Arrested Development (TV Series) Amigos (2004) User Reviews

Gene was far from the best. This episode is closer to it, though.

[gizmomogwai · 10/10 · 24 November 2008]

The third episode of season 2 continues the storyline of the Bluths looking for their fugitive father George who escaped from prison. Thanks to a private investigator named Gene Parmesan, they find out George went to Mexico, and they go to that country to pick up the stair car and hopefully find George. GOB is left out of the plan, though, and hires a bounty hunter named Ice to find out what his brother Michael is up to. The storyline is rich; Ice goes from a mission to keep an eye on Michael in Mexico, but ends up watching Lindsay in California while Michael goes back to Mexico, much to GOB's frustration.

This episode is the first to focus on the fact that, throughout the series, none of the Bluths seem to have friends besides each other. Here, GOB is feeling down about being friendless, and searches for someone in the family to spend time with. (This episode notably predates the introduction of the puppet Franklin, who as we see later, is really GOB's best friend.) As someone who never has had a lot of friends, I found this story enjoyable. Much of the humour of the episode, however, comes from Ann. The incestuous lust between George Michael and Maeby goes on the back burner in season 2, though it is joked about here when Michael comments on how George Michael can't date Maeby. Nevertheless, Hurwitz finds in Ann a joke to adequately (and amazingly) fill the void left by the incest subplot. Her lack of personality and plain looks makes Michael forget her, and call her Ann Hog and Plant, and- in the ultimate slap in the face- abandon her in Mexico. It was all delightfully inadvertent, but it's amazing she didn't break up with George Michael here instead of in the next episode. With a lot of great laugh out loud jokes in this episode, including the running joke about Tobias having to go to the hospital, and Lucille's rare enthusiastic reactions to Gene, Amigos emerges as one of the best episodes of Arrested Development. The laughs make up for the slightly forced feeling of Michael and GOB's talk at the end.

Amigos

[lassegalsgaard · 10/10 · 14 July 2022]

If I've discovered anything about this family throughout the first season, it's that there's absolutely nothing healthy about this family. The relationship they have with each other would be enough to make certain friends kill each other, and if it wasn't because they were related, I'm sure that they'd all be dead at this point. They're mean-spirited towards each other and they try to tell themselves that they have a lot of love, which I'm sure they do, but it's hidden under a big layer of absolute disgust. I don't know if this has anything to do with Mitchell Hurwitz and his own family, but I hope for his sake that it's not as chaotic as this. He's been able to make a show here that completely works on its merits and have strengths in both comedy and drama, but most of it, because of the family dynamic. This second season has been incredibly chaotic so far, and we've only just begun. I'm not really sure where it's going, but I'm almost sure that it can't end in any place that is any less chaotic than it is currently. If this episode indicates anything, I'm right in that specific prediction. This episode was a lot of fun, but also had a lot of great development for many of the characters, while not really getting them any further in their development, given that they start out the episode being pseudo-horrible people and end that way too. It's just the writing that makes this episode really special.

Hurwitz has this gift of making all the characters out to be idiots. There's absolutely no ounce of them that makes them able to work together at all. There are so many conversations where the characters are just speaking over their own heads and having two different conversations at the same time, and the fact that it's funny every single time is a great testament to Hurwitz abilities as a writer. Writing comedy is not easy, but he makes it seem so effortless because he has such a grip on these characters and their ambitions and their ego-centric personality disorders.

The storylines in this are all hilarious. First of all, the entire bounty hunter/P. I. part of the episode carried so much of the humor. The fact that everyone were excited every time Gene came in with his weird disguises was hilarious, and even after the fifth or sixth time, they still manage to make it funny. The character of Ice also carries a lot of laughs with him, especially because of the subplot with Lindsay, proving once again that she is a horrible and very self-centered human who doesn't even care if someone beats up her husband if it's not about her.

At the same time, there's a real realization here with the character of Gob. I've been thinking about the fact for a few episodes now that he really doesn't have a lot of friends. Most of the people he hang out with are women he has sex with. I think the episode, underneath all the jokes they made on his behalf, actually touched on a very core element of Gob's character, which is his loneliness. They've done this in previous episodes and his relationship to Michael, but it was touched upon in fine fashion and jokes in this.

And that also jumps into the performance aspects with Will Arnett truly killing it in this episode. He's depression arc is so funny and only gets funnier with his instant shift in tone when he thinks that Michael is bailing on him to go to Mexico. There's a lot of different dimensions to this character and I think Arnett nails every single one of them. The same with Jessica Walter, who continues to excel as the horrible Lucille Bluth. Never has negligence or indecency been as funny as it is with her, and Walter completely disappears into this horrible woman.

"Amigos" is one of the funnier episodes of the season so far, mostly because it doesn't focus much on character development, but on pure fun. There is some development and it's very good, but the ridiculous ideas explored in the episode with the whole Mexico trip is what brings the magic out in this one.