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of our idea of goodness? He argues that our morality is reactive: we develop our sense of goodness, based on what we don’t want done to us, out of resentment (ressentiment) of those who could make us suffer. By defining their actions as evil, and then seeing them as evil, we develop the concept of goodness: “good” is what those who can cause suffering don’t do. This makes inactivity—or weakness—seem to be something good; as Nietzsche writes, “weakness is being lied into something meritorious.”10 By “manufacturing” our virtues, we condemn and seek to destroy our aggressive, active nature: Not asserting ourselves becomes “patience,” denial of our desire becomes “unselfishness,” and not retaliating when injured becomes “forgiveness.” There’s something vicious in our virtue, for Nietzsche, as it demands that we delude ourselves about what’s good and about who we are. Like Gob, we take the strong wine of human virtue and turn it into water.

The deeper problem with this morality is that we can’t deny ourselves. Like George Michael’s desire for Maeby, our desires and drives need to be expressed, whether we want them to or not. Like everything that lives, we have a will to be—to desire, to act, to assert ourselves (this is the root of what Nietzsche calls the will to power). When we try to suppress our aggressive instincts, we only turn them inward: Rather than make others suffer, we inflict suffering on ourselves. It’s this self-destruction—the will “willing its own nothingness” that leads to what Nietzsche calls nihilism, the destruction of human life, creativity, and value.11 Morality comes to contradict life—arresting our development, if you will.

The Kantian idea of freedom epitomizes the problem that Nietzsche sees: free will confuses us, because it makes us think that we’re sovereign, independent subjects, when in fact we’re obeying someone else, reacting against them, or suppressing our own desire. As we obey the values and standards of others, we become trapped in the “slave morality” that Nietzsche sees as so dangerous. Only through an act of “self-overcoming,” realizing our history and the different forces that shape who we are, can any real freedom be achieved. Yet this requires creating one’s own values, rather than simply following the rules of morality laid down by Kant or our society.

In many ways, Arrested Development exposes the sort of self-contradiction that Nietzsche highlights within our quest to be moral. Buster’s courage in going to Iraq is really a cowardly avoidance of a deposition; Lucille’s adoption of Lindsay is just another competition with Stan Sitwell, Lindsay’s altruism is another form of self-assertion, and even Michael’s “keeping the family together” seems to be, in the end, just trying to do what his parents didn’t do. Our virtues, to paraphrase St. Augustine (354–430), are nothing but glittering vices.

For Nietzsche, the “self-overcoming” that will create new values can only happen if we recognize the history that makes us who we are. We are, as he puts it, “hybrids”: the result of multiple, conflicting systems of value, with diverse and contradictory desires. It’s only by accepting these desires, rather than denying them, that we can begin to create a new sense of who we are. Like Michael and George Michael, as they sail away from the family in the last episode, it is only by coming to terms with who we are that we can hope to begin anew. By living with our contradictions, rather than trying to suppress or deny them, we may be able to put them to a different use—a comic one, like a “gay science,” to use Nietzsche’s term, that opens a new future.

Contradiction and the Form of Comedy: There’s Always Money in the Banana Stand

“A joke is a play upon form.”

—Mary Douglas12

“I think that makes the joke on Gob.”

—Michael Bluth13

Gob is the joke. His attire, mannerisms, ego, and attempted magic build a form, a caricature through which the show plays on societal expectations and norms, twisting them to draw out humor. As a comedy of moral contradiction, there’s no