Arrested Development is great. There I said it. You agreed. Let's move on.
The show is such a thick cut of well-seasoned show steak, that if you cut off just a tiny bit of it, you're gonna get mind constipated for the night. This episode alone had 2 sub-plots to its already tangential plots of the over-arcing sub-plots of the series as a whole.
Let's take a look at one of these sub-plots. A perfect gift of logical absurdity that not only connects to the other plot lines seamlessly but, amps up the pace of the entire show.
Episode- Best Man for the Gob (season 1, episode 19)
Sub-plot: Dr. Funke's 100% Natural Good-Time Family Band Solution
After Tobias' urging, Michael (within the joke of sycning the band name with the narration) urges Lindsay to join the family band she, Maeby and Tobias played together in back when they lived in Boston. Lindsay does not want to do it, and hated the band because it got her hooked on medication. Maeby, thinking of herself, does want to get the band back together so that she can spend less time with her parents. The entire plot is hinged on Maeby. She, through a childhood of having horrible parents, recognizes and manipulated the situation to her advantage. It's very sad, actually. George Michael just wants to be in the band because it sounds fun, and because of his crush on his cousin. Which is even sadder. You can also replace the base word sad with funny, in those last to usages.
Tobias, however, is proud of the band, and is not surprised to meet a fan, who just so happens to be Gob's wife. He even provides some background, and holds our first mirror to the prescription drug industry, "Sadly, Teamocil has been discontinued. The sense of wellness it created in relationships was merely the first sign of complete pituitary shutdown."
The band gets back together for a drug expo show at the hotel where Gob's bachelor party is happening, and where George Michael and Michael are staying for their father-son fishing trip. The band, about ready to perform, breaks up because Lindsay is irritable because the drug she taken has a side effect of delayed irritabilty, and at the fact that they are "dressed like it is the 60s" when "it's the 21st century we should be dressed like its the 80s". (Maeby leaves the band because she again recognizes the situation and decides in her best interest, which is to just leave.) In a fun bit of awareness, the stakes are raised (and the climax to the sub-plot is set up) with a slow motion reaction when Tobias finds out that his parking won't be validated if no one performs.
In the 3rd and final scene of the solution plot, we get tidied up nicely. The commentary on how corporate and uninspired the artists who work for a drug company actually are with a cliche fawning folk ballad duet entitled "Teamocil", which features the line "There's no I in Teamocil, at least not where you'd think", proving that every detail these writers give themselves is perfectly thought out and executed.
The plot is rapidly moved forward and set up to its triumphant conclusion in song by a quick earlier exchange in the episode, as Gob's wife saves Tobias from solo-singing a duet by playing the song about a drug that affected her so deeply she would recognize the singer several years later and therefore have the gummation, flare, and ballsiness to cut through the crowd in song.
Wrapping things up nicely is the third heat that makes this joke such a well-oiled machine, George Michael using his wood block and developed rhythm (inspired by punctuality) comes in and delivers the spot-on parody of drug taglines. The similar drugs to take instead have similar togetherness names- "Grouphug" & "Bondat", or you can "consult your own wellness guide". With a cherry on top of Tobias kicking George Michael out of the band, likely due to his artistic integrity being ruined if he had a wood-block in his act.
The ripple effect reaches the A-story as Gob's wife tells Gob that she is in love with Tobias, his brother-in-law, but she pauses incorrectly after saying brother. Gob, vulnerable from the current issues he has with his father and jealous of Michael and currently being humbled by him, is reminded of Michael being in love with Marta, and feels betrayed by his younger brother and takes his aggressions out on him with a punch knocking him out cold. Thus begins the divorce process between Gob and Gob's wife. All this paragraph was summed up in 3 lines of dialouge in about 8 seconds.
