sendak imagery hit the nostalgia buttons like a ton of bricks. Or these stylish introductions to the title character of Milk and the comic book noir universe of Sin City . Or the heralding of the imminent arrival of The 4th Film By Quentin Tarantino. Or how the intriguing new Prometheus trailer pays homage to the one for Alien.

Occasionally, trailers go high concept. Here's one for Citizen Kane, which includes fictional interview snippets about the film's fictional subject, Charles Foster Kane. Here's the long form promo for Psycho, where Alfred Hitchcock takes the audience on a tour of the set, making the occasional droll insinuation. More recently, here's the trailer for Jerry Seinfeld's documentary Comedian, with veteran voice-over artist Hal Douglas in a recording booth, reading off a long list of overused trailer narration phrases, starting with "In a world..." to the frustration of an anonymous director. And then there's Austin Powers in Goldmember, which had little people acting out a scene from the first "Austin Powers" movie. Oh, and who could forget the fake trailers from "Grindhouse," two of which have gone on to become real movies?

For a while, the PIXAR teaser trailers were something to look forward to. Some were pretty much stand-alone shorts, giving a brief introduction to new characters and concepts. Here's our first look at Mike and Sully from Monsters Inc, and here's Mr. Incredible from The Incredibles, struggling to get into costume. I'm a little sad that they've moved away from this approach for their later films, but some of the other studios have picked up the torch. The teasers with the little yellow minions from Despicable Me were a lot of fun, even if I could never remember which movie they were promoting. And now they've started up again for Despicable Me 2, over sixteen months before the film actually comes out in July, 2013. I think that may set the record for the longest gap between a movie's teaser and its release date.

So what's my favorite trailer of them all? It's a pretty obscure one. Way, way back when I was first watching trailers online, I came across the gorgeous, disturbing trailer for Darren Aronofsky's Requiem for a Dream. It does a magnificent job of introducing the film's themes and conflicts without pigeonholing it as a drug memoir. The tone is set immediately by a quote from the film's source material by Hubert Selby Jr., eschewing all other narration or captions for intimate dialogue and glimpses of Arnofsky's tour-de-force visuals. Melancholy, dreamlike memories transition into a hallucinatory nightmare of the characters' addictions. Ironically, despite "Lux Aeterna" from "Requiem" featuring in so many subsequent movie trailers and commercials, it doesn't appear in the "Requiem" trailer itself. Instead, "Everloving," by Moby does the job.

I'm sure there are plenty I've missed here. Send suggestions if you've got them. And happy watching.
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5 Dr. Seuss Adaptations I Want to See

"The Lorax" opened today, and the reviews have been mixed, but not bad, and the box office returns should be decent. I'm not crazy about the marketing tactics or all the celebrity voices, but I hope the film does well. I'm very fond of Dr. Seuss and there are several of his books that I think would make good children's features. In fact, I'm surprised the filmmakers went with "The Lorax," which has such a strong environmentalist message, that they must have known was going to get them in trouble. Anyway, the guys at Illumination Studios seem to have the Seuss visual style down pat, and I'd love to see them tackle some of the following Seuss stories next:

"The Butter Battle Book" - One of the problems with the Seuss adaptations so far is that they've all been based on such short stories, picture books that only take a few minutes to read. "The Butter Battle Book" is a slightly more substantial one, about the Yooks and the Zooks who have almost identical societies, except that one likes to eat their bread with the buttered side up, and one prefers the buttered side down. They allow the one small difference to become a reason to hate each other, which escalates into a Seussian allegory for the Cold War. The messages still ring true, however, and the narrative is strong enough that it could be expanded much more naturally without so much obvious padding.

"Bartholomew and the Oobleck" - Bartholomew first appeared in "The 500 Hats of Bartholomew Cubbins," but his encounter with the oobleck would be much more interesting to see onscreen. It's a "be careful what you wish for" story of the King of Didd, who wants a new kind of weather, different from than the same old rain, snow, sun, and fog. He gets his wish in the form of ooblek, an unpleasant green goop that predictably causes havoc when it starts falling from the sky. Only the king's page, Bartholomew, has the good sense to figure out how to stop it. Actually, you could do both books together in one movie. Maybe "The King's Stilts" too, which is also about the adventures of a little boy and an eccentric king.

"The Cat in the Hat" - I think it's been long enough since that terrible live action Mike Myers movie to start thinking about another version of "The Cat in the Hat." This one would take some work, though, because the "Cat in the Hat" books don't exactly operate by conventional narratives, and shoehorning the character into one can lead to bad results. However, there is a lot of material for filmmakers to draw from. In addition to "The Cat in the Hat" and "The Cat in the Hat Comes Back," he also appeared in an animated television special that Dr. Seuss wrote with a different plot than either of the books. The Cat in the Hat is also a figure who pops up in a lot of Seuss's other work, which brings us to...

"Daisy-Head Mayzie" - Billed as a long lost Seuss manuscript when it was published posthumously in the '90s, "Mayzie" got a lot of attention when it first appeared, and is already a cable television special. Some critics dismissed it for being slight, but I like its messages and its sweetness. "Mayzie" is the story of a girl who first has to deal with being different, because of the yellow daisy growing out of the top of her head, and then with the dangers of sudden fame, after an agent parlays her uniqueness into celebrity. The Cat in the Hat serves as the narrator and as a Jiminy Cricket figure, giving Mayzie important advice, but I don't think he's integral to the story. Mayzie can stand just fine all by herself.

