'Recurring Developments' Is the Ultimate Inside-Joke Machine for 'Arrested' Fans
Arrested Development Day—the holiday we made up for Netflix's season four digital dump—is less than two weeks away. Do you have a 53-episode catchup marathon in you? Didn't really think so. But you probably did want to watch the first "Hey, brother" (that's season one, episode seven) or maybe all the episodes with some frozen banana stand action (early- to mid-season two). So the good people at the digital firm Beutler Ink built up a site called "Recurring Developments"—a viral visualization that its creators call "a service for the Arrested Development fan community." And we are grateful.
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Recurring Developments, quite simply, lists your favorite Arrested Development gags and connects them to all the episodes in which they appear. But as Buetler Ink creative strategist Chris Doty told The Atlantic Wire in an interview this morning, there's a bunch of data, too—or at least thorough fanboy homework involved. The idea for the project had been gestating in Doty's head for about a year, but development started in earnest in November, when everyone knew Netflix was bringing back the show, just not exactly when. Doty, who saw the series for the first time about four years ago, re-watched each episode—with a notebook. Other team members also pitched in, and William Beutler, president of Beutler Ink, said he "spent every waking hour of the last weekend spent doing quality assurance and copy edits." Then came javascript implementation from another shop, Red Edge.
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Beutler explained that Recurring Developments, in part, also grew out of an earlier project, "Infinite Atlas," a map of the places in David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest. Both the DFW masterwork and the cancelled Fox comedy have passionate fan bases, of course, but "in the case of Arrested Development," Beutler said, "what they lacked was a concrete way to actually sort through that data and actually see for themselves how that works and how the jokes and the episodes relate to each other." Since the site launched Tuesday afternoon, Beutler said, he's already noticed fans remarking how data points have surprised them. For instance, Buster's "I'm a monster" cry only appears in three episodes, which run in succession.
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Prepare for a succession of Arrested Development Internet goodies in the next 11 days before Netflix drops all 15 episodes of the final season on the Sunday before Memorial Day. Executive producer Ron Howard tweeted about how he got a video reel from Tobais Fünke, who also has a website titled "Insert Me Anywhere."
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