Netflix comedy is all arrested, no development

The first time I watched “Arrested Development” reminds me of the first time I drank a cup of joe.

The show’s rapid-fire banter, its subtle running jokes, the bizarre ensemble of unlikable but compulsively watchable characters and the exceedingly clever meta in-jokes peppered throughout it all made for a new television experience. Like that coffee, I found the show exciting and energizing.

As any caffeinedrinker knows, however, having the right amount of coffee is key. Too much, after all, leads to a dull, insistent headache.

Netflix released eight episodes of “Arrested Development,” comprising the second half of Season 5, last week. Many have suggested this might be the final batch of episodes — and I pray they’re correct.

The show has fallen out of favor twice since Netflix revived it. The first black eye came with Season 4 in 2013, seven years after its cancellation after three seasons on Fox in 2006.

Showrunner Mitchell Hurwitz and his crew attempted a radical experiment in the streaming age: to create a show with episodes that could be watched in any order. This was partially due to the cast’s scheduling conflicts, but it also felt like a very “Arrested Development” ploy — only it failed miserably.

The second came with the first batch of Season 5 episodes, which were released last May. They felt (somewhat) like a return to form, but the rollout was tainted by sexual harassment allegations against Jeffrey Tambor from fellow cast members from his Amazon show “Transparent,” Trace Lysette and Van Barnes.

Tambor was dropped from “Transparent” but remained on “Arrested Development” — which led to a disastrous roundtable interview in The New York Times in which Jessica Walter accused Tambor of being verbally abusive on-set, while the show’s male cast members defended him.

But putting all that aside and looking only at the content of this second half of Season 5 — it’s still a tough hang, to put it lightly.

The show is so mired in the past that its title no longer induces chuckles but groans. The new episodes don’t really seem to traffic in jokes so much as nostalgia. Recurring characters appear for mere seconds, not to introduce new jokes but to redo old ones.

Sometimes, the humor feels outdated, such as the introduction of a group of hardboiled, criminal gay men who call themselves the Gay Mafia. They fit into a plotline in which Gob has to pretend to be gay. The plotline is supposed to be making fun of Gob for his insecurity with his own sexuality. But the jokes fail, leaving the enterprise feeling like the very gay panic humor it’s attempting to mock.

At other times, the show’s references feel painfully outdated. It’s set just before the 2016 election, and the number of Hillary-issure-to-win jokes is exhausting. Even its shoehorned Trump jokes don’t feel as fresh as they might have months ago.

But the biggest problem with the back half of Season 5 is that it’s simply not funny.

“Arrested Development,” once a wonderfully layered experience, now just feels like work. It’s the embodiment of a caffeine headache — insistent, annoying and, worst of all, dull.