In a recent interview with Joel Keller of TV Squad, actor/comedian David Cross opined that the prospect of a big-screen cap on the TV comedy Arrested Development will never become a reality. His reasoning was that the considerably large cast and creative team of the series is too scattered, old and committed to other projects to entertain the possibility of a return to the Bluth family epic that made many of them famous. Especially for the youngest members of the cast, this is true. Michael Cera, who has been labeled (somewhat unfairly) as the movie's biggest opponent has a full-blown film career these days while Alia Shawkat, who played Maebe Funke, is set to co-star alongside Ellen Page in a new cable series called Stitch N'Bitch. But there are plenty of other reasons an Arrested Development movie won't, and probably shouldn't, happen.

I'm on record on this very blog as being one of the growing number of AD cult fans and I was irrationally excited to hear that my sister and her husband have recently jumped on that particularly bizarre bandwagon as well. I'd encourage anyone who's even moderately interested to give the series a fair shake. It really is one of the most unique, consistently funny and well-cast shows in history. That doesn't mean a last hurrah on the big screen is a good idea.

Arrested Development is a show that builds upon its own old scripts to amplify its pathos and humor. Watching episodes from the extremely truncated third season is a significantly different experience than getting used to the show's odd style in its earliest hours. It became increasingly apparent by the end of its production that AD wasn't getting a fourth season and that, at least at the time, no viewers but the hardcore fans were still watching. The result was an incredibly dense string of inside jokes for the people who supported the show from the get-go. This kind of slow build simply won't translate to a two-hour chunk of cinema. I don't doubt the ability of the show's now dispersed writers to come up with powerful new jokes or the cast's ability to make them work, just that the end product won't be the same as the show we love.

I think a big reason why fans have been clamoring for an Arrested Development movie is that the third season consisted of just 13 episodes, a full nine fewer than the first season. The conclusion felt rushed, probably because production constraints necessitated it, and many of the concluding jokes looked like cliffhangers. Maybe I'm in the minority, but I actually thought AD's ending was not only fitting, it was actually satisfying. Would it really be appropriate for any story involving the Bluth family to end cleanly? Would we actually like any of these characters if they truly learned from their mistakes and therefore became less ridiculous? Any conclusion a movie would provide would be either unfitting or just another cliffhanger.

There's nothing wrong with loving a TV show and if there's one show that deserves a loving fanbase, it's Arrested Development. But as the saying goes, "If you love something, set it free." Arrested Development may never come back to us, but at least we have a comedy without blemish to re-watch and love again.