For starters, I think a lot of the internet needs a swift punch in the face. Kind of like how the season ended. I've been reading a lot of negative reviews, which is fine if they want to be negative because there's a lot to be negative about for season 4, and a lot of these detractors wrote their "scathing" review or formed their opinion of the entire season when they were only 2-4 episodes in. I will never value someone's opinion on something if they don't finish it. In this case, they were not even 20% through with it. I can MAYBE look the other way if you form a valid argument for why you walked out or gave up so early but most of what I read was written after the 3rd episode or so. And a lot of the negative reviews were acting as if their world was coming to an end or something and was very childish.
Now on to my childish review.
The pacing seems weird and that's from a very big domino effect. The length of the episodes are 30something minutes compared to 22 when on network tv. Obviously they have no commercials on Netflix so they are allowed free reign to go as long as they want. And maybe they shouldn't. There were moments when I thought the music was way too loud but then I realized it's because there isn't anything happening on camera. A character is stuttering, someone is walking to/from somewhere, Ron Howard is overly-narrating a scene. It turns out the music wasn't loud, it's just more noticeable because there were a lot of moments of inaction. A lot of filler. It could be blamed on poor editing but I think it goes before that. It seems like having charcter-centric episodes was Mitch Hurwitz's idea from the beginning and it's ambitious but it never clicked. AD is about a lot zany things happening to a lot of characters at once ("once" being per episode and not the entire season) and then ties in at the last 5 minutes of the episode (and not last 4 episodes of the season).
So whatever you want to blame that format problem on (scheduling conflicts, poor editing, overambitious writing) needs to be fixed by season 5. And there will be a season 5. Even if it isn't officially announced, how 4 ended left way too much in the air to end a series on. There will be a season 5 and if there's a movie it will most likely take place after that. And hopefully Mitch Hurwitz will accept some of the criticism and season 5 can revert back to it's original style.
There were WAY too many callbacks to earlier jokes in seasons 1-3. I hope season 5 doesn't callback anything and it's all brand new jokes. I liked just about all of the guest stars. John Slattery's character was great as was Chloe'sFrom24 (will never use her real name). Young Barry Zuckercorn is tremendous too (played by Henry Winkler's son). Terry Crews is great. Everyone was. I liked Kristen Wiig and Seth Rogan too.
The bar for best comedy this year isn't set too high with what's on TV right now. If I would grade this season it would be like B- maybe. This wasn't the best season of Arrested Development but it's easily better than whatever is on TV today. Better than Modern Family. Better than The Office.
