The funniest show to ever be cancelled

The funniest and most bizarre show on television got even funnier and more bizarre in its third and final season, going out with a bang and not a whimper. Enough fuss has been made about Fox's decision to cancel Arrested Development midstream, but what more can be expected from the same roundtable that keeps the Fox News Channel going 24/7? The best that can be done is to celebrate the show for what it was, which was much, much more than any comedy currently on air.\nAside from a steady staff of amazing writers, the heart of the show (as with all the greats) is its cast of memorable, if not always likeable, characters. Jeffrey Tambor and Jessica Walter play the patriarch and matriarch of the Bluth family with witty abandon, while the deadpan Will Arnett and gleefully pathetic Tony Hale bake sons Gob and Buster to golden-brown perfection. Portia de Rossi and David Cross always impress as Lindsay and Dr. Tobias Funke, and Jason Bateman deserves special note as Michael, the family's constantly bedraggled moral center.\nEpisode after episode, the writers and cast of Arrested Development continued to outdo themselves with labyrinthine plots, rapid-fire dialogue exchanges, and some of the best physical comedy since the silent era. If Season One kept things on a relatively even keel, and Season Two jolted everything way off-kilter, then Season Three is a balls-out spectacle of ridiculousness, where necrophiliac nurses, killer hair plugs, and Scott Baio all coexist in the same twisted O.C. (but don't call it that).\nExtras gracing this two-disc set include a cache of often-amusing deleted and extended scenes, selected episode commentary tracks with creator Mitchell Hurwitz and the cast, and an appropriately bittersweet look at the last day of location photography for the series. Also featured is another in the series of hilarious Arrested Development blooper reels, which are wasted on most comedy series but sparkle with a hint of mad genius in the hands of a cast and writers this talented and tuned-in to one another.\n285 minutes is far less time than Arrested Development deserved to bring a sense of closure to its legion of diehard fans, but that's all Fox allowed it. Instead, we've been blessed with three more years of The Simpsons and another shitty season of Family Guy to choke down. Negativity and resentment will get us nowhere, however, and at least we have this final, brilliant season of the Bluth family's madcap, acid-tongued exploits to remember them by.