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The new season is, like a Bluth-constructed house, built on a shaky and unsuitable foundation.

Maureen Ryan takes on “Arrested Development.”

After more than a week of pondering, I think I’ve finally figured out the point of Season 4 of “Arrested Development”: I can only assume the goal was to cure TV aficionados of wanting to revive any classic show, ever.

Much of the fourth season serves as an equivalent to the kind of scary warning the Bluth kids used to get from J. Walter Weatherman, the one-armed man who menaced them as kids. But instead of instilling terror as to what might happen if we put an empty milk container back in the fridge, Season 4 stands as a warning to anyone who’s advocating for the return of a show for which they had great affection: Be careful what you wish for, because the results can be deeply misguided.

Maureen Ryan on the new season of “Community”:

In the two episodes NBC sent for review, Port and Guarascio are respectful to what came before — possibly too respectful, but the desire to not rock the boat is understandable. As was the case with “Cougar Town,” this new version of “Community” is acceptable and amusing, but it’s also slightly flatter and less surreal than the old-school version of the show. It remains to be seen if Port and Guarascio can bring the edge of unpredictability and whimsical pathos that has often informed the best episodes of the show — or impose a sympathetic but new vision on Greendale — but the study group remains recognizable and there aren’t any significant blunders so far.

Maureen Ryan takes a look at violence on TV.

Every so often, America agrees to have a debate about violence in popular culture. There are few if any concrete results that emerge from these debates, but it’s certainly a discussion worth having.

There’s no doubt that television is generally more violent and resorts to more graphic imagery than it did a decade or two ago. Whatever you think of the results of this trend, there are quite a few logical behind it.

Every day, an ever-expanding array of networks flood the market with all kinds of programming, and new-media companies like Netflix and Hulu are stepping into the fray as well. So how do does a network stand out in a cluttered media landscape? One way to get eyeballs is to gouge them out, apparently. Monday’s moderately successful debut of Fox’s “The Following” not only showed or mentioned a couple dozen murders but also featured a disturbing scene with a mutilated dog. Not wanting to be left behind, NBC debuts “Hannibal” later this season; the drama tells the backstory of the serial killer from “The Silence of the Lambs.” Gone are the days when a posse of good-looking lawyers or cops were enough to garner a reasonable audience — at least that’s what network executives concerned about audience erosion appear to be thinking. (Another example: “Do No Harm,” an upcoming doctor drama on NBC, is about a physician who moonlights as — wait for it — a murderer). To compete with all the noise in the marketplace, TV has gotten bigger, brasher and louder in a lot of ways (think of the dumb stereotypes on “2 Broke Girls” or the four-quadrant blandness of “Terra Nova” as other exemplars of this trend). TV shows have to be brassy and have a hook these days, and even if the hook isn’t vampires, there’s a good chance there will be blood.

Read the full story here.

Maureen Ryan breaks down Season 3 of “Downton Abbey.”

Though Season 3 of “Downton” is somewhat stronger than Season 2 — which made “90210” look like a model of narrative coherence by comparison — there are still times I mutter darkly about the drama, I must admit. When it keeps on stumbling over the same easily avoidable obstacles and when it keeps stacking the narrative deck in preposterously lopsided ways, I react about as well as the Dowager Countess would react to finding a dirty hippie in the shrubbery.

Maureen Ryan on AMC’s latest doozy.

The premise of “The Walking Dead” is that any character can die, at any time.

Apparently that’s true of “The Walking Dead’s” showrunners as well.

Glen Mazzara didn’t die, of course, but the showrunner/executive producer has left the series, which has unsurprisingly been renewed for a fourth season. Various parties released statements saying how this was all for the best, but that’s meaningless. Even if AMC had actually chopped off his head, Mazzara would have released a statement thanking the network, because that’s how things work in Hollywood. Creative people and executives put the best face on everything, even if they have knives sticking out of their backs.

In any case, it’s hard not to come to the conclusion that the management of AMC has no time for the cult of the showrunner that has grown up in the television industry.

Maureen Ryan takes a look at Lifetime’s “Liz & Dick.” Added bonus: She made a drinking game.

All it really does is make you sad about what’s become of Lindsay Lohan, and wonder at the motivations of the filmmakers who put her in this cheap-looking, exploitative movie.

Exploitation really is the name of the game here; the whole point of casting Lohan was to draft off her status as a formerly promising actress who some time ago became a tabloid fodder thanks to her career-destroying antics. The casting of Lohan would ensure coverage of the production itself, and then more “Can she manage a comeback” chatter once the movie’s air date approached. It’s one way to get attention for a project, I guess.