The Ocean Walker
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| Arrested Development episode | |
| "The Ocean Walker" | |
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| Episode No | 3AJD06 |
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| Airdate | December 5, 2005 |
| Writer(s) | Jake Farrow and Sam Laybourne |
| Director | Paul Feig |
| On the next: | “Michael relives a wedding nightmare.” |
| Guest star(s) | Charlize Theron as Rita Leeds Bob Einstein as Larry Mittleman Dave Thomas as Uncle Trevor |
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Arrested Development Season 3 |
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| All Arrested Development episodes | |
"The Ocean Walker" is the 46th episode of TV comedy series Arrested Development.
Contents |
[edit] Synopsis
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The plot summary in this article or section is too long or detailed compared to the rest of the article. Please edit the article to focus on discussing the work rather than merely reiterating the plot. |
Michael was sharing some very important news with his parents. He was getting married. George Sr. and Lucille thought this was a very bad idea, but Michael defended his relationship. But what Michael didn’t know is that mentally, Rita had only progressed to a first grade level, a fact that was masked by her English accent. Michael told the family the wedding was in one month.
Concerned that his family may have been making sense, Michael decided to talk to Rita. At the model home, Michael ran into Tobias, who was now getting around in a wheelchair because of numbness in his left arm and legs. Michael attributed this to Tobias’ recent hair transplant. Maeby then mentioned to Michael that she loved Rita because Rita had helped her with a little project the previous evening. It seemed that Maeby needed help with a script she was working on for her secret studio job. The man was in L.A., his love was in Tokyo. How to get them together? Rita suggested having them walk. Maeby thought this was brilliant since nobody could critique it for fear of looking stupid and set to finishing The Ocean Walker.
Meanwhile, Lindsay and Rita, quickly becoming the best of friends, returned from a shopping excursion. Michael took Lindsay aside and expressed his concerns about the lack of physicality in the relationship, wondering if Rita was just using him for a green card. Lindsay suggested getting a hotel room for the evening.
And G.O.B. began to prepare a magic trick for the wedding. Rita oversaw and told G.O.B. that she loved magic and begged him to do a trick for her. He tried to shoot her with a fireball, but only succeeded in dousing her with lighter fluid, a feat that Rita still found remarkable. G.O.B. realized he needed to get Rita involved in his wedding trick somehow. Rita bragged that she could hold her breath for 20 minutes.
Michael then caught up with Rita and invited her to a hotel for the evening. Rita said she needed to get her jammies and tiny teddy first. And so George-Michael drove Rita to Wee Britain. That’s when he first became concerned over her behavior. While Rita packed for her sleepover, her Uncle Trevor warned her about what that truly meant. Rita complained that she wanted to have some grown up fun, but Uncle Trevor said she wasn’t ready for a sexual relationship. Rita retorted that she was since she had seen Uncle Trevor’s secret magazine, Bumpaddle, and that she and Michael were getting married. Forbidding her, Uncle Trevor put "invisible locks" on the door, so Rita stormed to her room.
At the same time, Michael was sprinkling rose petals on a hotel bed and awaiting Rita's arrival. He called his father to brag that he and Rita were at a hotel and very much in love, so George Sr. asked his son to put her on the phone. After claiming that she was in the shower and then watching two episodes of E! True Hollywood Story with his father over the phone, Michael finally admitted that she wasn’t there. And she still wasn’t there the next morning when Michael and George Sr. awoke, phones still to their ears.
Michael drove to Wee Britain to call off the wedding. He asked Rita to tell him to his face why she never showed, but she said the invisible locks made it impossible to open the door. So Michael decided to scale the fire escape to rescue the beautiful, sweet mentally challenged woman he had fallen in love with without realizing she was mentally challenged. Pulling her through the window, Michael then used Buster’s hook on the overhead Poppins wire and, with Rita on his back, gently descended to the ground. And so, reunited with Rita, Michael told his parents he’d be getting married tomorrow.
