\Arrested Development's"" April 17 season finale may signify the end of the critically-acclaimed series. Despite its numerous awards, its low ratings have damaged the series. However, a dedicated group of fans are working to keep the show alive.
The Fox Network, which broadcasts the show, has not committed to a third season of the fan favorite and probably will not make any announcements until its ""upfront"" presentation on May 19. Furthermore, the season order was cut down from 22 to 18, in order to open up a slot for the premiere of ""American Dad"" on May 1.
The fan protests have taken on a unique form-""Arrested Development"" fans sent several gift baskets to FOX President Peter Liguori. Contained within these baskets were numerous handwritten letters, printed out e-mails and numerous ""Arrested Development"" inside jokes, including banana stress balls, pirate stickers and feather boas.
A website, www.saveourbluths.com, has also been created to help organize other fan involvement plans.
Katherine McKee helped organize the gift basket campaign, along with www.saveourbluths.com founder Bryant Liu.
""I feel the gift basket probably had some amount of impact,"" McKee said. ""We wanted to give the letter and the banana balls as nice of presentation as possible so that it would make an impression when it got there, because network executives are human-they will notice if something seems funny or clever.""
Other fans find hope in the website www.getarrested.com. This website features an online petition to save the show with over 85,000 signatures. However, getarrested.com differs from most online petitions, because Fox actually set up the petition to gauge audience reaction to the show.
While it never obtained strong ratings, ""Arrested Development"" was always a critical darling, earning numerous high marks in the press. It also was the first Fox sitcom to win the Emmy for Outstanding Comedy series, as well as Emmies for writing and directing. The show also earned series star Jason Bateman a Golden Globe for best actor.
UW-Madison Associate Lecturer of Communication Arts Caryn Murphy actually used ""Arrested Development"" as an example of quality television in her Communication Arts 351 class.
""We used ['Arrested Development'] to talk about innovations in the sitcom television genre, and changes in how the sitcom is filmed,"" Murphy said. ""It breaks with all these established forms of the situation comedy and tries to do something really new with the format.""
According to Murphy, the gift basket campaign has precedence in saving previous series. In the 1994-'95 season, both ""My So-Called Life"" and ""Party of Five"" faced cancellation. A dedicated group of fans of both series started up letter campaigns to save their shows. While ABC axed ""My So-Called Life,"" Fox decided to keep ""Party of Five.""
Murphy feels the campaign, as well as Fox's programming possibilities, might help to save ""Arrested Development.""
""I think [""Arrested Development""] has a pretty good shot considering where Fox programming is right now,"" Murphy said. ""I think they're going to try moving away from their reliance on reality-based programming and try to build their fictional programming back up again. Maybe 'Arrested Development' could be a prestige show to help them start to do that.\
