Spring Breakout

"Spring Breakout" is the 17th episode of season two and thirty-ninth episode overall of the TV comedy series Arrested Development.

Synopsis

The company has a meeting with landowner Cal Cullen, who comments that the Bluths "did not come off well on last night's Scandalmakers." (Clips from Scandalmakers are then shown, including Tobias, as George Sr., giving away his hiding place.) Michael says that they are "scandal-free", at which point Lucille walks in drunk, having taken Buster's pain medication for a hangover and then misreading an alcohol warning as an alcohol suggestion. Cullen refuses to do business with the Bluths, saying that he "couldn't afford to end up on Scandalmakers." Lucille taunts Cullen by doing her "chicken dance" and passes out in her chair. Cullen leaves in disgust and Michael ends the meeting.

Michael suggests to Lindsay that they hold an intervention for Lucille, but Lindsay resists, flashing back to another intervention the previous year. The family had gotten drunk themselves out of fear, and by the time Lucille had arrived, they were too intoxicated to be effective, and it had turned into a party. G.O.B. appears and suggests rehab instead. Michael asks where he was in the meeting, but he replies that he was off for spring break, even though his reputation has been ruined by "that jerk Phillip Litt" filming his seven flubs in a magic act. Tobias appears and complains about being panned for his performance as George Sr. Maeby is ordered to find out how teenagers actually talk and then revise the dialogue in The Young Man and the Beach.

Knowing that Lucille won't go to rehab willingly, Michael offers her a trip to a spa (which the Bluth Co. was offering as an incentive to homebuyers). She cannot take Oscar, because his last pair of pants has fallen apart, so Michael promises to go with her instead. Upon arriving, Lucille realizes that she is actually at a rehab facility and tries to flee, only to be subdued by the guards.

Kitty Sanchez finds George Sr. in the attic, clued in by Tobias's line in Scandalmakers ("Perhaps an attic shall I seek"). Angry about being abandoned in Mexico, she kidnaps him, blackmailing him with a "cooler of evidence." Meanwhile, to get ideas for better dialogue, Maeby joins George Michael at the Banana Stand. A Freudian slip by George Michael reveals his persistent feelings for her. Phillip Litt is using the same area to film his video, Girls With Low Self-Esteem, despite an ineffectual protest led by Lindsay.

Kitty takes George Sr. to a motel and screams that he owes her a child. George Sr. yearns for Lucille, as does Buster, alone in his mother's condo. Buster, unable to sleep, begins to drink from a large box of wine, mistaking it for a giant juicebox.

Michael meets with Cal Cullen again, and wins him over by pretending to have fond memories of Sugarfoot, despite the fact that it was off the air before he was born. However, Kitty interrupts, flashes her breasts, and threatens to "bring this corrupt company down" unless Lucille meets her in a certain bar.

While the family wonders how to get Lucille out of rehab and to the bar, Lindsay complains that her brothers (and Phillip Litt) objectify women. She comes up with the idea for a competing video, Men With Low Self-Esteem. G.O.B. uses Oscar to distract the guards so that they can abduct Lucille, pretending that they're going for new pants. Kitty offers to trade her evidence for a sperm sample from George Sr., and Lucille puts it up to a drinking contest.

G.O.B. finds a cooler in the freezer that looks exactly like the evidence cooler, and he and Michael plan to switch it with the evidence, despite Michael's this to be an ineffective idea. Maeby is frustrated by the immaturity of the teenagers at the Banana Stand. Nearby, her parents try to film Men With Low Self-Esteem, bringing them into competition with Phillip Litt. When Litt accuses Lindsay of being ashamed of her body, Tobias pulls down Litt's pants, exposing him as a never nude. Seeing this, Tobias takes off his own pants, revealing that he's "back into cutoffs."

G.O.B., excited at the thought of spring break, performs a wolf call in the hotel hallway. This inadvertently sets off a response by George Sr., allowing them to find his room. G.O.B. tries to vomit up the handcuff key, while Michael forges the signature of Saddam Hussein on the decoy cooler, promising to turn it in to the police. George Sr. tells Michael to turn it in, saying that the evidence exonerates him.

