Arrested Development (TV series)

Arrested Development is a character-driven comedy television series about a wealthy and dysfunctional family. The show is presented like a documentary, complete with narration, archival photos, and historical footage. Although set in Newport Beach, California and Balboa Island, it is primarily filmed on location around Culver City and Marina Del Rey.

Continuity

One fact about the show that particularly pleases fans is its constant and complex use of continuity. It will regularly feature callbacks to previous episodes, both in the form of references and when scenes will often parody scenes in early episodes.

Related Topics:
Continuity - Callback - Parody

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Similarly, the show will often use what creator Mitch Hurwitz termed a "call-forward", wherein plots or events will be foreshadowed, for example: there are several references to the loss of hands in the first and second seasons, even before Buster actually loses his hand.

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Oftentimes these running gags, such as none of the characters knowing the Spanish word for brother or each family member having their own "chicken dance" (that looks and sounds nothing like a chicken), or background jokes (like a Cornballer machine shown in Maggie Lizer's apartment) will be lost on new viewers, and sometimes even missed by regular viewers until repeated viewing. These jokes now are regularly discussed on internet forums.

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