Hi, this is Chris Wade, Slate's podcast and video producer here with a spoiler special podcast on Arrested Development Season 4, the hotly anticipated return of one of the most beloved TV shows of all time.

I'm here with browbeat editor David Hagland.

Hi, David.

Hi, Chris.

And Slate's culture critic, June Thomas.

We each plowed through all nearly eight hours of the new season over this beautiful Memorial Day weekend and are eager to get into it. So I think we'll start by just going around and giving our initial reaction. So David, do you want to start us off?

Yeah, I liked it. It definitely starts off a little slow. And I think the second half, the second, you know, starting

with episode eight or nine or so, I think it starts to pick up some real steam. And part of that

has to do with who the characters are that we're seeing at that point, as we'll get into.

But just overall, by the end, I was satisfied and glad that they had made it.

I also, I feel more or less similar to that.

I am not a big fan of the show.

I re-watched them all just before season four came out, so they're fresh in my mind.

But I was not part of the cult of Arrested Development.

So maybe because of that, maybe because my expectations weren't that high, I had a pretty good time watching them.

I found it fascinating, and I don't know if I would necessarily say that it was great.

I think that I will have to go back and watch it again to really decide if I think that it's good TV or not.

But I think that what it does and the way it plays

with structure and form and how it tells story is something I've never seen on TV before,

and I'm always a fan of that, of innovative things. The way the whole thing is formatted is

like a puzzle where you see the same thing over and over again, and each time you see it,

you get one more piece of what that puzzle was. And the entire thing over and over again and each time you see it you get one more

...