With Season 5 filmed, Arrested developments imminent tour of the UK has been cancelled. The bald one (Jeffrey Tambor) was shouting at Jessica Walters (the mother). The male cast chiefly talked this down, which is the scandle #meetoo. Yet their President get away with propositions a 10 year old in a lift, being a peeping tom at Miss America and paying people to keep his affairs quiet #immune. Can't wait for series 5.
Just watched the first 8 episodes of season 5 on Netflix and thought they were ok, still not as good as the first two seasons though. Portia De Rossi should've just been written out, it would've been better than the rubbish green screen scenes. What did everyone else think about the new episodes?
It wasn't great, I thought, unfortunately. A few moments where it looked like it was getting back to the good old days, but they were few and far between for me. 
Same main complaint as either cut of S4. The editing. Back on US network TV when they only had 22-23 minutes per episode to play with, the editing was ridiculously tight. Not one wasted second every episode, because they were juggling several convoluted plotlines involving 8-9 main characters each week. No gag or situation was overly leaned on, if anything the opposite was true, which makes it such a joy to rewatch because so much is going on you miss half of it the first few times around.
Now every episode feels sloppy and distended, because Netflix doesn't have that same time pressure. Episodes can just take as long as they take. And there just isn't that tightness to every scene there any more. Case in point, the Michael/George Michael meeting by the lift in Episode 3(?). It went on for about five minutes and was excruciatingly unfunny.
I'll give it a rewatch at some point before the other 8 episodes drop, because I might be being overly harsh here, but unless something drastic changes in those other episodes, it's probably time to knock this on the head IMHO. At least we'll still have S1-3 which are still, for my money, the funniest TV series ever.
I know exactly what you mean about the lift scene, the scenes with Tobias are quite hard to watch now compared too how he was in the earlier seasons. Has there been any details on when they are releasing the rest of the episodes?