History YMMV / Arresteddevelopment

** Maeby Funke. If you take away her resourcefulness, cunning, deceitfulness and rebellious attitude, you'll see a young girl horribly neglected by her self-centered parents and is desperate and will do anything to get ''some'' kind of attention from them.

* TooBleakStoppedCaring: Season 4 can come off like this sometimes- namely while the comedy's still there, it's far darker than before, ''everyone'' is in a worse position than they were, and the few likable characters take several levels in jerkass. Most notably Michael, George Michael, Buster and Maeby's storyline ALL have DownerEnding with all of them barely resembles the people they were at season 3.

* FunnyAneurysmMoment:
** Lucille constantly calls Lindsay fat. It's treated negatively in universe, but it's still deeply uncomfortable to watch knowing that Creator/PortiaDeRossi went public about her struggles with anorexia after the show ended.
** All the jokes about G.O.B.'s brief marriage and divorce have become somewhat bitter in light of the actors playing G.O.B. and his wife (Will Arnett and Amy Poehler) announcing their RealLife breakup in 2012.
** The scene in which Tobias, as [[Film/MrsDoubtfire Mrs. Featherbottom]], crashes into the table of the model home is quite uncomfortable to watch after Creator/RobinWilliams' death.
** Maeby's only successful movie during the original run of the show was ''Gangie''. Out of the entire cast, Creator/AliaShawkat ended up being the one with the least successful post-show career.
** Bob Loblaw and Lindsay's numerous miscommunications aren't nearly as funny after many fans took Scott Baio's response to the death of his old ''Happy Days'' co-star Erin Moran as saying she deserved an early death because of her drug problems, which he then hotly insisted wasn't what he meant.
** In "Everyone Gets Atrophy" of Season 5, Michael wonders if he might have been too verbally hard on Rebel. Afterwards, the season became OvershadowedByControversy in the aftermath of Jessica Walter accusing Jeffrey Tambor of verbally harassing her on set, and Jason Bateman got accused of attempting to brush her feelings aside during an interview.

** Maeby's only successful movie during the original run of the show was ''Gangie''. Guess what actress hasn't found success outside the context of her role on the show (no, not Jessica Walter)?

* SeasonalRot: Season 4 was subject to a lot of criticism. The change in overall style of the season with each character getting ADayInTheLimelight largely separate from the rest of the family essentially removed the family interactions that defined the show. In addition the longer episodes on Netflix (30-35 minutes vs. 22 in network tv) slowed down the trademark fast pace, leading many to complain of it being boring. Talk of Season 5 was primarily about trying to fix those issues, and getting the family together for more than a couple of scenes.

** GOB, his puppet Franklin, and Tobias - Tobias is especially notable in that he was originally supposed to be a minor character, but the character left such an impression that he was promoted to main character status.
** Steve Holt and Gene Parmesan also qualify.

* AwardSnub: The all star ensemble didn't do quite as well awards wise as you'd have hoped. Creator/JasonBateman and Creator/JeffreyTambor got two Emmy nominations, while Creator/WillArnett and Creator/JessicaWalter only got one, and Creator/DavidCross and Creator/TonyHale didn't even get in once. The underrated efforts of Creator/PortiaDeRossi, Creator/MichaelCera, and Creator/AliaShawkat were similarly ignored.

* DarknessInducedAudienceApathy: Season 4 can come off like this sometimes- namely while the comedy's still there, it's far darker than before, ''everyone'' is in a worse position than they were, and the few likable characters take several levels in jerkass. Most notably Michael, George Michael, Buster and Maeby's storyline ALL have DownerEnding with all of them barely resembles the people they were at season 3.

** In "Everyone Gets Atrophy" of Season 5, Michael wonders if he might have been too verbally hard on Rebel. Afterwards, the show became OvershadowedByControversy in the aftermath of Jessica Walter accusing Jeffrey Tambor of harassing her on set, and Jason Bateman got accused of attempting to brush her feelings aside during an interview.

* OvershadowedByControversy: Season 5 was marred by the sexual harassment accusations leveled against Jeffrey Tambor that got him fired from ''Series/{{Transparent}}'', which occurred after the season was largely already shot. In addition, a disastrous cast interview for ''The New York Times'' included Jessica Walter breaking into tears when describing Tambor's treatment of her during an argument on-set. Critics accused the Walters' costars Bateman, Hale and Cross of trying to downplay the incident at the expense of Walters' feelings. Backlash ultimately caused the rest of the press tour to be canceled, and it overshadowed the show's premiere.

* BadassDecay: George Sr's CrazyAwesome tendencies become less apparent by the third season. Part of this is likely due to him no longer having to pull as many [[ZanyScheme Zany Schemes]] to avoid capture. There's also the matter of [[spoiler: Lucille stealing his thunder in the finale when she's revealed as TheManBehindTheMan]]. Still, it wasn't until season 4 that this trope really set in, where George [[spoiler: [[BewareTheNiceOnes gets totally outplayed by Oscar]]]] and loses all of his masculinity before [[spoiler: starting to transition into a peaceful a woman]].

