It's just the best season of the best TV show ever...

Instead of recapping all the episodes of Arrested Development Season 2, let me just go over the characters really quick, and talk about some of the recurring subplots.

George Bluth, Sr. started the Bluth Company doing real estate, got rich, but was in jail in Season 1. In Season 2, the family discovers that he illegaly built houses in Iraq with Saddam Hussein. He's manipulative yet somewhat likable.

Lucille, his wife, is an alcoholic who's mean drunk and "mean sober too" as one of her sons puts it. While George is on the lam, she's having an affair with his twin brother, Oscar, a stoner ex-hippie.

Lucille has three sons and a daughter. Lindsay is that daughter and her marriage to ex-psychiatrist Tobias (David Cross) is on the rocks. They are exploring an open relationship so they don't get a divorce and of course, those things never work. They are horrible parents to their daughter, Maebe, who cons her way into a job at a film studio sometimes telling her parents she's going on a field trip to Sacramende. Lindsay has three brothers (actually, 2 and a half, more on that later): G.O.B. (the idiot), Buster (the weird one), and Michael (the normal one. Sorta.) Michael's son is named George Michael. Got that all? Good! Here's some of the things that make this season so funny...


Buster & the Hook
In the midst of the Iraq allegations, a Michael Moore type confronts Lucille and Buster on the street. Lucille exclaims, "We're loyal Americans" and enlists Buster into the army. Buster does all he can in the physical to fail, including saying, "My linus is shaped like a lobster tail...without the shell" but he fails at failing too. To defy his overprotective mother, he goes into the ocean before leaving for the army. In the ocean, a seal with a yellow bow tie bites off his hand. Tobias claims that could never happen, unless it had acquired a taste for mammal blood. Turns out G.O.B. used a seal in one of his acts and dressed it with a yellow bow tie and fed it cats before releasing it into the ocean. He goes out to hunt that seal to remove the incriminating bow tie but finds out it's hard to hunt seals with cats.

Oscar and Buster
Turns out Buster isn't really Michael and G.O.B.'s brother. He's a result of an affair by his mother with her husband's brother, Oscar. When George Sr. is in hiding, Oscar comes to live with Lucille and rekindles their romance. And Oscar's always dropping hints about him being Buster's real father but Buster is just so clueless that he never gets it and Lucille just rolls her eyes whenever this happens. Also, a dramatic sound effect plays.

Buster: "He'll stay with us!"
Lucille: "No, he won't!"
Buster: "You're the one who always says I need a father figure."
Oscar: "Yes, a father figure..."

Blue Man
Tobias gets depressed because for some reason he can't have sex with his beautiful wife (and the show constantly hints that he's gay) and sees an ad for the Blue Man Group. He thinks it's a support group and shows up to the show and gets the acting bug. He's always trying to become a blue man understudy and because of that, there's random blue paint all over the set. Also he says stuff like, "So I'm afraid I blue myself for nothing."

George Michael & Maebe
George Michael is in love with his cousin, Maebe. She cons her way into a job at a film studio and always tries to get GM to do her work so he gets to read the script "Dangerous Cousins", a film about cousins in love. He's constantly thinking she's hinting at something and he gets into plenty of awkward situations...

Michael: "Your cousin is a great girl. Too bad you can't date her..."
George Michael: "You mean, you'd be okay with that?!?!?!"

Michael "They're not a family. They're just people with our nose. And Aunt Lindsay."
George Michael: "You mean she's not really my aunt?!?!?!?"

G.O.B.
G.O.B. is an idiot. And a horrible magician.

Ann
Ann is George Michael's very bland, plain girlfriend. And everyone in the family is disappointed by George Michael's choice in girls. When Michael tells G.O.B. and his father that Ann is his son's girlfriend, they have the same reaction: "What, is she funny or something?" She's pictured in the school yearbook but it actually says "Not pictured" under her picture, a fact Maebe is constantly bringing up. The family leaves her in Mexico because they all forgot she was with them. Plus, everyone keeps calling her "Egg".

George Michael: "I get so distracted. She's so pretty."
Michael: "Do you? Maybe it's your eyes..." and then sends GM to an eye doctor.

Solid as a Rock
The Bluth company is alleged to have illegaly built houses in Iraq. G.O.B. then stupidly hires a business model with the slogan "Solid as a Rock" which sounds a lot like "Iraq" at the end.

Literal Doctor
When Buster loses his left hand, the doctor tells the family, "He's going to be all right" leading the family to celebrate.
When George Sr. escapes from the hospital, the doctor tells them, "We lost him" causing the family to mourn.
When Tobias (who has painted himself to be part of the Blue Man Group) is ok in the hospital, the doctor says, "It looks like he's dead" which causes them to mourn until Michael smartly asked, "He looks like he's dead or he is dead?"

Previews
Each episode has a little preview of the next at the end. Usually they're just kidding. Those clips are always over the top and hilarious. The best part was when they showed a preview of an episode where Buster looses his hand. I was like, "That's never going to happen!" They got me.

Henry Winkler
is Barry Zukerkorn, the worst lawyer in the world.

Barry: "Can i have a moment alone with my client?"
Barry: "Did you follow any of that???"


I could go on and on about this show. About Ice, the party planner/bounty hunter, about Sitwell, the hairless man, Traci's maternity clothes, Pop Pop gets a treat, "who took the cap off my f*cking Glisten?!?!?!", G.O.B.'s chicken dance, Girls With Low Self-Esteem, never-nudes, the cornballer, Sally Sitwell, and Afternoon Delite. But how about this. Just watch the show. And if the show doesn't seem funny, believe me, it's a LOT funnier in context. Like, try watching Season 1 first and get to know the characters. Season 2 was definitely the peak of this show. It would always just keep going over-the-top and I kept thinking, "This show is probably going to jump the shark pretty soon." Like when Buster got his hook, I thought the show would turn into just cheap jokes. But Season 2 never does that. It's only probably the best season of any show ever.

Season 3 is another story, so if you're seeing this show on TV now and thinking, "This is only mildly funny", don't be fooled.