In a meta attempt to tell the story from within itself, Howard makes Michael the de facto Ron Howard of the story in a way that parallels his real-life role. Taking up his real-life position as producer, Howard imparts the task of collecting signatures from each of his family members to have rights to their story for an upcoming film about them to Michael Bluth. Reprising his essential role in the Netflix revival of the series, Ron Howard appears in a guest star cameo for six episodes of the fourth season. He explained in a CNN interview that he wanted to take an anthropological perspective for his voice narration, and borrowed from National Geographic to create a sociological commentary on the Bluth family as they went through their day-to-day lives after losing everything.įunny enough, even though he’s intended to be a detached observer, our narrator actually comes into play on-screen at the end of the third season, and then again through the fourth and fifth. Narration a la National GeographicĮven though it may not be totally obvious at first, Ron Howard’s approach to the role was actually more documentary than comedic. While the audience is tossed into the narrative relatively quickly, Howard’s voiceover guides us towards the main plot in no time at all and before we know it, each audience member may as well be a part of the Bluth family. Throughout the series, we not only follow the Bluths on all of their misadventures and struggles to find a way back to the life they’d lost, but we get a glimpse into everything they gain along the way. This style of narration works so well because it draws the audience in and makes us feel like we’re not just observing the Bluth family in their natural habitat, but we’re privy to every single inside joke and miscommunication. Anytime Gob does something reckless or Lucille does something selfish, our well-timed narrator is there to tell us exactly what’s going on and why even if we didn’t ask for it. Whether it’s guiding us through the shenanigans of each episode or following each individual character, Ron Howard uses his skill as a narrator to keep his audience in the loop about everything that’s going on in the series, almost like a documentary. Somehow the objective narrator who wasn’t even a character becomes a character – but more on that later. Suddenly, the best part of the series wasn’t the plot, writing, or characters, but the off-screen voice-over. Eventually, Howard was asked to do a bit of narration for the pilot episode, but neither of the producers could have predicted that a celebrity voice-over might become the highest testing element among focus groups. When the beloved show was initially pitched, Mitchell Hurwitz and Ron Howard toyed around with the idea of using a narrator but were still undecided. Years after it’s the official finale, we can’t help but love, quote, and identify with the individual characters and talk about their favorite scenes to anyone else that’s seen the show. He keeps us in the loop through every scheme, lie, and plot, and taking a light-hearted approach to the role he uses his position as the narrator to make us like even the most objectionable of characters, showcasing relatable family issues.Ī testament to the quality of his voiceover, our narrator succeeds in helping us all fall in love with the Bluth family – even though most of them are either terrible or vastly misunderstood. Appearing in all 82 episodes of the beloved series, and sharing his no-nonsense insights as a detached observer, Ron Howard manages to bring us closer to the characters. In his only known narration role, the Oscar winner (and show’s producer) went totally uncredited for his series-spanning voice-over. Now the story of a wealthy family who lost everything and the one narrator who had no choice but to keep them all together.
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