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“Now the story of a wealthy family who lost everything, and the one son who had no choice but to keep them all together.”

It was Arrested Development. I was never one to openly admit such a love for a mere television show, but this habit was changed with this Arrested Development because it was more than just any television show—it was an extraordinary experience. Arrested ran for a mere three seasons and fifty-three episodes on the Fox network, but in that time it was able to blossom into the smartest, most creative, and most hilariously written sitcom ever.

To devout fans like myself, every season of Arrested Development was a season-long piece of genius. Granted, the show’s basic (very basic) synopsis about a “crazy, dysfunctional family” sounds terribly generic and hackneyed, but creator Mitchell Hurwitz was able to turn it into something never seen before.

When George Bluth, Sr., patriarch of the prominent Bluth family and CEO of a development company is arrested for what was originally believed to be just fraud, his son Michael is faced with the difficult task of controlling his family.

“Difficult” because of whom exactly he has to deal with. There’s his mother, Lucille, a seldom-sober and cold-hearted socialite, his shallow, materialistic sister Lindsay and her closet-homosexual husband Tobias, and his older brother G.O.B., a magician (no, seriously) with visions of grandeur. There’s also Michael’s son, George Michael, the perfect example of any awkward teenager conflicted with his love for his may-or-may-not-be-biological cousin, Maeby.

Michael is the only level-headed one of the group, but even he finds it hard to not cut and run when his father admits that he “may have committed some light treason.” Indeed, it is later revealed that George made deals to build houses for Saddam Hussein in Iraq. Of course, he “thought it was the Soup Nazi” and told him he “admired his work,” but treason charges aren’t that easy to fight. Thus lays the basis of the greatest show in the history of network television.

I’ll be the first to admit that Arrested Development is not for everyone. This show is not for Average Joe sitcom watcher who enjoys a good laugh track to actually tell him when to laugh at those hilarious jokes. This also isn’t for those who can’t stand to actually pay attention to a show for the entire thirty minutes; jokes in this show aren’t simply one-liners, they are built up and called back later in the episode. In fact, callbacks were ultimately made to prior episodes and prior seasons, rewarding the loyal viewer.

So this was probably why Arrested Development wasn’t given the fair shake it deserved. Despite its winning five Emmys in its initial season, including Best Comedy Series, the ratings never took off. Season Two saw a cutback of four episodes (from twenty-two to eighteen), and the mere prospect of a Season Three seemed to be in limbo. It was received, but with a paltry thirteen episodes. Things did not look good. As the ratings continued to slide, Fox all but pulled the plug.

But that doesn’t mean they didn’t go out in style. The show has made even the FBI look ridiculous, having the bureau believe pictures of Tobias’ private parts to be Iraqi bunkers hiding weapons of mass destruction. Every word out of Tobias’ mouth, in fact, seemed to be a double entendre (“I just blue myself,” in reference to painting himself to perform with the Blue Man Group), G.O.B. is forever politically incorrect (“I found a way to make money with our Mexican friends from Columbia!”), and Lucille is as unloving as a mother can be. All the while Michael is the straight man, playing off of his family perfectly.

It was tough being a fan of a show that was forever toyed with by the Fox network—episodes were postponed, timeslots relocated, and there was occasional confusion as to when the episodes would actually air. Still, the waning episodes felt all the more rewarding as they became more self-referential. This proved to further alienate any new viewers from jumping in, but for the loyal fans that had fought to Get Arrested since the beginning, Mondays at 8:30 proved to be the greatest thirty-minutes of television each week.