Justice Is Blind

"Justice is Blind" is the eighteenth episode of the first season of the American television satirical sitcom Arrested Development. It was written by Abraham Higginbotham and directed by Jay Chandrasekhar. It originally aired on Fox on March 21, 2004.

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, George Sr. wants Gob to sneak into Maggie's house for evidence, but he instead sends Tobias, who breaks in while Maggie is still home, hoping to sneak around her. Michael finds out her seeing-eye dog is blind, so Maggie must have been able to see all this time. George Michael confronts Maeby for posing as a terminally ill twin sister Surely.

Plot
At school, George Michael (Michael Cera) questions Maeby (Alia Shawkat) about her second identity, her ‘twin’ Surely, a wheelchair-using sick girl suffering from "B.S." Meanwhile, Michael (Jason Bateman) wrestles over whether to read Maggie's case file when Gob (Will Arnett) comes in, who wants to destroy the file, but Michael points out that it is merely a list of what the prosecution has against George Sr. Lindsay (Portia de Rossi) works on her newest cause of getting the Ten Commandments statue removed from the courthouse, and Michael decides to return Maggie's file unopened. Over drinks, Michael confesses his identity to Maggie, who already knew, and they agree that they cannot ethically continue their relationship, but Michael goes home with her anyway.

The next day, Michael and Maggie leave her house and encounter a police officer, due to Maggie being needed at the office to interview a surprise witness, who turns out to be Buster (Tony Hale). Buster offers inside evidence in exchange for George Sr. (Jeffrey Tambor) being kept in prison and Annyong (Justin Lee) being sent back to Korea, and Maggie quickly realizes he knows nothing. Michael, left with Maggie's seeing-eye dog Justice, discovers that the dog is blind, not Maggie. At the prison, George Sr. meets with Gob, Barry Zuckerkorn (Henry Winkler) and Lucille (Jessica Walter). Gob had earlier swapped files with Michael, saying there are "boxes of evidence" stashed at Maggie's house. George Sr. says Gob should break in and steal the evidence, but Gob passes on the assignment to Tobias (David Cross).

Tobias sneaks into Maggie's house just as she returns home, and he runs to the bathroom and puts on her perfume to cloak his scent. Maggie, wanting to keep up the charade of being blind, passive-aggressively hinders Tobias' attempts to steal the evidence boxes for a while, until she finally gets enough and attacks him with a bat, causing him to panic and spray her eyes with perfume, temporarily blinding her. As the family gathers at the courthouse, Surely Fünke addresses a crowd about injustice and Lindsay's group cheers the removal of the Ten Commandments. As the statue is lifted out by a crane, it falls on Barry's car. In court, Michael attempts to expose Maggie by throwing the Bible at her, figuring she will instinctively duck, and blow her cover, but she still cannot see because of the perfume sprayed in her eyes, and the Bible smacks her in the face and Michael is led away. George Michael decides not to expose Maeby's lie because she credits him as her inspiration. Later, Michael reunites with Maggie, and she has decided to drop the blind pretense and say being struck with the Bible has restored her sight.

On the next Arrested Development...
Barry gets a "sign from God" after the Ten Commandments statue falls on his car, and Maggie is replaced with a new prosecutor.

Production
"Justice Is Blind" was directed by Jay Chandrasekhar and written by Abraham Higginbotham. It was Chandrasekhar's fourth and final directing credit, and Higginbotham's second writing credit. It was the seventeenth episode of the season to be filmed after the pilot, and the fifth of Fox's second episode order for the season.

Reception
The A.V. Club writer Noel Murray praised the episode and it's predecessor, "Altar Egos", 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 37th out of the whole series, saying the subplot was "is hilarious in concept, but underdeveloped." In the United States, the episode was watched by 7.02 million viewers on its original broadcast, a decrease of over 2 million viewers from the previous episode, "Altar Egos", which had an all time high for the series.