Ben Yagoda traces how Arrested Development transformed the trope:
The main thing Arrested has done is take the traditional character-based catchphrase and make it fungible. It evolves and shape-shifts and gets used by different characters and in different situations, episode to episode and season to season, gathering comic and sometimes revelatory power in the process. Season 4’s seventh episode, “Colony Collapse,” had some pretty epic examples of this. (Read no further if you haven’t seen it yet and want nothing spoiled.)
Gob Bluth (Will Arnett) has experienced a series of unfortunate events befitting his homophonic namesake, the biblical Job, not least a love connection with his nephew’s former girlfriend, Ann, aka “Egg,” aka “her?” In a tour-de-force scene, Arnett breaks down and blubbers, his power of speech limited to fragments of catchphrases of his former cocky self, “Come on!” and “This is an [X]-dollar suit” (the latter made more poignant by the fact that he is actually wearing Ann’s bathrobe). As Vulture recapper Zach Dionne aptly put it, “Gob’s brain is short-circuiting with Arrested Development references.”
Albert Ching thinks this elevated the series above its contemporary comedies:
]]>Arrested Development wasn’t a one-dimensional catchphrase-factory—if it was, it wouldn’t have been nearly as embraced or remembered as fondly. And that’s maybe its greatest accomplishment: It made you care about a family that could have been thoroughly unlikeable, but it didn’t achieve that through the usual means. George Michael and Maeby’s potentially incestuous relationship may not have been something audiences rooted for in a traditional sense, but it had its own twisted sweetness to it, and as a result felt more earned than something more calculated to tug at heartstrings. When Gob showed his brother, Michael, that he really cared, it was through a singing, racist puppet. Such was the power of Arrested Development‘s multifaceted approach to humor: It not only furthered the plot and fueled the characters, it also conveyed a subtle sincerity without being maudlin.