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It’s hard to think of another series that features so many different kinds of disabilities while ensuring that the people with those syndromes are more than their impairments. What feels insultingly one-dimensional with a core character, however, feels like just the right level of nuance for Arrested Development’s sprawling supporting cast. The Bluths are a terrible lot, and the show never lets us forget it, but there’s something cruel, and boring, about continuing to harp on Buster’s otherness. In Buster’s case, they underline the idea that it’s acceptable for someone with a disability to be made into a spectacle and to be feared. Such scenes are frequently funny, but they’re far from empathetic. Even in the latest season, a decade after his accident, Buster’s hardly made peace with his disability, calling himself a “half-man.” His various prosthetics-a hook, a rubber hand, and in Seasons 4 and 5, a bionic, military-grade, Terminator-like claw he can scarcely control-justify the scared (not just startled) reactions from the other Bluths. “I’m a monster!” the behooked man-baby cries, after explaining that, as “half-machine,” he should be expected to find the Roomba in his bed sexually attractive. This half-minute clip, for example, encapsulates how Buster and his family see him after his maiming. The dated insensitivity toward minority groups extends to the program’s depiction of Buster after his seal-induced amputation. In the decade and a half since its premiere, we’ve moved beyond its casual transphobia, its racism-lite, even the ugly gender politics that still plague the show behind the scenes.
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If you’ve recently rewatched Arrested Development’s first three seasons, you can’t help but notice that the sitcom is of a pre-woke era. What feels insultingly one-dimensional with a core character feels like just the right level of nuance for Arrested Development’s sprawling supporting cast.
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Many of these characters’ impairments were never named by their medical terms, (problematically) rendering them as one more zany quirk on a series full of them, like Carl Weathers’ shameless parsimony, Nurse Adelaide’s coma fetishism, and Kitty Sanchez’s post-surgical lazy-eyed nipples. Walter Weatherman’s one arm, Buster Bluth’s one hand, Jack Dorso’s waist-down paralysis, Marky Bark’s face blindness, and, most controversially, Rita Leeds’ intellectual disability. Never cured were Stan Sitwell’s (and later his daughter, Sally’s) hairlessness, J. Tobias’ never-nudism was quickly resolved (and Maggie Lizer’s blindness revealed as a fraud), while Lucille Austero’s “dizzies” came and went. No other show made quips about vertigo, alopecia, and amputated limbs on the regular, meaning that some of Arrested Development’s laughs could be found nowhere else on TV. Jokes about disability were part of Arrested Development from the start-Tobias’ never-nudism, a crippling disorder that make it impossible for him to be naked, even in private, is mentioned in the second episode-and they gave the sitcom’s original three-season run its ballsy air, as well its comic edge.