Can Arrested Development save the sitcom? Though it may be too early to tell, Arrested Development (Sundays at 8:30 p.m on Fox) has brought a new twist to an old Fox concept: the dysfunctional family. Having aired shows like Married... With Children, The Simpsons, Malcolm in the Middle and Family Guy (and, to a much weirder extent, Trading Spouses: Meet Your New Mommy) Fox consistently explores family values by smashing them into pieces. It truly is the anti-Cosby network.

Even after winning five Emmy awards, Arrested Development has not received the respect it deserves. The premiere of the ratings-starved comedy's second season was pushed back two months to find a better time slot. With only about six million viewers an episode, Arrested Development seems to live on the edge of cancellation.

Narrated by director Ron Howard (A Beautiful Mind), Arrested Development is about a family-owned development firm whose president, George Bluth Sr. (Jeffery Tambor, There's Something About Mary), has been arrested. In his father's absence, Michael Bluth (Jason Bateman, Dodgeball) is left to run both his father's business and his own dysfunctional family.

While they have been compared to The Royal Tenenbaums, the Bluths are a different type of family. Since only he and his incarcerated father have any brains, Michael is left as the only glue holding his crazy family together. Among other frustrations, he fights a constant battle to connect with his own son, George-Michael (Michael Cera, Confessions of a Dangerous Mind).

The show requires an intelligent and patient audience. Every week, its writers push the envelope by using extraordinarily dry, witty and subtle humor. There is no laugh track, and the characters never pause to indicate the end of a joke. The cast deadpans their lines, and only Michael seems to even question his family's oddities. The show's tightly-knit continuity requires viewers to pay close attention to each episode.

In the beginning of season two, Michael's sister and brother-in-law separate. Though his sister Lindsay (Portia de Rossi, Ally McBeal) has no success in her constant attempts at dating, his brother-in-law, Tobias FAnke (David Cross, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind) decides to seek counseling.

While flipping through the phone book, he comes upon what he thinks is a support group. It ends up being an audition for performance artists The Blue Man Group. Tobias, thinking that this is his calling, decides to try out and paints his entire body blue. Although he is unsuccessful, blue stains are found on his walls, furniture and clothing for the entire second season, reminding us of the incident.

Anyone can relate the Bluths to members of their own family, but-as other Fox anti-Cosby family comedies-Arrested Development's eccentric cast take its characters to the extreme.

The family's classic, underachieving momma's boy Buster (Tony Hale), one of Michael's brothers, tells his family he is joining the army. But after failing to do so, he does not want to disappoint his family when they entertain guests for what they think is his father's funeral. So he asks his other brother George Oscar "Gob" (Will Arnett)-a wannabe magician turned family company figurehead-to get him an army outfit.

George Oscar, also an ex-stripper, asks an old friend to get him a costume. Buster then shows up at his father's funeral in a stripper's faux-army outfit, complete with a fake gun strapped around the arm.

With its extremely talented cast and great regular guests (including Henry Winkler and Liza Minnelli), scenes like this consistently leave Arrested Development's small but devoted audience in stitches.

"This is such a huge honor-and, I fear, a giant mistake," said creator Mitch Hurwitz (Golden Girls) in his Emmy acceptance speech.

The only mistake is that you haven't been watching.