Altar Egos (Arrested Development)

"Altar Egos" is the seventeenth episode of the first season of the American television satirical sitcom Arrested Development. It was written by producer Barbie Feldman Adler and directed by Jay Chandrasekhar. It originally aired on Fox on March 17, 2004, and was the highest watched episode of the series, with 9.62 million viewers.

The series, narrated by Ron Howard, follows the Bluths, a formerly wealthy, dysfunctional family, who made their money from property development. The Bluth family consists of Michael, his twin-sister Lindsay, his older brother Gob, his younger brother Buster, their mother Lucille and father George Sr., as well as Michael's son George Michael, and Lindsay and her husband Tobias' daughter Maeby. In the episode, Michael has a deceitful one-night stand with Maggie, a blind prosecutor who is arguing against his father, while Gob marries a woman (Will Arnett's then-wife Amy Poehler) he has just met, and George Sr. uses an undercover FBI agent who has fallen for him for information on the case.

Plot
Michael (Jason Bateman) and the family gather to discuss George Sr. (Jeffrey Tambor)'s upcoming trial, where lawyer Barry Zuckerkorn (Henry Winkler) reveals that they've received a plea offer, which Lucille (Jessica Walters), speaking for George Sr., wants to accept. Cindi Lightballoon (Jane Lynch), an undercover FBI agent, falls in love with George Sr., and tells him that she knows for a fact that he can beat the government's case against him. Lindsay (Portia de Rossi) receives a letter from Maeby (Alia Shawkat)'s school saying that her daughter is failing, so she and Tobias hire George Michael (Michael Cera) to tutor Maeby.

Michael sits down to read the plea, but Gob (Will Arnett) suggests he have a one-night stand with a lawyer instead. As Michael reads the plea, Maggie Lizer (Julia Louis-Dreyfus), bumps into him, and he introduces himself as "Chareth Cutestory," a maritime lawyer, and goes home with Maggie. The following morning, Michael realizes that Maggie is blind, while George Sr. presses Cindi for information about his case, where Lucille catches him and storms away. When Michael comes home, Gob tells him that he had got married a previous during a series of escalating dares.

Michael then has his second date with Maggie, and George Sr. is approached by Cindi, who tells him she knows for a fact he will be set free, but is then revealed that she misunderstood "faith is a facet" for "faith is a fact." At the high school, Maeby pays George Michael to do an essay for her, then runs off. George Michael then attends the fundraiser for "Surely Fünke," where he discovers that Maeby has been collecting charity money by posing as a dying girl in a wheelchair. At the courthouse, Michael meets up with his family, and neither he nor Barry have read the plea deal. George Sr. decides to take the plea even though no one has read it, and the hearing gets underway, where Maggie is the prosecutor. Michael later visits Maggie, and she hands him the Bluth case file so he can advise her about it.

On the next Arrested Development...
Maeby attempts to deposit her check from the Surely Fünke fundraiser, and Gob adapts to married life. Tobias breaks into Maggie's house to steal evidence, where she is revealed to not really be blind.

Production
"Altar Egos" was directed by Jay Chandrasekhar and written by producer Barbie Feldman Adler. It was Chandrasekhar's third directing credit and Feldman Adler's second writing credit. It was the sixteenth episode of the season to be filmed after the pilot, and the fourth of Fox's second episode order for the season.

Reception
The A.V. Club writer Noel Murray praised the episode and it's follow up, "Justice Is Blind", saying "they're a prime example of how [Arrested Development]'s writers, cast and crew can sustain an intricate, comedically fertile, largely self-contained story for longer than just 22 minutes." In 2019, Brian Tallerico from Vulture ranked the episode as the 15th best of the whole series, saying it "serves up hysterical performances and characteristically ridiculous plots". In the United States, the episode was watched by 9.62 million viewers on its original broadcast, an all time high for the series, and an increase of over 4 million viewers from the previously aired episode, "Staff Infection".