The bad news is this: turns out “remixing” Arrested Development’s disappointing fourth season wasn’t a magic bullet.
If anything, it’s a magic trick – or, more correctly, an illusion.
The fourth season of the cult show was anticipated with a fever resembling your average GVH sufferer, but ultimately was as DOA as a dove in a paper bag. The story jumped around constantly as it followed one character in each of its 15 episodes, the stunt casting (e.g. Kristen Wiig and Seth Rogen as Lucille and George Sr in flashbacks) was distracting rather than fun, and the jokes about the 2008 financial crisis fell largely flat.
Creator Mitch Hurwitz re-edited the season so its sprawling narrative has been turned into something more closely resembling the tighter, shorter episodes of seasons one through three.
The resulting 22 episode run gives the illusion of being part of the classic Arrested Development run, but it still doesn’t measure up. The incredibly intricate plotting and episode structure that make the first three seasons so re-watchable (though your mileage may vary on the Charlize Theron episodes) just can’t be recreated after the fact.
But the remix approach could be a game-changer for TV creators.
Much as streaming has allowed beloved shows like Community second chances after cancellation or second stabs at closure for series like Gilmore Girls where the creators left before the end, it now offers showrunners the opportunity to right whatever wrongs they want to in the edit suite – and then hand the results over to fans with the stamp of official approval.
As if to drive this point home, Netflix is now hiding the “original cut” episodes of Season 4 under the “Trailers and More” section when you select the show. The “remix” is the official version of that season now.
Netflix
Whether this is ultimately a good thing is hard to say. If the Gilmore Girls revival taught us anything, it’s that handing the keys back to the creators doesn’t always give us what we want.
TEAM JESS FOREVER
In future, this power could well be used for cutting a nonsense or offensive subplot, CGI-ing out a tainted cast member, making alternate endings canon, or adding deleted scenes back in that were cut for time in free-to-air premieres. Or makers could tinker with their creations endlessly, like Ridley Scott’s repeated runs at Blade Runner or Kanye re-titling, re-sequencing and re-mixing The Life Of Pablo even after its release.
Whether you’re a purist or open to change, this could signal the beginning of the end of the Final Product being truly final. After all, there’s always money in the banan- I mean, in a shiny new re-issue.