"I don't watch much TV."

I've said this a lot in the last four years, usually with some silly measure of pride -- as if eschewing "the idiot box" in favor of movies, Internet and whatever else automatically qualifies me as intelligent and studious -- and I've heard a lot of other students wear this renunciation as a badge of honor as well.

That's probably why I still don't write about TV very often, even though, for all I know, Desperate Housewives or Lost are as good as people say they are. But unless the cast members abruptly, unanimously leave the country, I think those shows will be around for quite a while, and their fan bases will undoubtedly grow. But there's one masterpiece of a show that unfortunately might be pulled from the air before it can cultivate a respectable audience.

I'm sure most of you have heard of Fox's Arrested Development by now, and some of you are probably sick of hearing about it. I'm going to spend this article trying to convince as many of you as possible to watch it, though, because, frankly, it will take a huge audience surge to convince Fox to hold onto this series since they've already pre-empted the final episodes of the current season. I don't have a ton of space and don't want to waste a lot of it summarizing the plot. The show's narrator (Ron Howard) pretty much does that for you first-timers and in a far more succinct manner than I can do here, making Arrested Development an extremely easy show to bandwagon onto (like I recently have). What I have provided are some brief character notes to help you get more of the jokes when you watch it on Sunday (see nifty "Companion").

I say "more of the jokes," because Arrested Development is a humor buffet. No matter how much you laugh at an episode upon first viewing, there is always more coming at you than you can possibly absorb.

It's taken the cinema verité style of Curb Your Enthusiasm to incredible new heights by mixing it with the allusion-heavy cutaway techniques of Family Guy. It stays amazingly fresh and topical like South Park did in its heyday and boasts an ever-growing cast of oddball peripheral characters that might be considered live-action's best answer so far to the colorful cast of The Simpsons.

The writing, meanwhile, blossoms in multiple directions like the world of a great novel, making it one of the least episodic episodic television series I've ever seen. But despite the sharpness of its wit and the intricate manner in which it weaves its influences, the most refreshing quality of Arrested Development is that at its core is a sweetness so pre-postmodern I'd almost liken it to Howard's other series, Happy Days or The Andy Griffith Show.

It's about family. As sincerely as it can be. That the Bluth family is one of the more dysfunctional bunches we've seen on network television doesn't mean the characters wallow in Seinfeld-esque self-absorption (not that there's anything wrong with that). Beneath the smarmy way they treat other, the Bluths clearly share a lot of love; they just manifest that love in perverse, antithetical ways and to consistently hilarious comic effect.

So, I know you might not watch much TV, but if you do watch any at all, please, please find 30 minutes a week to watch Arrested Development, and tell your friends to do the same. Only you can prevent premature cancellation. And if you do, I promise I'll rent Lost's first season as soon as it comes to DVD.