For varying reasons, most of the Bluths (even Steve Holt) feel compelled to run off to Mexico. Michael tries to convince Buster to go to the police.
Absurdist plotting carries a mid-tier episode through 59 jokes in steady, character-driven rhythms.
Directed by Troy Miller · Written by Richard Day
WAR
143.4
Wins Above Replacement
“Self Deportation” ranks #66 of 84 Arrested Development episodes on the Humor Index, scoring 92.9 — Elite. The episode packs 95 scored jokes at 2.7 per minute, averaging 7.6 on craft and 7.4 on impact, with Michael landing the most laughs. Every joke is ranked below with its individual craft and impact scores.
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Top Jokes
Buster: I wish I could've seen their faces at the ceremony.
Buster Absurdist Character Comedy ★ Rewatch Callback George Michael · Maeby: Oh, you looked in my 'Please Don't Read' folder? No, that one was empty. I found it in 'Just Odds and Ends.' Great, you got past my double bluff.
Buster: Buster's extended Michael impression: 'Hi, I'm Michael, and I save everyone so I feel special, even though you don't deserve it. I'm leaving. I won't be coming back. Look who's back.'
Buster Character Comedy Meta/Self-Referential ★ Rewatch Callback Lucille: Oh, that's nice. I always say, 'Make people cry, make people cry.' But yours includes the people who don't want to give you the satisfaction.
Lucille Character Comedy Irony/Sarcasm ★ Rewatch Buster: Okay, like, bad example, I saw Lucille 2's lifeless body sprawled across the stair car?
Buster Dark/Subversive Character Comedy ★ Rewatch Callback All Jokes — 95 analyzed
Show all ↓ Hide ↑ Kitty · Narrator: Ron Howard wants to make a heartfelt father-son drama that has a good clean message for his illegitimate daughter to star in.
Kitty: You have to crank out family dramas before they let you make your dream superhero movie. Do you have a dream superhero movie? I want to remake Spider-Man 2, the first one.
Kitty Character Comedy Absurdist ★ Rewatch Michael: My brother Buster has something better than a hook. A robot hand.
Michael Character Comedy Irony/Sarcasm ★ Rewatch Callback Michael: If she could go that unlikable.
Michael Deadpan/Understatement Character Comedy Kitty · Michael: They're Imagine dollars. They're redeemable in the gift shop. That's Ron Howard. Brian's on the 50.
Narrator: It's a severance thing they're doing because of Ron's need to be loved and Brian's conflict avoidance issues.
Narrator Deadpan/Understatement Character Comedy ★ Rewatch Michael · Gift Shop Employee: I think I'm gonna take one Gung Ho kimono, okay? Oh, and maybe a Brian wig. That's fun. Oh, we only sell these as a set.
George Michael (voicemail) · Michael · Gift Shop Employee: You've reached George Maharis. Did you want that Rebel Alley hair? Oh. Uh, no no. That's... that is mine. I came with that.
Buster · Narrator: Winner of 1982's Least Seen on Campus.
Buster: I wish I could've seen their faces at the ceremony.
Buster Absurdist Character Comedy ★ Rewatch Callback Michael · Buster: show your hand / This is one of only two things the Army warns us about when they issue these.
Buster · Michael: Maybe that's a role I can play in your life. Don't say... Mom. Mmm.
Michael: I thought you were gonna say Dad.
Michael Reaction Beat Deadpan/Understatement Buster: Well, I lived with Mother. Did you think we were dating?
Buster Character Comedy Irony/Sarcasm ★ Rewatch Callback Narrator: Question's been asked. [reaction beat — the narrator's deadpan acknowledgment]
Narrator Deadpan/Understatement Reaction Beat ★ Rewatch Buster: Should I not say that?
Buster Character Comedy Cringe/Discomfort ★ Rewatch Buster · Michael: What? In person? Yeah. Uh, no. On the phone.
Michael · Narrator: Just Mama's worst nightmare. Buster's missing. Oh, and his bath has gone cold.
