Who is Gob Bluth in Arrested Development?

Show

Arrested Development

Played by

Will Arnett

First episode

“Pilot”Season 1, Episode 1, aired November 2, 2003

Role

Main cast

Network

FOX

Occupation

Magician, briefly Bluth Company president

Show run

2003 to 2019Canceled by FOX in 2006, then revived by Netflix for seasons in 2013 and 2018 to 2019.

Also known as

G.O.B., George Oscar Bluth II

Gob Bluth is the showboating oldest brother of the Bluth family, a magician with more pyrotechnics than talent. Played by Will Arnett, he is one of the funniest and most quotable characters in Arrested Development.

On Arrested Development, Gob Bluth's story runs through Michael Bluth (Brother and Rival), Lucille Bluth (Mother), George Bluth Sr. (Father), Buster Bluth (Brother), Lindsay Bluth Funke (Sister), and George Michael Bluth (Nephew).

Who is Gob Bluth?

Gob, whose name is pronounced like the biblical Job and comes from his initials, George Oscar Bluth II, is the oldest child of George Sr. and Lucille. He makes his living, loosely speaking, as a magician, and he helped found an alliance of magicians sworn to protect their secrets until he was blacklisted for revealing one.

His father ignored him as a boy and his mother openly dislikes him as an adult, so Gob spends the series trying to prove he is the family's favorite son. He resents that his younger brother, Michael, is the one everyone relies on, even though, deep down, he loves Michael more than anyone.

Personality and comedy

Gob's magic shows are a mess of fireworks, wind machines, dance moves, and the song "The Final Countdown," and the illusions fail more often than they work. He insists on calling them illusions rather than tricks, rides a Segway everywhere, and is constantly reminding people of the prestige he believes he deserves.

When his schemes collapse, he has a signature line of regret: "I've made a huge mistake." He is also a self-styled ladies' man who exaggerates his conquests, and Will Arnett plays his insecurity and bravado at full volume, which made Gob one of the show's breakout characters.

Key storylines

Gob stages a jailbreak stunt to promote his act, steals Michael's ideas to work for a rival builder, and is named president of the Bluth Company in season two, where he quickly makes everything worse. In a series of escalating dares he marries a woman he has just met, then never learns her name. In season three he discovers he is the father of Steve Holt, a high school jock.

In the Netflix revival Gob's love life gets even stranger. He gets engaged to Ann Veal, George Michael's former girlfriend, ruins their wedding with a botched magic trick, and then falls into a complicated romance with his longtime rival, the magician Tony Wonder.

Behind the scenes and legacy

Will Arnett earned a Primetime Emmy nomination for Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Comedy Series in 2006 for the role. The woman Gob marries on a dare was played by Amy Poehler, Arnett's wife at the time.

Gob's catchphrases, his chicken dance, and his doomed illusions remain some of the most quoted material from Arrested Development, a show that came back on Netflix seven years after Fox canceled it.

Gob Bluth: frequently asked questions

All Arrested Development charactersEssential Arrested Development episodesArrested Development triviaMore 2000s sitcom characters

All sitcom characters A to Z