Arrested Development (TV series)/Headscratchers

• The staircar, or namely its' continued existence as such. At mid-decade prices the body would fetch at least $300 as scrap metal, enough to cover the cost of replacing it with a used pickup box. Surely there'd be a scrapyard somewhere in SoCal that would make the swap? Once converted to a pickup, the resulting truck would not only be more useable (Cargo space! Lots of it! No more hop-ons!) but also more saleable.
  • Somehow, I can't see the Bluths driving a pickup truck. I think they would rather have the staircar.
  • To follow up on the previous question, what the heck is a hop-on?
  • A hop-on is someone who hops on the staircar to get a ride. It is similar to a live-in when they have the cabintruck in season 3.
  • "Watch out for the hop ons. You're going to get hop ons."
  • Rule of Funny. It's also possible they just didn't think of that.
    • Likely given this family's Rich in Dollars, Poor In Sense tendencies. Would they even know where to scrap anything?
  • After the stink Michael's materialistic family rose over the idea of having to drive the staircar around, just imagine the fuss they'd make over a $300 pickup truck.
• The Sudden Valley model house is located in the middle of nowhere and the house's pipes aren't connected to anything. Where's the running water coming from?
  • The line is that the drainpipes aren't hooked up. The water could be functional.
• How does Tobias change his cutoffs if he can never be completely nude?
  • That's why he has the sock. He puts it on, changes the cutoffs, then (if George Michael's look of horror is any indication,) takes it off.
• Every year, some teenagers dump the banana stand in Newport Bay, and it has to be rebuilt. So why doesn't Michael know about the money inside the walls?
  • Becuase George sr. always took care of that. Michael was always second on the scene. Or Kitty snuck it into the stand in the dead of night.
  • It's possible that George Sr. didn't keep money in the banana stand since it was built, he only started keeping it there when he started taking the risks that got him thrown in jail. Or he moved it about? I know he says "there's always money in the banana stand" but he could just be trying to come up with an innocuous way of hinting at the money there, rather than being totally accurate.
• In the final episode we find out Lindsay is adopted, in fact it is revealed she actually three years older than what she thought she was. How were George Sr. and Lucille able to hide her age while the kids were young when supposedly she and Michael were twins?
  • What probably happened is that by the time that Lindsay and Michael were old enough to question their parents, they could pass it off as girls growing faster than boys. Gob doesn't even remember growing up with Lindsay until Michael reminds him. Finally, Lucille always insults Lindsay as being fat-- which caused Lindsay to believe that rather than wondering why she was bigger than Michael.
• Does GOB live at the model home with Michael, or does he just spend all his time there? If the former, where did he live before the show started?
  • In Season 1 he seemed to alternate between staying on the family's yacht and shacking up with one woman or another.
  • I always pictured him in a lighthouse.
• In the episode "Sword of Destiny", the old guy in the Chinese herbal tea shop sold GOB the, well, Sword of Destiny despite the fact that it's obviously a katana (hint: It's Japanese). Is this ignorance on the writer's part? How about the fact that he just sold a supposed rare artifact to a complete stranger? The old man was just messing with GOB and got a quick buck from his ignorance.
  • He works at a herbal tea shop. It's called the Sword of Destiny. It's not a real artefact, it's just a cool trinket he keeps in his store to impress the rest of us who aren't sword experts.
• If the Sudden Valley model house's pipes aren't connected to anything in the basement, where does the house get its running water?
  • The exact line is that the drainpipes don't go anywhere. The model home pumps water into its fixtures, but the waste just drains into the basement.
• Senior, inspired by the play of lights on the wall, "converted to Judaism" in prison. In prison. Now, if memory serves, there's a surgical component to that conversion...
  • The conversion isn't exactly serious: he uses a piece of shoe as a yarmulke and by the end of the second series he's converting to Christianity. He just Did Not Do the Research.
• A running joke in season three refers to the word "pussy" apparently being an affectionate British term for a kind and sensitive man. This British troper says huh? I have never heard it used in that way in my entire life. Perhaps it existed with that meaning in older works, but certainly nowadays it's used in the same way as the US uses it - in reference to a weak/cowardly person or a woman's nether-regions. A humungous case of Did Not Do the Research, or a Genius Bonus that's gone over my head?
  • Neither; it was more or less intended to be a joke about British slang being incomprehensible to Americans. Michael constantly uses supposedly British slang that is in fact British, but not for what he was using it for.