Arrested Development Season 5 Episode 5 Review: Sinking Feelings

This Arrested Development review contains spoilers

Arrested Development Season 5 Episode 5

If season 4 had you feeling like the child of divorced parents, then you’ll be happy to see that the Bluths are back together and in full swing in “Sinking Feelings.”  This one where Michael stays has a little stimmy for everyone, especially if you love to see the Bluths being… well the Bluths. 

“Sinking Ships” brings back some familiar faces. As Michael and George Michael struggle to reconnect Rebel Alley comes back to stir the pot, or does she? It’s kind of hard to understand why this is a storyline that is still happening. It doesn’t matter anyway because father and son eventually find their way back to each other in this episode. And I mean finally, it’s taken a while. 

Meanwhile, the rest of the Bluths are awaiting their Golden Anchor Family of the Year award. Unfortunately, the one familiar staple does not make an appearance in this episode: the banana stand. It’s missing, which has not been explained, but it’s probably in the ocean…again. Gob, however, traded in the banana costume for a white 80s tux and delivers a speech that sends George Sr. floating to the bottom of the ocean and interrupting a rather sweet moment of some maritime bonding between Michael and George Michael who have just reconnected. Folks who wanted to see him off the show, no such luck. Michael saves his father from attempted suicide and the family is all back together, well except Buster who has wound up in jail. 

Baby Buster really has a bit of a mess on his hands this time. Without a mother stapled to his side, the youngest Bluth has managed to get himself tied up in the investigation of a missing Lucille 2. I don’t know why there is suddenly a murder mystery aspect to this show, but I have yet to decide whether it’s a yay or a nay. On the plus side, though, it does bring back Barry Zuckerkorn. While the jury is still out on that, Buster’s scenes in this episode were some of my favorite. Of course, I am biased because the Motherboy champion has always been my favorite. Last season, he was airing on the side of seen and not heard, but this season he’s inching in and I am glad. “Sinking Feelings” gives us another look at Buster going head-to-head with the police, and well that’s always a good time. No grilled cheese sandwiches this time either, though.  

While Buster is in the clink, Tobias is still acting his way through the Bluth family and lands himself in a George Sr./Oscar situation when the cops arrest him thinking he’s Buster. He makes it out okay though, and thankfully so, because we find out that Tobias has had another child this whole time named Murphy Brown. Murphy Brown is his first name. We don’t know his last name yet, but I am guessing there’s a good reason for that, so stay tuned! 

Who am I missing? Oh, that’s right Lindsay. She and Lucille once again find themselves in a mother-daughter spat. Lindsay has been waiting her whole life for a compliment from her mother, and finally gets it when Lucille reads a speech at the Golden Anchor awards that Maeby wrote for Lindsay about Maeby. Are you following? Maeby had another plan up her sleeve to tank her mother’s campaign, so she writes a loving mother-to-daughter speech for Lindsay— at the end of which she’d reveal herself to be a meth addict. But Lucille steals it and reads it for Lindsay. Turns out, all along Lindsay didn’t really care about what Lucille thought of her. So, Lindsay co-opts Michael’s catch phrase and says “I’m outta here” to the Bluths in search of her biological mother. 

That’s about all the goings on of this episode. It’s always nice to see the Bluths all in one place (mostly), but this episode was a little lackluster compared to some of the others so far. If you are a big fan of the Arrested Development callback aesthetic then this has a lot for you — including the return of the kissing cousins. But, aside from all the nostalgia fun, it wasn’t the meatiest of all the episodes. But I give it three Elvis heads out of five.