Michael · Buster: Maybe have a full psych panel while you're in there, too. Oh, those things are so easy to beat.
Narrator · G.O.B.: His recent rivalry with magician Tony Wonder had blossomed into a kind of friendship... before contracting into a rivalry again. Same. Which suddenly became a... oh, let's say, boarding school romance.
Narrator G.O.B. Character Comedy Dark/Subversive Misdirection ★ Rewatch Callback G.O.B. · George Sr.: Uh, this place is full of cincos and mayos. We need to find out whatever the word for ten is. Find that. It's ten. Every culture uses ten.
Hopi Therapist: I can get hard, so let's focus on you.
Waitress · G.O.B. · George Sr.: They're primas. Primos, huh? I've gotta be honest, I've seen better. No, it means cousins. One hates her father, and the other hates her grandfather.
G.O.B. · George Sr.: I don't know about you, but I'd prefer the thrill of the hunt, as opposed to... If we wait, something a little better will come along. Thank you. Not trying to fall head over heels here. Not super eager to be, uh, missing somebody. I mean, who you love.
Buster: APB. 'Aw, poor Buster.'
Buster Wordplay/Pun Character Comedy Buster · Michael: [Buster laughs] What's so funny? You always come back to save the family. We joke about that all the time.
Buster: Buster's extended Michael impression: 'Hi, I'm Michael, and I save everyone so I feel special, even though you don't deserve it. I'm leaving. I won't be coming back. Look who's back.'
Buster Character Comedy Meta/Self-Referential ★ Rewatch Callback Michael: Covered a lot of ground there.
Michael Deadpan/Understatement Reaction Beat Buster: Okay, like, bad example, I saw Lucille 2's lifeless body sprawled across the stair car?
Buster Dark/Subversive Character Comedy ★ Rewatch Callback Michael: Perfect. If that's what happened, tell them.
Michael Deadpan/Understatement Dark/Subversive ★ Rewatch Michael · Buster: She's gonna be as dry as, uh... well, Lucille 1. I can hear Mother winking now.
Michael · Buster: You already got into the candy bears, huh? This is literally one of only two things the Army warns about when they issue these.
Michael Buster Callback Character Comedy Running Gag ★ Rewatch Callback Michael · Buster: You already got into the candy bears, huh? / This is literally one of only two things the Army warns about when they issue these.
Narrator · Michael: Hi, it's Lucille Austero. I've been looking for you. Note, I mean. I know, I'd left you a note... This is why you always... leave a note.
Michael · Narrator: Hi, it's Lucille Austero. — No! — I've been looking for you. / Note, I mean.
Michael: Where's that from?
Michael Meta/Self-Referential Reaction Beat ★ Rewatch Maeby · George Michael: Oh, so much for apologizing. I'm telling you, he's moved on. Okay? You should, too.
Maeby · George Michael: Welcome to the shitty parents club. No, no, we don't have kids. No.
George Michael · Maeby · Narrator: Just the cousins. Mm-hmm. Which turned out to be... Primos! This crew.
Michael · Narrator: Michael was also heading to Mexico. And after taking care of one last bit of business... Uh, yeah, I'm completely sure he's been gone 72 hours. As a matter of fact, his bath has grown cold. So that's, uh, an alarm bell right there.
Michael · Narrator: No pictures, thank you! Put your phones down. We take the pictures. When the fleet of recovery vans arrived from the search engine Michael had been working for, he discovered that the car that takes the pictures was no longer under his control.
Dave · Lisa · Jeff: Hi, I'm Dave from Mapping. She's Lisa from Traditional Search. And that's Jeff. I'm Jeff from Earth.
Dave: We heard we had a runaway ostrich.
Dave Absurdist Misdirection ★ Rewatch Dave · Narrator: Oh, no. They never arrest the drivers. They do come down pretty hard on the cars, but it's cheaper to just retrain the people instead. It sounds super futuristic and dystopian, but it's really not. Earth was right.