"Gerald McBoing-Boing" - Not a Seuss book, but one of the great UPA cartoon shorts, which Seuss wrote, about a boy who speaks in sound effects instead of words. There were three further shorts, and Gerald hosted his own television show briefly in the '50s, and then returned for a Canadian cartoon series just recently, in 2005. Now the greatness of the original short was in its simplicity and the concept couldn't be stretched out to feature length without adding a lot more to the existing story, which would be very tricky. I'd try combining it with one of the Seuss's stories with less compelling protagonists, like "I Had Trouble in Getting to Solla Sollew," or maybe even "Oh, the Places You'll Go!"
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The Top 10 Callbacks of "Arrested Development"

Watching "Arrested Development" has been a lot of fun. I was going to do a Top Ten list of favorite episodes after finishing off the third season, but one thing that the show does particularly well, which is difficult to talk about in discussing specific episodes, is all the callbacks and self-references. So I decided to write up a list of my favorite running gags and multi-episode subplots that reward the most loyal viewers. Spoilers everywhere!

The Blue Man Group - This is a pop culture reference that may go stale with time, but you'll never find a more thorough exploitation of it. Tobias's unsuccessful attempts to start an acting career lead him to an understudy role with the Blue Man Group, so he's frequently covered head to toe in blue body paint, leaving blue handprints everywhere in the model home and camouflaging himself by standing next to blue objects. This is especially helpful when he starts impulsively spying on people. Eventually George Senior and other characters get in on the Blue Man act, literally, ruining Tobias's dreams.

Buster's Loss - Buster's hand is bitten off by a seal in the second season, leading to all kinds of fun gags with hooks and fake plastic hands, but the event is actually alluded to repeatedly in advance. Nowhere is this more apparent than in one later episode, where Buster's trying not to think about the trauma, only to spy his beloved hand-shaped chair, recovered earlier in the season, and then the stuffed seal he won from an arcade claw game in a different episode. This one's great not only for the delivery, but how quickly it manages to connect the dots and reveal everything was set up from the start.

Annyong - The Korean boy adopted by Lucille Bluth in the first season initially had one schtick: the only word he says is "Annyong," which the family assumes is his name, but which actually means "Hello" in Korean. He was shipped off to boarding school after a few amusing appearances, only to return briefly in a series of shocking twists at the end of the third season, revealing himself as both the mysterious informant, Mr. F, and the grandson of the original frozen banana vendor who George Senior ripped off and then had deported. Alas, the show ends before we get to see the fallout of his revenge.

Maeby's Secret Career - Maeby is a tough character because her rebel nature can make her unsympathetic. So I was glad when the writers gave her a bizarre subplot of her own - a secret career as a Hollywood studio executive in charge of feature films. Mistaken for a grown woman, Maeby first takes the job as a way to get out of doing homework, but soon finds herself up to her neck in scripts and spouting Variety speak. It provides the perfect opportunity for the writers to satirize the hand that feeds them, and get us to sympatize with Maeby too, who is pushed to her limit keeping the act up.

Michael Bluth v. Ann Veal - Just when you thought that Michael was an all-around good guy, his son George Michael gets a girlfriend, one that Michael does not care for at all. He finds Ann so unmemorable, that he constantly forgets that she exists and will be unable to recall her name five seconds after George Michael patiently explains (again) who she is. Michael has called her Egg, Bland, Yam, Plain, and Plant. He's inadvertantly abandoned her in Mexico. As the show rolled along, Ann's staunchly devout Christian personality came out, but Michael still can't seem to get her name right on the first try.

Steve Holt! - High school jock Steve Holt! is George Michael's rival for the attentions of Maeby. Held back from graduating twice, he's nonetheless extremely popular with the immature crowd, and has a certain charisma that attracts the wrong kind of woman. Does this sound like another character we know? I wonder if the writers planned this one from the beginning. If they didn't, I fully credit them for figuring how to keep Steve Holt! involved in the non high school storylines - by revealing him to be Gob Bluth's illegitimate son and making the kissing cousins love triangle complete.

The Worst Doctor Ever - Doctor Fishman, who always seems to be the attending physician when any of the Bluths are rushed to the hospital, is absolutely awful at communicating the status of his patients to their anxious relatives. He tells the Bluths that George Senior is gone after an apparent heart attack, which the family takes badly until they realize he means that George Senior has escaped from the hospital. Then Buster losing his left hand to the seal prompts Fishman to declare that he will be "all right." Of all the doctors who have appeared on the show, however, he's probably the most competent.

John Beard as John Beard - Southern California residents will recognize John Beard, a real local news anchor who had long stints with both NBC and FOX. In the "Arrested Development" universe, he plays himself presenting a fictional newscast, conveying important news updates whenever the script requires them. This includes appearances in several flashbacks, in a series of bad wigs, to match. While the show was on the air he was at FOX, so there's a good chance that commercials featuring his real newscasts might have run during the ad breaks of "Arrested Development" in the Los Angeles area.

No Touching! - During the first season, George Senior's visits with his family in prison were strictly supervised by guards who liked to enforce one rule above all others: no touching! There were a couple of good variations on this turn of phrase, but then George Senior escaped, so that particular gag disappeared for a while. Eventually George Senior was caught, and Michael arranged for him to stay at his mother's apartment under house arrest. Affection starved Lucille was overjoyed, and George Senior considerably less so. Michael left them alone together, after declaring "more touching."

Dance, Chicken, Dance - Finally, a minor running gag, but one of my favorites. It started with Gob's ridiculous chicken dance that he used to goad Buster into a fight. Then it was revealed that the same chicken dance got him in serious trouble during a visit to Mexico, for offending the locals. Then sister Lindsay performed her own version in a different episode. Then Lucille revealed hers. And George. Even Michael finally resorted to clucking at his family. Every reappearance of the playground taunt just cements the fact that the Bluth family all share the same basic immaturity and flair for the ridiculous.
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