George Michael finds Maeby talking to a vapid boy. George Michael says that she is like a "delicate flower" and that he doesn't "want her to be plucked by someone who doesn't even care that [she is] blossoming." Maeby says that this is just what she wanted to hear (as dialogue for her movie), and kisses George Michael on the cheek. Unbeknownst to Maeby, this reignites George Michael's feelings for her and he calls up Ann(her?), saying that they need to talk, presumably intending to dump her.

Lucille wins the drinking contest, despite drinking extra between rounds. G.O.B. regains his self-confidence after the successful rescue of George Sr., but then falls into the pool while holding the cooler, destroying the exonerating evidence. When Michael gets home, he finds out from Lucille that the decoy cooler that they left in Kitty's motel room contained a sperm sample from George Sr.

Episode notes

Cultural references

Girls with Low Self Esteem is a parody of Girls Gone Wild, with Zach Braff's character Phillip Litt representing Joe Francis.
The intervention-turned-party scene (particularly the part with Buster playing the piano erratically) is reminiscent of one in the anti-drug film Reefer Madness.
The cooler is signed "H MADDAS" ("SADDAM H" backwards). This is due to the fact that Arabic is read from right to left.
In the surveillance video of Shady Pines when Michael and G.O.B try to get their mother out of rehab, the woman attempting an escape who gets tackled by the guards is supposed to be Diana Ross (judging by the large, curly hair, the white boots, and the instrumental version of "Can't Hurry Love" playing when she makes her escape).
Shady Pines was the name of the retirement community in which Sophia Petrillo lived on The Golden Girls. Arrested Development creator Mitchell Hurwitz used to be a writer on The Golden Girls.
The 'Senior Tadpole' bar is a reference to 'Senor Frog's', a popular chain of bars located in typical spring break locales (e.g. Cozumel, Puerto Vallarta, etc.).
In the scene with the Drinking Contest between Lucille and Kitty, a guy off-camera shouts "she's mixing!" when Lucille takes a glass of wine after doing shots. He also shouts "She's in Rehab!" after the contest ends. This is a parody on how Spring Breakers celebrate everything by drinking.

Hidden/background jokes

Mr. Banana Grabber Mr. Banana Grabber can briefly be seen in the introduction to the fictional show Scandalmakers.
Michael's hair Michael is wearing Franklin's wig in the "intervention".
Franklin Gob can be briefly be seen talking to his puppet Franklin while intoxicated during what was supposed to be an intervention for Lucille.
Buster's hand:
- Buster "plays" the piano in the "intervention" with only his right hand.
- Lucille uses Buster's hook to break a block of ice. Buster is seen shortly thereafter with a stub.
- Buster carries around his prosthetic arm when he's drunk on box wine.
"I want to marry my mother" Buster picks up this magazine briefly when he's left home alone. In a later scene, Buster says that Lucille is better looking than the escorts G.O.B. dates.
When Tobias and Phillip Litt pull down their pants, a nearby girl looks at their legs and starts laughing.
Narrator The narrator of Arrested Development repeatedly comments on the poor narration in the episode of Scandalmaners. He finishes the episode by saying, "And that's how you narrate a story."
Flowers:
- While drunk on box wine, Buster sings into a flower as he lays writhing on the dining room table. Later, when Buster accidentally hits himself on the head with a coconut after his comment on how Tobias "just wants to see boys' Linuses," there's a flower vase behind him.
- Lucille's room at Shady Pines is filled with wilted flowers because the vases are filled with smuggled-in alcohol (a joke that's more obvious in the deleted scenes).
- George Michael tells Maeby that she's like a flower and doesn't deserve to be "plucked" before she blossoms.
The FOX Network: Fed up with an idiotic customer who she is using as a way to get inspiration for her newest movie, Maeby remarks, "Why are we even going after this idiot demographic?", which mirrors one of the conflicts that the writers for Arrested Development had to endure with Fox.
Motherboy: The eponymous song first heard in the episode "Motherboy XXX" plays in the scene depicting Buster in the house, unguarded by Lucille while she is at rehab.
Buster, while drinking Lucille's wine, is listening to the song "Rose's Turn" sung by Liza Minelli, who plays his ex girlfriend Lucille 2. Lucille Bluth listens to the Ethel Merman version of the same song when she has the apartment to herself in an earlier episode.
When Kitty flashes Michael, amid everything else being said Cal Cullen utters disappointedly, "Oh, they're crooked."
Tobias frequently appears under the chimney in this episode.
When George Sr. is shown looking at his medicine bottle, he winks, similar to how Lucille did earlier in the episode. This implies that he also doesn't understand the meaning of the drowsy eye alcohol warning.
When the narrator comments on the "unfocused" nature of the narration in Scandalmakers, the shot of Dave Attell's pants is unfocused.
Lucille tells Michael that the cooler he used for the "switch and bait" (found in the freezer at the banana stand) was where she was hiding George Sr's sperm specimen. It's reminiscent of when Michael accidentally loses $250k when he burns the banana stand when she exclaims, "There were 250ccs of your father in that banana stand!"
Michael tells Gob that switching out coolers will buy them "like, one second?" When Kitty sees that George Sr. is missing, she checks the cooler, which we are told takes place "2 seconds later."

