"This was Arrested Development"

All good things must come to an end, and, last night, the funniest television show ever, period, came to its end--and what a finale! The final four episodes of "Arrested Development" ran in a two-hour block. The show had drifted a little earlier in the season, but the episodes last night were among the sharpest and funniest of the entire run. The Bluth family satirized the Terry Schiavo controversy, and the war in Iraq (a lot of war satire, and it was razor-sharp funny), Court TV, among other things, and they managed to give the Fox network another kick in the ass through a couple of snarky references to "Skating with Celebrities." I have a nasty cough, and I thought I was going to die coughing on several occasions.

The show came full-circle in the final episode, with the Bluth family having a boat party, this time on the Queen Mary. Instead of saving the day as usual, however, Michael and George Michael sailed off into the sunset on a small yacht as the SEC's speedboats chased after the rest of the Bluth family. Ron Howard's voice-over said, "this was Arrested Development." Then, in a brief epilogue, Maeby was trying to sell the family's story to an unidentified Hollywood Mogul. For the first time in the series, Ron Howard appeared on camera to say that he didn't see it as a series, but maybe as a movie. Hot damn! An AD movie! That would be very cool.