In the beginning— pre-show— it’s clear that this started with his dad, but various flashbacks show that his dad became inaccessible fairly early on, so those feelings got transferred to his younger brother Michael. Now throughout much of their adulthood Michael becomes this weird vessel of both Gob’s need for approval from a father figure and a way to express his queerness in a “safe” way (it’s just a dove!)

Flash forward to S4, and Michael has suddenly become the inaccessible one to Gob. In addition to his physically distancing himself from the family, the few times he does talk to Gob he acts basically like George Sr. did— dismissive, despairing and deeply disapproving of Gob’s lifestyle, and Gob is again left without anybody to say “You’re essentially a good person and I love you unconditionally because we’re family.”

More simply, it’s the much-vaunted “YES” that Gob needs to hear.

Now the relationship between Gob and George Michael got touched on pretty briefly in the first series (I can only think of two episodes offhand where it was an actual plot point), but in S4 we get no less than three major scenes of the two interacting, and all of them center on Gob aggressively trying to endear himself to George Michael (one scene happening directly after a failed attempt to do the same to Michael) and George Michael squirming under Gob’s sudden oppressive clinginess towards him. Because Gob is treating him like he used to treat Michael.

So in S4, we have Gob treating his 20 year old nephew with the same reckless affection and need for approval that he used to try to get from George Sr., used to try to get from Michael, used to try to get from the Entourage, and that he finally gets in a healthy way for the first time in his life from Tony Wonder.

S1E18 - Michael appeared in the school play The Trial of Captain Hook. Later in the episode Fakin’ It from season 3, Lucille refers to Buster as “Captain Hook.”

S1E20 - "This party is going to be off the hook."

S2E1 - When Lucille is watching the news, you can hear John Beard mentioning a surprise seal attack and then saying “meet one surprised bather, coming up.” The camera immediately moves to show Buster.

S2E3 - Buster arrives to Lupe’s house, sees the hand chair, and says “wow, i never thought I’d miss a hand so much.”

S2E6 - Buster is playing the claw machine and gets a toy seal. Later when he’s returning home, the narrator mentions that “Buster had gotten hooked playing” that game. 

S2E11- Lucille, Oscar and Buster and in the beach, and when they’re talking, the seal is seen in the background. Later, George Sr. says about Buster “what if i never get a chance to reach out and touch that hand of his again?” And of course, the bench that shows “arm off.” 

I mean

he got a fucking suit and quicken for his birthday and it’s like he just found out maeby’s not his cousin

and he gets a fucking pepsi with breakfast. look at the smile. he looks like he’s just been crowned king of his own country.

Michael Bluth: Moment killer.

the clip from the last day on the AD set in season three where Will wraps his filming and makes his lil mini speech about how much he loved working with everybody and he’s CHOKING UP because why wouldn’t you it’s uber sadness but THEN the clip from the first day of AD season four filming where he’s shouting at everybody “Hey guys! WE’RE FUCKING HERE! LET’S FUCKING—WE’RE HERE!! WE’RE DOING IT!” because baby

(x) Mitch Hurwitz (via ivemadeahugeblunder)

Have I mentioned lately that, if I could sit down and have a drink with absolutely anybody in the world and just listen to them fucking talk about whatever they want to talk about at me, it would probably be Mitch Hurwitz? The guy is a fucking certifiable showrunning genius, determined to the core to get his vision out, and by all accounts he’s entirely humble and genuine, and just the love that goes into nearly every frame of S4 is a testament to all of that.

He refused to do a cheap cop-out with Tony Wonder. He could have made another character, he could have recast Tony Wonder and made up a story about botched plastic surgery, but of course he didn’t. Simply because that’s not how the story goes, and even if it was only by a small margin, it wouldn’t have meant as much if he’d settled for less than Ben Stiller. Mitch isn’t stupid or needlessly difficult; he knows when to pull back his punches and just make a funny reference to executive meddling or budget cuts (“I’ll sit across from you, so it doesn’t look bad!”), but even when another director might settle for less goddamn it Mitch knew that this was not one of those times.

Not because he was being irrationally stubborn, but because he had not yet exhausted all of his options to make his vision come to fruition, and even though that option turned out to be “sit on the footage for three months before we finish up the last two episodes,” well, that’s what it took to give us what is nearly unanimously agreed upon as the best plotline of Season 4.

Arrested Development S1E17 and Happy Days opening credits

After the encounter with Lucille 2 on top of the staircar he’s a lot more beat up:

…with obviously fresh injuries that are still visible the next morning:

GOB saw him like that, and he was presumably caught on film in the house; Sally talked to him on the staircar so she knows he didn’t have those injuries before he spoke to Lucille 2. It could be another thing that leads to either the police or GOB or Michael himself thinking that he’s the killer.

(PS, the band-aid on his head vanishes in the model home scenes and reappears when he’s at Rebel’s house, but pretty sure that’s just a continuity error.)

Just, out of nowhere in A New Attitude, that kid in the ballpit rams him with a plastic toy that gives him a hell of a shiner, and then he gets the shit beaten out of him by Lucille 2, and by the end of the last episode his face looks like it’s been thoroughly tenderized, and it’s so blatant that it feels like there should be some purpose to it.

At first I thought that the facial injuries were maybe there as visual cues for timeline reaons, but what purpose that would serve I’m not sure. Or is it supposed to be a physical representation of how shitty of a person he’s rapidly degrading into by the season’s end? I seem to remember a few other characters (Lucille 2 and Gob) getting similar facial injuries throughout the season as well.

jenni-snake said:

Do you think it’s an editing mistake, or that it’s actually true? Somebody said something about him dating JBJ, which as headcanon I totally support, but don’t find all that likely. 

And I mean, if it was any other show, they’d probably try to explain everything so it made sense, but luckily AD doesn’t have to resort to that, which sometimes turns out to be a bit unnatural and forced. Though it does leave us with many uncertainties…

It’s funny how you loved me

And forgot, so suddenly

It’s funny to everyone but me

This song plays over several points in S4, but maybe most prominently when Michael wakes up from being Forget-Me-Now’d the morning after Cinco and calls Rebel.