Welcome to a new Sitcom Tuesday! Coverage of Arrested Development will begin next week. In the meantime, I’m excited to set the figurative table by resurrecting another entry from this blog’s decade-long run. Here’s how it works: I’ll provide a link to a piece that I first published several seasons ago, and then I’ll offer a bit of updated commentary, relevant to today…

So, let’s revisit… Short-Lived Sitcom Potpourri Pop-Out – EVERYTHING’S RELATIVE (1999): https://jacksonupperco.com/2023/04/11/short-lived-sitcom-potpourri-pop-out-everythings-relative-1999/

This is the perfect opportunity to once again sing the praises of an all-too-brief series that I covered in a Potpourri Pop-Out classified as a Sitcom Tuesday (which makes it eligible to rerun now!), for Everything’s Relative, which only lasted four episodes on NBC in 1999, was the first sitcom helmed by former Golden Girls and John Larroquette scribe Mitchell Hurwitz, who, of course, also went on to create and spearhead the show we’ll be discussing next week, Arrested Development. In fact, there’s so much of Everything’s Relative in Arrested Development, as it’s another intelligent idea-driven single-cam about a guy with a dysfunctional family — and it even includes Jeffrey Tambor as the patriarch. With a few minor tweaks — and the addition of several major wrinkles, like the high-concept “riches to rags” premise incited by the patriarch’s jailing, and the more inventive mockumentary framing that encourages a fresh, fast-paced, anything-goes storytelling — Arrested Development is essentially the upgraded, more successful take on Everything’s Relative. And studying the latter is thus a joyful experience for any fan of Arrested Development because it really is a stepping stone, with shared attributes that speak to Hurwitz’s writing style — like a brisk, jokey sensibility predicated on madcap, wacky, big ideas, utilizing characters who all have individual ways to be funny. Indeed, even though this show came and went in under a month, I’m comfortable calling it one of the most promising short-lived sitcoms I’ve ever seen, with genuinely amusing episodes and implied narrative potential — later corroborated by what was revealed on Arrested Development. So, if you haven’t checked out my thoughts on the series, click on the link above. It’s a great entry point for my coverage ahead.

Come back next week for Arrested Development! And stay tuned tomorrow for a new Wildcard!