The Great Experiment concludes! This is the series finale of our 5 part Final Countdown to the Arrested Development Season 4 premale.
Whereas Day 3 of the Final Countdown focused on minor characters, our finale focuses on an actor who, while he only appears in one episode, is a vocal presence in every episode of the series. Child star turned teen star turned successful film director and producer, Ron Howard holds the vocal reins of Arrested Development as the show's narrator. Whether he's correcting GOB or criticizing the narrator of Scandalmakers, Howard gets some of the show's best jokes. And some of these reference previous points of Howard's career.
In the Season 1 episode Public Relations, for example, Ron gets to make a crack about his time on The Andy Griffith Show. When Jessie the publicist pejoratively refers to George-Michael as Opie, Howard's narration warns that "she had best watch her mouth." Howard, of course, started his career playing young Opie on The Andy Griffith Show. Andy Griffith earns another shout out when the Bluths try to hire him as a fake lawyer given his work on Matlock, but leaves suspecting the Bluths are making fun of him with their cabin-car. The narrator stresses "No one was making fun of Andy Griffith."
But his influence on the show extends far beyond his voice and jokes about his childhood stardom. Ron Howard plays the nepotism card. For starters, there's conservationist and tree-dweller Johnny Bark, played by Ron's own brother! But that's just a one episode part. For more significant parts, we turn to Howard's former Happy Days co-stars. Most prominently, there's Barry Zuckercorn, played by Henry Winkler, famous for the Happy Days character Arthur "The Fonz" Fonzarelli.
Arrested's writers take advantage of the Fonz's fame plenty, too. Most obviously there is the moment he strikes his iconic "no-comb-required" pose in a bathroom mirror. Then another iconic Fonz moment gets recreated when the Bluths track down the shark that ate the flipper of the seal that ate the hand of Buster. After discussing the situation (that the seal itself was still missing), Barry jumps over the shark, referencing the most infamous scene in Happy Days history.
The final joke about the Fonz is actually delivered by a character who isn't Barry Zuckerkorn. In Season 3, the Bluths family replaces Barry with the law-blogging Bob Loblaw, played by Scott Baio. Baio originally came into stardom on... You guessed it, Happy Days, where he was brought in as the Fonz's cousin Charles "Chachi" Arcola in the show's fifth season (actually just two episodes before the Fonz jumped the shark). Chachi quickly earned positive reviews from young teenage girls, basically replacing the older Winkler as the show's young heartthrob. Loblaw references this when he tells the Bluths "Look, this is not the first time I've been brought in to replace Barry Zuckerkorn. I think I can do for you everything he did. Plus, skew younger. With juries and so forth."
In the end, Ron Howard does finally make an appearance... as Ron Howard! The series finale features one final "On the Next Arrested Development," this time called "On the Epilogue of Arrested Development." Here, Ron Howard plays himself as a film executive hearing Maeby pitch the story of her family. Howard's response has been talked about by fans for years: "I don't see it as a series... Maybe a movie."
Those ten words have kept fans hoping for years that an Arrested Development film would be released. And on May 26th the wait is over... Only unlike Ron Howard, we see it as a series.
Enjoy it! It's Arrested Development.
"He was actually found in a hole near the house, but this inattention to detail was typical of the laziness the show's narrator was known for." - The Narrator, Arrested Development
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