Arrested Development is known for being a big comedy with many characters and subplots as we have seen in the previous episode. That being said, "My Mother, the Car" is a smaller, more focused episode. We get little snippets of all the characters, but this episode focuses mainly on Jessica Walter and Jason Bateman. Walter's Lucille is the series evil 'villain' with a drive to control the entire family and business, and she's at her most evil here. Even though her character is deplorable, the show manages to find sympathy for her. Finding sympathy in despicable characters is hard to do, but creator Mitchell Hurwitz pulls it off very well, especially here. In addition to the mother/son dynamic, there are several other things of note that occurred here. GOB is one of best sitcom characters in all of television history, and this episode furthered that notion. Also, we see a very popular shirt from Lindsay and George-Michael continues his cousin-loving with his new favorite movie: Les Cousins Dangereux.
The episode begins with Lucille saying she wants to throw a lavish birthday party for herself, but Michael denies her wants. She convinces Lindsay to convince Michael to throw a surprise party for her. Of course, no one shows up. Michael berates his family, and tells them they better show up to the next party. Did they show? Nope. On the way home, Michael allows his drunk mother to drive-even though she's not a good driver and she was even featured on the show World's Worst Drivers. It's no surprise that she hits a guy with a car. Michael is knocked out by one of Buster's artifacts and can't remember the incident, and Lucille makes it out as if it is Michael's fault. Meanwhile, Lindsay keeps visiting George Sr in prison with her 'slut' shirt hoping to get noticed, but little does she know George Sr paid a fortune to keep the prisoners silent. George-Michael continues fawning over his cousin with a new French movie that happens to be about cousins falling in love. Finally, GOB decides to turn the family's yacht into a loveboat and decides to go to South America.
Overall, I had a great time with this episode. The clever jokes are still there, and I love the quality of the dirty jokes. Generally, I feel shame when it comes to jokes regarding rape, incest, etc-but wow, these jokes are so good here. The scenes where an older couple visit GOB's 'loveboat'=classic. In addition to the laughs, this film has a mystery feeling to it as the majority of the episode focuses on Michael putting the pieces together ala Scooby-Doo style. This is a smaller, more tighter episode of this series, and it's a fun watch.
My Grade: A-
