The first time I saw Arrested Development was probably in the early part of 2008 thanks to Hulu having all of the seasons at the time. After seeing it, I thought it was really good -- probably a 9.5/10. That said, I still didn't think it was worthy of all the praise it got (tons of people calling it the best sitcom ever, being possibly the highest rated show on IMDB tied with The Wire, etc).

But then about two months ago, I decided to get the DVDs for all 3 seasons. I wasn't really dying to see them again, but Amazon had them for $13 each and I figured they would be nice to have in my DVD collection. Then a couple weeks later, I was bored so decided to pop in Season 1...I was hooked, even though I saw the show before and generally knew what was going to happen. I couldn't stop watching episode after episode. I burned through the whole series in about a week, and instead of putting it away I just went back to the pilot and started watching it all over again.

The first time around, you miss so many subtle jokes and some hints as to what happens later in the show...
***SPOILER***

Another thing about this show that makes it great is how it mixes so many different kinds of humor. There's something for everyone in Arrested Development. There's obvious humor that even braindead people can enjoy (Gob's chicken dance), there's raunchy humor (Tobias), there's a lot of dry humor that Brits can appreciate, and there are many references to pop culture -- these range from the "Girls With Low Self Esteem" videos which are obviously a spoof of Girls Gone Wild to one episode that references the hell out of Charlie Brown (believe me, it's better than it sounds).

The casting directors for this show are geniuses. Except for The Wire, I've never seen a cast this good. David Cross, Will Arnett, and Tony Hale without a doubt stand out as the funniest main characters on the show. But, the rest of the major characters (counting the three I mentioned, there are nine of them) are all exceptional except for maybe Portia de Rossi as Lindsay. And it doesn't stop there; just about all of the minor characters are hilarious...Barry Zuckerkorn, Bob Loblaw, the Surrogate, Annyong, and even White Power Bill provide some of the funniest moments in the show.

I might be preaching to the choir here, but if you have never seen this show you owe it to yourself to see it somehow (for the rest of the year, hulu has season 1 up for Americans). If you don't like it after the Pilot, don't give up -- give it at least three or four episodes since it takes a while to warm up to the characters.

Arrested Development debuted around the same time as Two and a Half Men. AD has been gone for years, but Two and a Half Men is still going strong. There's something seriously wrong about that.