Why Arrested Development Should Never Have Been Cancelled

Arrested Development was and the way things are going now, probably always will be one of the smartest, funniest shows on TV. I know I sound like tons of other pretentious watchers who praise it to death, when in the end the show couldn't hold an audience. What most people don't understand is how much Fox had to do with that. I don't claim to be smarter than the average TV viewer. I think if anyone of any level of intelligence watched it, they would find humor in it. It had a cast of brilliant and hilarious actors who worked together beautifully and created something truly captivating. So then why didn't more people watch?

The answer doesn't lie with the show itself, but with the network that treated Arrested Development like a thorn in its side that it wanted removed. The network heads did not like the show. They had a lot of problems with the writers because they constantly wanted to push the envelope. The series was heavily under promoted and the worst of it is, they kept changing the time slot to try to improve its ratings. I don't understand what kind of person was in charge of marketing that they thought this would be a good idea.

I'm no expert on Nielsen ratings but if your show is not doing very well, despite critical acclaim and a solid cult fanbase, you need to increase promotions, not move it around until people forget what day and time it's on and give up altogether. This is a show that won five Emmy awards its first season. For Fox, this is quite an accomplishment. But it's not surprising considering they've done the same in the past to much loved shows like Family Guy and Firefly. At least with Family Guy they realized their mistake and brought it back. It is unfortunate that the same cannot be said for all those other shows who were prematurely cut short.
Arrested Development just had the bad luck to be picked up by a network that puts such little faith in their shows.

To this day, however, DVD sales prove that this show was something special- something that deserved a better chance. Now all we have are the hopes that the cast will reunite and at least make a movie to fulfill our cravings for some dysfunctional hilarity. In the meantime, past, current and future fans of the show, myself included obviously, will always have fond memories with the Bluth family.