Arrested Development: “Queen B.” (Episode 4.10)

Lucille Bluth has always been one of the strongest characters on Arrested Development. As the Bluth family’s mean, boozy matriarch, Jessica Walter has consistently stolen nearly every scene she’s been in, but while she’s always good for a laugh, Lucille’s never been the most three-dimensional. It’s probably why she’s one of the handful of characters to only receive one episode centered around them this season—and perhaps why she gets fleshed out a little bit towards the end.
“Queen B.,” or Lucille’s Arrested Development, opens with a clip of The Real Asian Prison Housewives of the Orange County White Collar Prison System. The show (which I’m surprised isn’t already actually airing on the Bravo network) chronicles the Jade Dragon triad—Noh, Olive and Mrs. Oh—as they butt heads with the newest member of their gang, Lucille. “Anyone who comes after me is gonna be one unfortunate cookie,” she says, before cracking herself up and pointing out her pun. From there, we flash back to her pirating of the Queen Mary, and it’s revealed she turned the boat around to give Lucille Austero the finger. Her alibi is that Buster fell off the boat and she turned it around to save his life.
As she awaits her trial under house arrest, she and Buster hit a few rough patches. He delivers her toast with hook holes in it and threatens himself with “it sure would be a shame if something were to happen to your pretty little key witness,” and Lucille remains her normal, domineering self. On the eve of her trial, she goes to grab a few of her possessions in case things don’t turn out in her favor, and she discovers her family’s been labeling her stuff so they can divvy it up when she’s gone. The family’s all absent for the trial as well, and Lucille 2 is the only witness to show up. Of course, her questioning quickly devolves into a hilarious argument with Lucille 1, and Lucille 1 finds herself facing three-to-five years behind bars at a country club prison.
It’s there that she convinces the Chinese (specifically, Olive Garden, a member of her new gang) to foot the bill for the wall on the border. But after an assassination attempt involving a sharpened package of uncooked ramen (which she escapes by flinging hot water on it), Lucille agrees to check into Austerity—the rehab clinic owned by Lucille 2 where Tobias is currently serving out his court-ordered work release program as a therapist.