Callbacks/running jokes

Tobias is gay
- When Lindsay says she'll create "Men with Low Self Esteem" Tobias thinks it's a great idea.
- Lindsay and Tobias go to the boardwalk to film Men with Low Self Esteem and Tobias shouts, "Come on! Let's see some bananas and nuts! Oh, perhaps we should just pull their pants off."
- Buster comments on how Tobias "just wants to see boys' Linuses." he previously referred to a doctor having touched his "Charlie Browns".
Scandalmakers -- The Scandalmakers episode based on the Bluths figures prominently into the plot.
Chicken dance -- This is the introduction of Lucille's chicken dance.
Never-nude
- Tobias is seen wearing only his cutoffs in the intervention flashback.
- The affliction is mentioned in relation to how Scandlemakers portrayed Tobias.
- Phillip Litt is "revealed" to be a never-nude.
- Tobias says that Phillip didn't see him at the never-nude convention because he was with the never-nude contingent in Germany. This is a reference to Beef Consommé in which Tobias says that he knows of at least two Germans who suffer the same affliction.
Joy in solitude -- The montage of Buster enjoying having the condo to himself parallels Lucille's scene in Marta Complex.
Magician lingo -- Gob calls Michael a "Howdy Do Dat", a reference to what Magicians call their fans first used by Tony Wonder in Sword of Destiny.
Police brutality -- As Oscar attempts to escape from Shady Pines a security guard can be seen about to club him much like what frequently happened when Oscar was mistaken for George Sr. by the police throughout the second season.
Wolf call -- Gob and Michael locate George Sr. when they hear his wolf call, a reference to his howling in Burning Love.
"I swallowed a key" -- Once again Gob has swallowed a key, a feat first shown in Key Decisions. This time, however, he is able to retrieve the key and use it to free George Sr..
Lucille tells Michael that the cooler he used for the "switch and bait" (found in the freezer at the banana stand) was where she was hiding George Sr's sperm specimen. It is reminiscent of Michael losing $250k by burning the banana stand in Top Banana when she exclaims, "There were 250 ccs of your father in that banana stand!"
No touching! -- When Lucille shoves Michael against the wall he says "No touching," a phrase commonly used when the family visited George Sr. in prison during Season One.
Mr. Manager -- During a clip of "Girls with Low Self-Esteem," a poster next to G.O.B.'s performance reads "Mr. Magician," a callback to Michael and George-Michael's conversation about George Michael being promoted to "Mr. Manager" in Top Banana.

Cameos

Carl Weathers and Dave Attell can be seen in a flashback to the making of Scandalmakers.
Zach Braff as Phillip Litt
Dick Van Patten as Cal Cullen, the potential investor.

External links