But that’s when George Sr. and Lucille had a surprise visitor, Uncle Trevor. He was looking for Rita, adamantly declaring that she wasn’t getting married. That there was no way Michael was getting her millions simply because she was mentally challenged. George Sr. and Lucille focused more on the millions part. Uncle Trevor went on to explain that Rita owned all of Wee Britain, as well the Wee Britain in Cleveland, which Uncle Trevor feared she might lose if the plans for her idea of a floating town, Sea Britain, came through.
George Sr. said that Michael wasn’t after her money, and Lucille remarked that Michael probably didn’t even know about her condition. Uncle Trevor admitted that most Yanks are fooled by her accent, and the plastic surgery Rita recently had also masked her condition (the show cuts to a shot of Charlize Theron from Monster). Uncle Trevor vowed to stop this wedding, even if he had to search every hotel in town. George Sr. and Lucille directed Uncle Trevor to Legoland. But when he left, they said they had 24 hours to find Michael and Rita and get them married.
Later that night, Michael was at the hotel with his bride-to-be. She told him she was ready for sexual relations, then brought out her Bumpaddle paddle. But then George Michael knocked on the door. George Michael struggled with his words at first, then finally told his father he had been videotaping Rita lately. He showed Michael footage of Rita eating the plastic fruit in the model home. Repeatedly. Michael finally realized that Rita was a few steps slow, then thought back on the mountain of evidence he had missed over the past weeks.
Back in the room, Rita was ready for their adult fun, but Michael was now trying to find a way out. He suggested waiting until after they were married. The next morning, however, as Michael prepared to let Rita down gently, he was surprised by his family, which was throwing him a surprise wedding. Lucille drummed up excitement for the day, but when George Sr. made an aside about Rita being retarded, Larry the surrogate repeated it. Michael couldn’t believe his family would stoop so low, then realized Rita must be rich. George Sr. fired Larry. Michael caught up with Rita to set everything straight.
He explained that things couldn’t work between them and she realized she had to go back to England with Uncle Trevor. After a sad goodbye, Rita walked away over the pool. Michael asks G. O. B. if that was a part of his magic trick but he says no. In the "next time" segment G.O.B. reveals, "It's my illusion!"
[edit] Episode notes
- This is the first Arrested Development episode where the "On the next" segment is a continuation of the previous scene.
[edit] References
- Mr. Roboto - Buster dancing to Styx’s Mr. Roboto (“Domo arigato, Mr. Roboto”) is a reference to Tony Hale’s early work in a commercial for the 1999 Volkswagen Golf where he’s seen dancing and singing to the same song.
- Alice in Wonderland - Michael refers to Rita and Lindsay as Tweedledee and Tweedledum (identical characters from Alice in Wonderland) when they enter the house dressed alike. There is a double-meaning with this joke, as Rita is referred to as Tweedledum by Michael. The fact that he calls her a name with the word "dumb" in it is an inadvertent jab at Rita's intelligence from an unwitting Michael. The narrator comments on this, saying, "Michael didn't mean it in that way. How could he? He didn't even know."
- Being There - The ending to this episode heavily references the Peter Sellers film Being There, in which a mentally disabled man walks across the water, not knowing he can't. The plot of Being There also concerns the political elite mistaking the man's limited cognitive functions for words of wisdom.
- E! True Hollywood Story - Michael and George Sr. watch two E! True Hollywood Stories while on the phone, waiting for Rita to show up.
- Blossom - George Sr. watches an E! True Hollywood Story that appears to be about the star actress of the show, Mayim Bialik, judging from his comment, "Wow, that Blossom really blew up, huh?"
- Hot Potato - The song that Rita plays in the stair car is "Hot Potato", by popular children's performers The Wiggles.
- Legoland - This is one of many times that The Bluths express interest in this California theme park located near San Diego.
- Uncle Trevor is seen wearing a Legoland shirt in the episode as well, having taken George Sr. and Lucille's fake tip-off that Rita and Michael were headed there.
- Monster - The photo of Rita before getting plastic surgery is in fact a photo of Charlize Theron as serial killer Aileen Wuornos, an Oscar-winning role that Theron played in the movie Monster.
- Deliverance - Rita is shown playing the banjo much like the boy, Lonny, in the film.
