According to this gossip column posted yesterday on E! Online, the brilliantly antic Fox sitcom Arrested Development will be returning for at least one more season. The show’s low ratings (in a very bad time slot) led Fox to shorten the show’s second season from 22 episodes to 18, and the network seemed unlikely to give the show another chance. Few people, myself included, actually expected Fox to green-light a third season. Anyway, if the facts in the E! Online column are true, this is fantastic news indeed:

Earlier this week, a friend here at E! interviewed Jason Bateman at a charity event with his good friend Ben Stiller. When asked the status of Arrested Development, he lit up like a banana stand: “Actually, great. Supergreat. There is a heartbeat. There is no flatline. And there may be twins. I’m going to let Kristin figure out what that means. I can’t comment any further, but there will be an announcement next week.”

… But glory be, after much badgering and pestering, two rock-solid Fox sources, who have never failed me before, caved and gave me the lowdown.

Arrested Development is coming back! These highly placed sources confirmed late Friday it has been renewed for a full season of 22 episodes. How freaking fantastic is that?

Initially, Fox president Peter Liguori’s plan was to order two seasons—hence, the “twins” reference—in order to keep the licensing fee down. But ultimately he went with a single season. And hey, I’ll take it.

According to these insiders, even though the ratings weren’t exactly American Idol numbers, Liguori, bless his perceptive little heart, has faith that the show will do well in a different time slot. He also wants to bring AD up to the magical episode number required for syndication and feels the show will do very well in repeats and also in DVD.

This is a relief—I thought I might have to brandish Lucille’s rape horn to help save the show.

I’m in L.A. for vacation this week, so posting will probably be a bit light until about April 18.

I tend not to get too excited by celebrity sightings, because I’m, y’know, cool and stuff, but last night I had a good one: I was sitting at the counter at Fred 62, a cool diner in Los Feliz, and a few seats away from me were two of the young actresses from Arrested Development: Alia Shawkat, who plays Maeby Fünke, and Mae Whitman, who plays Ann, George Michael Bluth’s girlfriend. Arrested Development is so much better than almost anything on television these days, so I’m still a little giddy about this sighting. I love that show.

In their quest for newsstand “pop,” many magazines design their covers in such a way that the logotype is almost an afterthought. Titles of magazines are often partly blotted out by celebrity heads, torsos, hair, and other body parts. This April 2005 cover of Parents magazine demonstrates the perils of this design technique:

(Note that I never said this was the real cover. You can find a lot more of my designs via the magazine covers tag.)

(Inspired partly by a brief moment in a recent episode of Arrested Development involving Buster and an alarm clock.)

UPDATE, June 2005: This cover escaped from its moorings several weeks ago and has traveled all over the net, creating a small urban legend in the process. See this June 14 post for the story of how Snopes.com stepped in to debunk it.