Arrested Development and Philosophy_ They've Made a Huge Mistake - Kristopher G. Phillips [86]
George: Well, I could ask the guys to leave, but, uh . . . you know, they’ve been locking the doors lately. I don’t know.
Gob: I’ve made a huge mistake. [“Key Decisions”]
Of course at this point we may say: “Only now that you can’t use a private bathroom do you realize that you made a mistake?! What about recognition of the injustice performed against Marta, or against Michael by making him an accomplice to this exploit by taking her to the “Daytime Desi” award show?!” But, Aristotle makes an important distinction between an active wrong and a wrong committed unintentionally.
Those we might label “unjust,” Aristotle tells us, must have some grasp of the injustices they have committed, and Gob clearly lacks this. However, we see Gob utter his line again later, after proudly telling Marta that he wants to stay with her and that they will be together for a long time. She leaves, and he immediately admits the error. In this instance, it seems, he has knowingly deceived her. His boastful nature has once again landed him in the position of admitting a “huge mistake.” He can’t seem to find the Aristotelean mean of “truthfulness” and “proper pride” between these two extremes.
In the next episode, called “Marta Complex,” we witness a hilarious love triangle (or perhaps a love rhombus, if you include Buster’s crush) escalate after Michael makes a toast to the family.5 Michael embeds a proclamation of love to Marta within this speech. She is moved and realizes she has made a huge mistake, for it is actually Michael she loves. Gob unwittingly reports this to Michael the next day:
Gob: Michael.
Michael: Hey.
Gob: Great speech last night.
Michael: Really? What did it inspire you to do, kill somebody?
Gob: Getting there. Marta’s cheating on me.
Michael: What?
Gob: Yeah. Can you believe that?
Michael: That’s crazy, Gob She’s not a cheater. If she were to cheat, I’d like to think she’d cheat . . . you’re the cheater.
Gob: That’s how I know all the signs. Last night she was all distant and weird. Wouldn’t let me make love to her on Mom’s bed. I don’t even want to tell you what she wouldn’t let me do to her in the car. And then today, I overhear her talking on the phone about somebody, all super silently, all in Spanish.
Narrator: In fact, Marta was on the phone with her mother talking about Michael.
Marta: No es el Gob el que yo quiero. Es el hermano.
(Computer beeping.)
Marta: Hermano. (Subtitle: The brother)
Gob: And she kept using this guy’s name like, “Hermano.”
Michael: Let me tell you something, Gob. We’re going to track this Hermano down, okay? And we’re going to nail him. Because if anyone’s going to go out with that girl, it’s going to be one of us.
Gob: Right. Me.
Michael: And I’m okay with that. [“Marta Complex”]
Gob is livid. Yet, this makes little sense, considering that he’s been unfaithful all along with various women, including “Legs,” the bottom half of the woman from the “saw-a-lady-in-half illusion” in the episode “Storming the Castle.” These actions, in connection with the many other vices that Gob demonstrates, would be enough for Aristotle to deem him wicked, not because of any particular act, but due to Gob’s failure to use his rational faculties toward flourishing. He does not have the disposition to embody the excellence of character that Aristotle called justice, which he described as
that in virtue of which the just man is said to be a doer, by choice, of that which is just, and one who will distribute either between himself and another or between two others not so as to give more of what is desirable to himself and less to his neighbor, but so as to give what is equal in accordance with proportion; and similarly in distributing between two other persons.”6
Gob’s inability to balance his responsibility for the wrongs he has committed and his desire to seek revenge against