Sad Sack (Arrested Development)

"Sad Sack" is the fifth episode of the second season of the American television satirical sitcom Arrested Development. It is the 27th overall episode of the series, and was written by supervising producer Barbie Adler and directed by Peter Lauer. It originally aired on Fox on December 12, 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. is concerned about the romance growing between his twin brother Oscar and Lucille, and the prosecutor turns up new evidence supporting the Bluths' "light treason" charge.

Plot
George Michael (Michael Cera) reports to Michael (Jason Bateman) that he got a B- on his last math test, and Michael decides to get him glasses. Tobias (David Cross) announces to Michael that he's heading off for the gym, which makes Lindsay (Portia de Rossi) paranoid. Maeby (Alia Shawkat), determined to get closer to Steve Holt (Justin Grant Wade), begins ordering items in order to have Steve deliver them to the house as part of his job, and Lindsay develops a crush on him. George Sr. (Jeffrey Tambor) tells Michael he came back only to see if Lucille (Jessica Walter) is still his, and if she's in love with Oscar (Tambor), George Sr. will go away for good. Michael meets with the new prosecutor, Wayne Jarvis (John Michael Higgins), the man who almost represented the Bluths in "In God We Trust", and offers Michael immunity if he hands over George Sr.

Buster (Tony Hale) can't scale a wall which he needs to climb to pass in the army. Elsewhere, Buster tries to convince Gob (Will Arnett) to be a motivator for him. Michael sets out to see if his mother and Oscar are really in love, and Lindsay decides to aggressively coming on to Steve Holt, but Maeby sabotages that by telling Steve that Lindsay is actually her transgender father, which only furthers Steve's interest in Lindsay. Wayne reveals to Michael that they tapped into the Bluth Company email server and found satellite images of the Iraqi countryside, and believes that George Sr. was building over WMD bunkers to hide them. Lindsay proudly announces that she's set up a lunch date with Steve Holt, and Michael heads up to the attic and finds his father missing once again. George Sr., wearing a remarkably bad wig pretending to be Oscar, asks Lucille if she loves him.

The photos that Wayne Jarvis obtained finally made their way to the public, and are seen by several branches of government due to the Patriot Act, leading Buster's army division to leave for combat without him, so Gob inspires Buster to finally scale that wall. Upon overhearing Maeby tell George Michael about her own crush on Steve Holt, Lindsay decides to move away from Steve. George Sr. returns to the attic, where Michael is waiting for him. Michael has his meeting with Wayne Jarvis, where Wayne threatens Michael with the Iraqi photos, but Barry Zuckerkorn (Henry Winkler), seeing the photos for the first time, realizes that they are actually a close-up of "balls". The picture was of Tobias' testicles, which he inadvertently photographed and emailed to the company while playing around with the cell phone Gob had given him. George Michael complains about his new glasses, and Michael accepts that his son's eyesight is fine.

On the next Arrested Development...
Oscar returns to find a now distant Lucille, which is what attracted him to her in the first place, Lindsay reconciles with Maeby, and Tobias returns to being a never-nude after his testicles are leaked.

Production
"Sad Sack" was directed by Peter Lauer and written by supervising producer Barbie Adler. It was Lauer's first directing credit and Adler's third writing credit. It was the fifth episode of the season to be filmed.

Reception
The A.V. Club writer Noel Murray praised the episode, saying "While not as taut or sharp overall as “¡Amigos!” and “Good Grief”—hey, they can’t all be two of the best sitcom episodes of all time—“Sad Sack” is even more pointedly political". In 2019, Brian Tallerico from Vulture ranked the episode 35th out of the whole series, saying "The second season started with such a brilliant flurry of hilarity that it had to slow down at some point … and it was right around “Sad Sack”". In the United States, the episode was watched by 6.28 million viewers on its original broadcast.