Arrested Development Forums

In one of the later episodes - season 2 finale maybe? - GM and Maeby are at the Dangerous Cousins American remake protest, I think, or maybe it happened in their room? Anyway, Maeby says that they had to make them not biological cousins for the American version because it was too controversial. I wonder if that's a bit of self reference? It's odd that they threw that line about the test tube into one of Lucille's rantings right in the beginning of the show, maybe had the narrator mention it once or twice, then leave it alone until the very end of the series. Did the network force them to alter the pilot because they were afraid of the controversy? Did they want to save the adoption angle for the end, or was that tacked on too after they got canceled?

This show tends to do a metric ton of foreshadowing with their planned plot twists, I'm not sure if they were finishing planned storylines or just throwing it together. Thanks.

Of course it's a self-reference. They do it all the time...

For example, towards the end of a second season, when Michael is upset that developers now want 18 instead of initially ordered 22 houses, that's a reference to the network backing down on the initial order of 22 episodes and now want 18 episodes.

I think it's actually making fun of another movie. There was a popular American movie in the nineties called Cruel Intentions that was based on a French film called Dangerous Liaisons. Some things were changed in the American version to make it more socially and commercially acceptable.