Mexican Elder: Now, if you'll excuse us, we must say buenos días. Vamos, vamos. Play the guitar, old man! Strum! Strum!
George Michael · Unnamed Companion: Who were those scary, handsome Mexicans on those magical horses? They just looked like old white men to me.
Unnamed Companion: I was gonna have to leave early, and I didn't know how to tell you. But now we can just all go together.
Maeby · George Michael: I just know that you don't like standing up to people on horses with guns. No, I never really was that guy.
George Michael · Maeby: Fakeblock doesn't actually exist. Are you telling me that the software that's supposed to keep people's computers unhackable and keep any kind of information private doesn't exist? How did you find out? It was easy. I just looked in your computer under 'Secrets.'
George Michael · Maeby: Oh, you looked in my 'Please Don't Read' folder? No, that one was empty. I found it in 'Just Odds and Ends.' Great, you got past my double bluff.
George Michael · Maeby: Get going with my own goop. Goop? What is goop? If you have to ask, you probably don't know what it is. I don't know what it is. I feel like maybe you don't know what it is. Maybe it's 'go-op'? To me, that would make less sense. Maybe that's what 'go-op' is. Not everything always making sense.
Narrator: Meanwhile, George Sr. and G.O.B. continued trying to out-goop each other.
Narrator Wordplay/Pun Callback ★ Rewatch Callback G.O.B. · George Sr.: I won't tell Mom about all the ladies you're if you don't tell Mom about all the ladies I'm.
G.O.B. · George Sr.: She's got a friend! That's a friend? Bush. Trash bag and bush. Thought it was a woman. Yeah. Like, hunched over, right? Yeah. Like, with the... I wanted to do her so bad.
G.O.B. · George Sr.: That was a ten-gallon Hefty sack? Oh, yeah. Yeah, a ten. Definitely a ten. Yeah. Nice. I like... a ten.
Lucille · Tobias: Lucille, at the behest of her court-mandated therapist, was struggling to make sense of things. Am I horrible for saying these things? No. But I was doing the math, and I still think you're gonna have a problem with this final 'raped murderer.'
Lucille · Tobias: How many more sessions do I have to endure until I'm done with... no offense... you? Legally, two. But I am in the family. I mean... this is my family.
Lucille · Tobias: My daughter is divorcing you. This is it. I'm confused by the word 'it.' Are you implying that you don't want to see me anymore? I'm confused by the word 'anymore.'
Tobias: You've lost touch with your daughter. Put me in, for God's sake.
Tobias Character Comedy Irony/Sarcasm Lucille: Oh, don't talk to me about walls. That's why we're in this mess. My husband buys land so we can get a contract to build a little something on the border. A wall.
Lucille Setup/Punchline Irony/Sarcasm ★ Rewatch Politician: I am gonna put this on my wall. [politician holding up a check while discussing the wall]
George Sr.: I bribed Love to get the wall, and I don't have the land to build it on!
Narrator · Oscar: It was just on the wrong side of the border. Which they might have known had George's brother Oscar not burned the signs. It's okay to burn these? Well, this is America. They don't want us to burn signs, they shouldn't write 'em in Spanish.
Lucille: Who better than the Chinese to help us build a wall, right?
Lucille Irony/Sarcasm Character Comedy Lucille 2: I can't be running a company that's building a wall I campaigned against!
Tobias: hurt people... hurt people.
Tobias Wordplay/Pun Character Comedy Lucille: Oh, that's nice. I always say, 'Make people cry, make people cry.' But yours includes the people who don't want to give you the satisfaction.
Lucille Character Comedy Irony/Sarcasm ★ Rewatch Tobias: Swimming! Hurt people, hurt people.
Tobias Callback Character Comedy ★ Rewatch Callback Lindsay · Narrator · Bar Worker: Lindsay had also made it to Mexico, and was enjoying the fact that men were more respectful. Puta Night is Thursday. That's so nice. No, I'm not. That was based on her belief that 'puta' meant 'young.'