- Parliament As a test of Rita's intelligence, Michael asks her how many Houses of Parliament there are in the British government. She responds with seven, Michael says, "Does sound about right" and the narrator twice interjects and says that there are actually three. The intentional, jokey mistake (ironically, though Rita failed the intelligence test, so did the others, a satirical commentary on America's reputation for being unschooled in international matters) is reiterated later by George-Michael. In fact the Parliament is composed of two chambers: the House of Commons and the House of Lords.
- Howard Johnsons When George Sr. said, "cheap waitress at a Hojos", he was referring to the Howard Johnson chain of resteraunts. Lucille retorted with, "It was Stuckeys", referring to a roadside convenience store chain.
- Tiny Teddy When Rita refers to her stuffed animal as a "tiny teddy" he thinks she is referring to the lingerie known as a teddy.
[edit] Hidden/background jokes
- Bubuman - Michael mentions that Rita refers to a doctor as a "bubuman". Rita is in fact calling the doctor a "Boo-boo man." Michael incorrectly assumes that Rita's childish term is, in fact, a commonplace Britishism. Similarly, using a commonly cited example of a Britishism, she refers to elevators as "up boxes" instead of the correct term, "lift".
- Scary Movie 2 - Tobias' insistence on getting back in his wheelchair alone is a reference to David Cross' role in Scary Movie as paraplegic Dwight Hartman, who refuses the aid of others.
- See Britain - Rita's idea for "Sea Britain" is a variation of "Wee Britain" in the show. Both fictional place names are references to the UK's successful "See Britain" advertising campaign. Ironically, the real Great Britain is an island, and is in theory, already a "Sea Britain".
- The Ocean Walker - This is the first mention of Maeby's film project "The Ocean Walker". Although Maeby says she's going to have to stop production on The Ocean Walker, we see an online banner advertising it in S.O.B.s.
- Early in the episode, George Sr. and Lucille lie to Uncle Trevor by telling him to look for Rita and Michael at Legoland. Later, at the end of the episode Uncle Trevor can be seen wearing a Legoland shirt underneath his jacket.
- After Michael is struck by the Mary Poppins doll again, there are two signs visible in the background. The first is an authentic-looking street sign from an area of Central London, reading "Leicester Square, WC2, City of Westminster". The other stands on the sidewalk and reads "Please stay off my landing port... I'm not the tourist killing sort... ...But if you have a working girl to kill, Please let her stay while I do my will", presumably again referencing Jack the Ripper, as Michael does in For British Eyes Only.
- Rita – When Michael tells his father that Rita is mentally handicapped, he stutters, "I think she might be ... reta- retarded", where "reta-" is pronounced as "Rita", indicating that "Rita" is a back-formation of retarded.
[edit] Character cameos
- This episode marks the last appearance of Charlize Theron and Dave Thomas as Rita and Uncle Trevor (although still photos of Rita later appear in Prison Break-In and Development Arrested).
- Bob Einstein's character, Larry Mittleman, is fired by George Sr. in this episode, but he appears again as a surrogate for someone else in S.O.B.s.
[edit] Foreshadowing/future references
- Hair Plugs - Tobias continues to get sicker from his hair plugs in this episode, falling over and being confined to a wheelchair (though denying there's anything wrong with him).
- Wedding nightmare - Throughout this episode, the wedding incident at the end is repeatedly foreshadowed in several of G.O.B.'s lines, followed by dramatic music. However, the foreshadowing is in fact used to mislead the audience into thinking that something horrible might happen to Rita, rather than Tobias.
[edit] Goofs
- Cameraman - At the 01:55 mark, a cameraman can briefly be seen standing outside the staircar during Buster's "Mr. Roboto" flashback.
- At the 07:26 mark when Michael goes to sit down with Rita, a cameraman can briefly be seen on the left of the screen (this is in Widescreen format only).
- At the end of Mr. F, Michael and Rita leave to get married before Trevor finds out, and Trevor figures this out from the note that Rita leaves. However, at the start of this episode, Michael and Rita are no longer on the run from Trevor, and Trevor appears shocked when Rita tells him that she's going to marry Michael.
- Star Wars Kid - Unfortunately, the video tape with George-Michael on it fell into the hands of the FBI at the end of Sword of Destiny. It seems unlikely that the Bluths would have gotten it back, or have another copy.
