Yesterday in our Mad Men discussion I bemoaned that the kid they cast as a young Jon Hamm “Grows up to look like Don Knotts, not Don Draper.” You see, I have an unhealthy obsession with continuity and have watched a lot of Andy Griffith Show re-runs in my lifetime. It should be noted though that Brandon Killham has actually portrayed young Don/Dick several times, so Mad Men actually kind of deserves a pat on the back for continuity. But it should also be noted that puberty has decided that this kid grows up to look just like that one dude from Big Bang Theory.
Well, it turns out our friends at Vulture have an even more ill-advised obsession than I do as they tracked down the career arc of the poorly cast kid actor to discover — as you probably gathered from the headline unless you suffer from world’s worst reading comprehension — that Don Draper is not the only iconic television character he has inaccurately portrayed in youth. Behold, Brandon Killham as a young (would-never-grow-up-to-look-like-Jason-Bateman) Michael Bluth in Season 3 of Arrested Development…
Why couldn’t they stick with the much more accurate kid from “Pier Pressure”? Your and Bobby Draper I’s guess is as good as mine, although mine involves the Illuminati. This brings me to my favorite continuity development to come out of all of this. Yep, that Arrested Development managed to cast a dog with three legs for J. Walter Weatherman but couldn’t nail young Michael in consecutive seasons.
Vulture also dug up one other role where Brandon Killham served as the younger flashback version. If you can stop thinking about J. Walter Weatherman’s dog check it out.
