New ‘Arrested Development’ Features a ‘More Pathetic’ Michael Bluth
Jason Bateman offered MTV a preview of what fans can expect for the lovable, hapless sort-of patriarch Michael Bluth when Arrested Development returns in May.
“Michael has been a little banged up over the last six years and he’s lost a little dignity and he’s trying to get his life back together,” Bateman said before last night’s Golden Globes. “It’s pretty good, he’s a little bit more pathetic than the first go-round. Still wearing the same pants though.”
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The 14 new episodes are set to premiere all at once on Netflix in May, with Bateman noting they don’t really mark a fourth season of the show so much as the first act of a story that a movie would complete: “We start a story we don’t finish until we’re in the movie. They all work together, kind of like what they were going to do with Dark Tower or something,” he said. “It’s a hybrid package of entertainment.”
Creator Mitchell Hurwitz said last week that each of the new episodes will focus on one specific character, with the entire case appearing together just once, in the finale. Only Bateman will appear in each of the new episodes.
“The bigger story is the family has fallen apart at the start of our show,” Hurwitz said. “They all went their own way, without Michael holding them together, so they’re left to their own devices, and they’re not the most successful devices.”