Bar Worker · Lindsay: No. Puta. I try to stay out of the sun.
Lindsay · Herbert Love: Oh, my God. Lindsay. What are you doing here? Guess I just had to get away. I was just ordering lunch. Can I buy you lunch? Oh, yeah. I'm so hungry, I could eat.
Volunteer: We are lucky. We have next to nothing. We are helping these people because nobody else will. They've been kicked out of the only country they've ever known because of the cruelty of your president... Barack Obama.
Maeby · Volunteer: So, you're trying to, like, teach them a lesson or...? We're volunteers. Who did you think the water was for? Oh. I thought you were just trying to get me to give you a higher Uber rating.
George Michael: Mexico. It's like being in the Spanish dorms of the UCI sister campus in Spain all over again.
George Michael · Noah: God, the salt is different here. It's fatter or something, right? We're from Orange County.
Narrator · Noah: They saw foreign films. I'm glad someone had the guts to give the Minions their own movie. It's great because it's subtitled in Spanish, but we don't have to read. It's in English. If you don't want to see 'em, you can block 'em.
Narrator: They discovered charming native communities where local artisans peddled their wares. [cut to: Señor Frog's or equivalent American-style tourist bar/shop in Mexico]
Narrator · George Michael · Noah: Adopted customs like the midday break, or siesta. Yes! Who left the air conditioning on? Oh, me. I never left.
TV Announcer · Trump (implied) · Lucille: Candidate descended the escalator into the lobby. I will build a great, great wall on our southern border. Which was my idea! And I will have Mexico pay for that wall. Okay. That is a clever twist.
Michael · Narrator: Michael had been at Search for a month. In that time, he'd developed himself physically... And then lunge. Duck, sweep the leg, lunge.
Michael · Narrator: Ted, I think you see your daughter coming. You're not expecting this, but she's coming in hot with a right... He'd gotten to teach a class he'd successfully persuaded management to try out. Mona, I know your husband's down, he probably needs medical attention, but you got another son on your flank.
Michael: And everybody, we're going to duck, sweep the leg, and lunge. And he comes back again. And we sweep the leg and lunge. That's great. Everybody put down your cactus. Let's all huddle up.
Michael: Wow, satisfy an old dream. Boy, do you really have to spend 1,000 bucks on the gear, though? Not if you have your own. Mm. Yeah. Well, not here, but I could drive home and get it. Course, I could see my family.
Michael Character Comedy Misdirection Michael · Instructor/Employee: Wow, satisfy an old dream. Boy, do you really have to spend 1,000 bucks on the gear, though? / Not if you have your own.
Michael: Hola. Window cleaner!
Michael Character Comedy Physical/Slapstick Buster · Tobias: I shall be neither seen nor heard. I blue myself. It's vodka. It goes bad once it's opened. I heard the jury's still out on science.
Tobias · Michael: Until right at the end there. [Tobias's blue paint seen by the family — his disguise as window cleaner fails at the crucial moment]
Narrator · Michael: She forgave the debt. And feeling bad that he'd been forgiven by someone he wanted to forget, he decided to thank her in person.
Lucille: Speech! Speech! You're my third least favorite child.
Lucille Character Comedy Deadpan/Understatement Narrator: Like a Motherboy Ball.
Narrator Callback Irony/Sarcasm ★ Rewatch Callback Michael: I should ask if she wants to get pre-pre-engaged.
Lucille: I want that pie covered. And not with your face.
Lucille Character Comedy Deadpan/Understatement Michael · G.O.B.: G.O.B.! I haven't seen you in a year! It's been two months. Get your hands off. Oh, yeah? What's the last thing you remember us doing? What do you remember? What? No. Enough!
G.O.B.: Harmless bathhousing amongst brothers, yes?
G.O.B. Character Comedy Irony/Sarcasm ★ Rewatch Narrator · George Michael: And George Michael dips his toe into the Mexican nightlife. Guys, it's 9:00. Gives us 30 minutes till they shut down that last machine at Pinkberry.
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