Arrested Development and Philosophy_ They've Made a Huge Mistake - Kristopher G. Phillips [8]
Similarly, Lindsay brags about keeping the house clean, but the two times she claimed to clean it she actually tricked someone else into doing the job (Lupe the first time, and Tobias—Mrs. Featherbottom—the second). Whenever she begins to see the ugly truth of her life, Lindsay immediately descends deeper within the cave. When she and Tobias finally admit to each other that their marriage is not working, she quickly switches gears. After an admittedly delusional suggestion of Tobias’s (“it never works; these people somehow delude themselves into thinking that it might but—but it might work for us”), Lindsay proclaims their relationship an open marriage. She then happily engages in an imagined competition with Tobias over who will manage to have an affair first, even though neither of them do more than brag and scheme. Lindsay guards carefully against ever having to face her life for what it really is—and she’s happy because of it.
Tobias: “You Blow Hard.”
Tobias is perhaps the saddest member of the Bluth family, though he rarely recognizes this himself. He usually manages to glide along, deeply, happily self-deluded. Even more so than Gob, Tobias’s professional identification is simply in his mind. Like Gob, Tobias has no reason to believe that he’s any good at his chosen profession. After a few failed attempts to land work, Tobias is happy to spend most of his time on the couch. He blissfully wallows in his conception of himself as a misunderstood actor who strives for work, while actually watching bad TV and experimenting with his wife’s wildly overpriced beauty products.
Tobias twists every situation to better match what he takes himself to be (an actor) and what he takes himself to be doing (searching for his breakthrough role). Despite good evidence to the contrary, Tobias insists on understanding his gym buddy, Frank, as anything but what he really is. When it becomes clear that Frank is not interested in him sexually, Tobias hears “agent” and assumes it to mean “talent agent.” He misunderstands Frank as saying that he works for the CAA (Creative Arts Agency), when in fact he works for the CIA (Central Intelligence Agency). He interprets Frank’s request that he be a mole as Frank wanting him to don a giant mole suit and act out a role.13 Common sense tells us that we should understand ambiguous words in the most reasonable way, given the context, but Tobias’s single-minded desire for the world to conform to his dreams leads him to contort his understanding of simple information in such a way that his own delusions are not threatened.
Tobias’s sexual orientation is a running joke and a continuing mystery in the show. It isn’t clear whether or not Tobias is gay because Tobias himself doesn’t know. He’s a tragic character, because it’s clear that he does love his wife and daughter (this is undeniable when you remember that, after being kicked out of the house, he becomes Mrs. Featherbottom to spend more time with them).14 The fact that outing himself would result in the end of his marriage is compounded by Tobias’s deep sexual repression, of which his never-nude syndrome is one manifestation (it’s exactly what it sounds like, and there are literally dozens of them). His level of repression suggests that Tobias would find having a sexual relationship with a man just as challenging as with his wife. We’re also told that he and Lindsay do, on extremely rare occasions, manage to have enjoyable sex. So, while Tobias isn’t clearly gay, he’s certainly unaware of his own sexual nature.
Despite these extremely deep-rooted problems, Tobias has worked himself into such a high level of denial about his issues that he understands himself as actually