Switch Hitter

"Switch Hitter" is the seventh episode of the second season of the American television satirical sitcom Arrested Development. It is the 29th overall episode of the series, and was written by supervising producer Barbie Adler from a story by Courtney Lilly, and directed by Paul Feig. It originally aired on Fox on January 16, 2005.

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, armed with Michael's good ideas, Gob goes to work for their competitor, Stan Sitwell. George Sr. thinks Sitwell is just trying to win the company softball game.

Plot
Michael (Jason Bateman) schedules a meeting with Stan Sitwell (Ed Begley Jr.), president of a rival company. Maeby (Alia Shawkat) has a homework assignment on The Old Man and the Sea, and tries to get George Michael (Michael Cera) to do it for her, but isn't able to get him to do it on time, so she decides to skip school and go along with Tobias (David Cross) as he auditions for the role of "Confidence Man #2". Lindsay (Portia de Rossi) has been taking Teamocil, mainly for the side-effect of a decreased sex-drive. When Stan arrives, he and Michael discuss a joint venture to build 450 homes, and he agrees on the condition that one of the homes is given to a disadvantaged family. Michael goes upstairs to run the deal through George Sr. (Jeffrey Tambor), who shoots him down, saying that Sitwell was just trying to figure out the batting order for the softball game, and Stan hires Gob.

Michael regains being president at the Bluth Company, and George Michael visits him, suggesting that they use Ann (Mae Whitman) in this the softball roster since it's a league requirement to have women on the team. Michael says they should keep Ann as a backup, and Gob comes into Michael's office looking for his old job back since Sitwell started to ask him for work ideas. At the studio, Tobias is talking up the Fünke name around the water coolers while Maeby calls George Michael from a studio exec's office. While in the office, she's mistaken for a studio exec and passes off her homework to a studio reader. After burning through all of Michael's ideas in a single meeting, Sitwell praises Gob, and asks him to play on their softball team.

Michael is forced to put Ann on the team, and Lucille is forced to ask General Anderson (J. K. Simmons), whom she knew during the Vietnam War, to have Buster withdrawn from the army, and agrees after she sings "Downtown" to him. Michael meets Gob at his office and asks him to throw the game, explaining that Sitwell only hired Gob to win the game and make the Bluths look foolish. Back at the studio, Maeby is mistaken for a studio exec by Mort Meyers (Jeff Garlin), and gets her The Old Man and the Sea script looked at, and also gets Tobias a job at the studio. At the softball game, Gob is throwing the game until Sitwell gives him a heart to heart talk and he decides to start playing better. Gob and Michael see that George Sr. is disguised as the umpire and is trying to fix the game. Michael causes the Bluth Company to lose the game, and Michael tells his father that he's president whether George Sr. likes it or not.

On the next Arrested Development...
Maeby gets Tobias a job as a security job, and General Anderson tells Buster he will be joining him in shipping out after Buster gives him a shoulder massage.

Production
"Switch Hitter" was directed by Paul Feig, and written by supervising producer Barbie Adler from a story by Courtney Lilly. It was Feig's third directing credit and Adler's fourth writing credit. It was the seventh episode of the season to be filmed.

Reception
The A.V. Club writer Noel Murray praised the episode, saying it "begins one of [his] favorite storylines in the entire run of Arrested Development". In 2019, Brian Tallerico from Vulture ranked the episode 52nd out of the whole series, saying it "stands poor at the center of season two’s mid-season sag." In the United States, the episode was watched by 5.78 million viewers on its original broadcast.