For all of you who don't watch it, let me explain why AD is so great. At a very shallow level, the show is extremely funny. The comedic timing is great, the ensemble cast is perfect, and the jokes are hilarious. However, the show also has an incredible amount of depth to it, forcing several viewings of an episode to get it all. Allusions and foreshadowing happen all over the place, in the volume usually associated with a Shakespearean play. The main way is through the extensive use of callbacks. Jokes, aspects of the Bluths' lives, and many little details are often recycled in some way, but almost always with a twist to them. Some of these go back just a few episodes, some call back all the way to the first couple episodes. They range from the subtle (such as the fact that family's maid often wears unseasonal sweaters, or that one character reuses the same banner for multiple occasions, altering it only as much is necessary), to the not-so-subtle (such as the fact that one character thinks that Portugal is in Mexico, or the fact that another character never gets the context of the word "blue" correct, confusing the depressed meaning with the color), to the overt (such as the fact that all of the Bluths seem to have their own impression of what a chicken sounds like, and none of them sounds remotely like a chicken, or the fact that one character unknowingly makes homosexual
double entendres on a regular basis).
Unfortunately, these callbacks force the viewer to see the show from the beginning to fully appreciate everything, making it harder for people who might want to start watching it at a later date. I suspect that this is part of the reason for its low ratings (combined with Fox's marketing strategy for the show: show a promo for it ten minutes before it airs).
