One of the many brilliant things about the new season of Arrested Development episodes being released on Sunday is that you can watch them in the order of your choosing. Each show follows a single character, and while they are interlinked, they are also independent. For some hardcore fans, this situation is going to create a crisis: Which one to watch first? Should you start with the lead, Michael Bluth, to keep the structure of the first three seasons going? Or work your way from oldest to youngest, starting with George Bluth, Sr. and then moving down to Maeby? Or from dumbest to smartest, starting with G.O.B. and moving up to Lucille? There are so many ways to arrange the story. I know just where I'll begin, though. To me, the heart and soul of Arrested Development is Tobias Fünke. He comes first.
Arrested Development has had a tortured production history in part because its characters are people you laugh at rather than with. The original three seasons were an extended study of the comic potential of obliviousness. Lucille Bluth's guide to motherhood included the line: "If that's a veiled criticism, I don't hear it and I won't respond." G.O.B.'s guide to dating an older woman contained the tender exchange: "I'm not ashamed to be with you. I love being with you. I'm ashamed to be seen with you." Even Michael Bluth, the responsible one, is oblivious about what really matters: He smothers his son and cannot deal with women. Narcissism has swallowed everyone in the world of Arrested Development, and it makes them stupid no matter how smart they are. That's its glorious trick.
Tobias is the ultimate expression of the contradiction. His stupidity about himself is incredible. He thinks he can act. He thinks his marriage to Lindsay Bluth is worth saving and that an open marriage will work. He hasn't figured out that he's gay. There's the never-nudism. And of course he doesn't realize what he's saying half the time. In other words, he has no idea about the nature of himself. But at the same time — and it's the genius of his character — he's an extremely gifted therapist. He is completely aware of everybody else's psychological mechanisms. Here is the perfect piece of Fünke dialogue:
Tobias: When I was a psychiatrist, and this is before I became an actor...
Lindsay: You're still not an actor.
Tobias: Lovely... I saw a lot of this type of behavior, and what I think you're experiencing is your son's very normal need to distance himself from his overbearing father. Am I touching something?
Where has there ever been a comic character so complicated, so full of contradictions, such a mixture of blindness and insight? Some superfans have claimed that Tobias is black and that this joke was being set up throughout the second and third seasons but they ran out of time. It makes perfect sense to me. Think about it: Tobias as "a colored man" painted blue in Lucille's kitchen; Tobias as a name that sounds like it belongs to a "big black guy," according to Lindsay; Tobias wondering why his wife would go with the bounty hunter Ice, someone "so similar to my own type." I so deeply hope that this joke finally arrives in the new series because it would fit his permanent identity crisis perfectly. His obliviousness just grows deeper and deeper.
The most amazing feature of Tobias Fünke is how organically all of these contradictions coexist and how easily they live together. For that we have David Cross to thank. His performance has to be the greatest comic performance since Jason Alexander as George Costanza. Where Constanza is all coiled suppressed rage, Tobias, despite the never-nudism, is mostly laid-back, eager to please, and happy to hug anyone who's willing to hug him back. That ease of manner is an even more amazing when you consider what David Cross is like in his other comedy. His standup is pure angry brilliance. He's so funny that he can just read nastily from the newspaper and it works. And Cross's savagery comes through in Tobias's softness, which somehow makes the character even more absurd.
Tobias is the key to the whole show, even though he's peripheral to the family and more or less incidental to the plot. He's a super-complicated laughingstock, as rewatchable and fascinating as he is hilarious. Which is exactly what Arrested Development is at its best.
ncG1vNJzZmivp6x7pr%2FQrqCrnV6YvK57xKernqqklravucSnq2ispmSuc36WamlooZ5ivbOtyKycZqeWYsGwrsiaqmaepaO4pns%3D