* CrazyAwesome: George sometimes leans into this. The man is clearly insane, doing things like setting up elaborately cruel pranks to teach his children life lessons (including to teach Michael to ''not'' teach people life lessons), posing as God in a live painting banquet so he can make a jailbreak, stashing away money in giant banana-shaped food stands, and using his eldest sons to stage "Boy Fights" so he could sell the tapes for money (even though he was already rich as all hell, so said money would be pretty much worthless to him). This is also deconstructed, as his insane behavior ended up greatly helping shape his [[DysfunctionJunction ludicrously screwed up family]].

** In "The One Where They Build A House", Buster tries to take advantage of a collapsing house facade to injure himself and evade enlistment in the Army, only to find the wall to fall with the window around him, leaving him unharmed. The character's name and the visual gag are a reference to fhe work of silent-film comedian Buster Keaton, perhaps most famous for first performing the same stunt and visual gag.

* OvershadowedByControversy: Season 5 was marred by the sexual harassment accusations leveled against Jeffrey Tambor that got him fired from ''Series/{{Transparent}}'', which occurred after the season was largely already shot. In addition, a disastrous cast interview for ''The New York Times'' included Jessica Walter breaking into tears when describing Tambor's treatment of her during an argument on-set. Critics accused the Walters' costars Bateman, Hale and Cross of trying to downplay the incident at the expense of Walters' feelings. Backlash ultimately caused the rest of the press tour to be canceled, and it overshadowed the show's premier.

** "I mean, it's one [X]. What could it cost, ten dollars?" An unaware Lucille essentially summing up just how out-of-touch wealthy people can be, with people often substituting Banana and the price for something else.

* UnintentionallyUnsympathetic: Conversely, while Michael is supposed to have the audience feel bad for him due to being forced to put up with all the craziness his family causes, his behavior shows that he isn't really that much better than the rest of his family. Even before taking a major Jerkass level in the fourth season he could often act pretty smug and pulled some pretty despicable acts himself, such as sleeping with the teacher his son had a crush on and then setting Gob up as a scapegoat when he found out, and agreeing to let Uncle Jack have sex with Lindsay completely without her consent or knowledge. He also repeatedly treats George Michael just as roughly as his own father treated him and his siblings and though he’d often come to the realization that he was acting just like his own father and promise to do better from then on [[AesopAmnesia he almost always winds up forgetting this by the next episode]], and that doesn't even take into account how he's often treated Ann like crap for no reason just because she was dating his son. [[http://www.collegehumor.com/post/7007570/5-beloved-tv-characters-who-are-actually-assholes This list]] on ''Website/CollegeHumor'' even takes a look at TV characters who show signs of this trope, with Michael earning a no. 3 spot.

** Creator/SethRogen playing a younger George Bluth Sr. in flashbacks in Season 4, due to bearing little resemblance to Jeffrey Tambor. That said, those who have seen Tambor in his younger days in films such as ''Film/AndJusticeForAll'' will note that he did bear at least a passing resemblance to Rogen.

%%* ValuesDissonance: In the episode "Sad Sack", aired in 2004, Maeby pretends her mother is {{Transgender}} to make Steve Holt stop liking her. She uses the offensive slur words "tranny" and "shemale" to describe her - but the offensiveness of the words is not acknowledged, and they're treated casually. As transgender people are no longer AcceptableTargets, these jokes can seem cruel and dated when watched today. Later seasons don't use the slurs (aside from a CallBack in form of Tobias wearing the [[ItsPronouncedTropay "Shémale"]] T-shirt from that episode).
%%* ValuesResonance: A big part of this show's continuing popularity. It first aired in 2003, but its merciless mockery of the excess and corruption of America's corporate elite seems to have ''really'' caught on with Americans in the years after the 2007 Recession, when [[AcceptableTargets making fun of the rich]] became even more of a national pastime than it had been before.

* ValuesDissonance: In the episode "Sad Sack", aired in 2004, Maeby pretends her mother is {{Transgender}} to make Steve Holt stop liking her. She uses the offensive slur words "tranny" and "shemale" to describe her - but the offensiveness of the words is not acknowledged, and they're treated casually. As transgender people are no longer AcceptableTargets, these jokes can seem cruel and dated when watched today. Later seasons don't use the slurs (aside from a CallBack in form of Tobias wearing the [[ItsPronouncedTropay "Shémale"]] T-shirt from that episode).
* ValuesResonance: A big part of this show's continuing popularity. It first aired in 2003, but its merciless mockery of the excess and corruption of America's corporate elite seems to have ''really'' caught on with Americans in the years after the 2007 Recession, when [[AcceptableTargets making fun of the rich]] became even more of a national pastime than it had been before.