Skip to main content

Brain Toilet: An Advance Review of the Return of ABC's "Better Off Ted"

I can't tell you how incredibly excited I am about the return of ABC's fantastic comedy series Better Off Ted this summer.

It's especially true this summer when the season seems to be positively overflowing with network castoffs as the broadcasters burn off remaining unaired installments of their sadly canceled series. (Just take a look at Saturday nights to see what I mean.)

But despite its place on the schedule this summer, ABC's winsome Better Off Ted isn't canceled; in fact, it earned a slot on the network's midseason lineup thanks to some goodwill from Steve McPherson and the programmers at the Alphabet. But there's still a handful of unaired episodes from the series' first season, which means that Ted fans will be getting a fresh batch of Veridian goodness over the next few weeks.

Tonight's episode ("You Are the Boss of Me"), written by Dan O'Shannon, is a fantastic reminder of just how quirky and lovable this series is. I had the opportunity to watch it last week and I am still scratching my head as to why ABC didn't just air this hysterical installment during the regular season.

While I don't want to spoil any major plot points (though, granted, this is a comedy series so there aren't too many O'Henry-style surprise twists), I will say that "You Are the Boss of Me" is already one of my very favorite installments of the series to date. It also features some fantastic character development, especially regarding the relationships between our core cast, pushing them into unexpected and interesting territory as they cross the one boundary that shouldn't ever be crossed: that between boss and employee.

Ted is reeling from the unexpected return (off-screen, of course) of his ex-wife from Botswana and has sent daughter Rose to New York to spend some time with her. Lonely and stressed, he turns to Phil and Lem for companionship... only to learn that they have plans that don't include him or other bosses. Namely: Medieval Fight Club, an underground stress-relieving medieval tournament that's literally underground in the Veridian sub-basements.

Meanwhile, Linda's offer of a ride home to Veronica--whose driver has died that week--leads to an unexpected friendship between the two. Or at least as close to friendship as is possible with the icy Veronica, which means Veronica spilling her guts about her deepest, darkest deeds to an incredulous Linda. (One such secret involves feeding her sister in her sleep so she can never be thinner than Veronica.) Naturally, this leads to some, er, strain between Linda and Veronica, one with hysterical consequences.

While the Ted/Phil/Lem and Linda/Veronica storylines are separate, they dovetail nicely at the end of the episode and share similar themes about workplace boundaries. It's hard to come back from emotional intimacy with your boss once it's been established and you might wish to have never crossed that frontier in the first place, as both Linda and Phil and Lem discover to their chagrin.

It's episodes like this that demonstrate why Better Off Ted has such fun with the workplace comedy milieu. In establishing an absurd, off-kilter world where nearly anything is possible and setting it in the heart of a, well, heartless multi-national corporation, creator Victor Fresco has turned the workplace comedy on its head, creating almost an anti-Office, where the mundane experiences of worker drones are juxtaposed with cyborg creations, cow-less meat, and scream-inducing itchy chairs.

All in all, it might be summer time, but there's no better place to be Tuesday nights than back in this office.

Better Off Ted returns with new episodes beginning tonight at 9:30 pm ET/PT on ABC.

Comments

Veronica said…
Woo hoo! I'm thrilled that Better Off Ted will be coming back next season and even more thrilled that we will be treated to some new episodes this summer. Definitely looking forward to Medieval Fight Club. Just reading your review about it made me laugh!
Unknown said…
Definitely a bright spot in the lackluster summer schedule.

Popular posts from this blog

What's Done is Done: The Eternal Struggle Between Good and Evil on the Season Finale of "Lost"

Every story begins with thread. It's up to the storyteller to determine just how much they need to parcel out, what pattern they're making, and when to cut it short and tie it off. With last night's penultimate season finale of Lost ("The Incident, Parts One and Two"), written by Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse, we began to see the pattern that Lindelof and Cuse have been designing towards the last five seasons of this serpentine series. And it was only fitting that the two-hour finale, which pushes us on the road to the final season of Lost , should begin with thread, a loom, and a tapestry. Would Jack follow through on his plan to detonate the island and therefore reset their lives aboard Oceanic Flight 815 ? Why did Locke want to kill Jacob? What caused The Incident? What was in the box and just what lies in the shadow of the statue? We got the answers to these in a two-hour season finale that didn't quite pack the same emotional wallop of previous season

Pilot Inspektor: CBS' "Smith"

I may just have to change my original "What I'll Be Watching This Fall" post, as I sat down and finally watched CBS' new crime drama Smith this weekend. (What? It's taken me a long time to make my way through the stack of pilot DVDs.) While it's on following Gilmore Girls and Veronica Mars on Tuesday nights (10 pm ET/PT, to be exact), I'm going to be sure to leave enough room on my TiVo to make sure that I catch this compelling, amoral drama. While one can't help but be impressed by what might just be the most marquee-friendly cast in primetime--Ray Liotta, Virginia Madsen, Jonny Lee Miller, Amy Smart, Simon Baker, and Franky G all star and Shohreh Aghdashloo has a recurring role--the pilot's premise alone earned major points in my book: it's a crime drama from the point of view of the criminals, who engage in high-stakes heists. But don't be alarmed; it's nothing like NBC's short-lived Heist . Instead, think of it as The Italian

The Daily Beast: "How The Killing Went Wrong"

While the uproar over the U.S. version of The Killing has quieted, the show is still a pale imitation of the Danish series on which it is based. Over at The Daily Beast, you can read my latest feature, "How The Killing Went Wrong," in which I look at how The Killing has handled itself during its second season, and compare it to the stunning and electrifying original Danish series, Forbrydelsen , on which it is based. (I recently watched all 20 episodes of Forbrydelsen over a few evenings.) The original is a mind-blowing and gut-wrenching work of genius. It’s not necessary to rehash the anger that followed in the wake of the conclusion last June of the first season of AMC’s mystery drama The Killing, based on Søren Sveistrup’s landmark Danish show Forbrydelsen, which follows the murder of a schoolgirl and its impact on the people whose lives the investigation touches upon. What followed were irate reviews, burnished with the “burning intensity of 10,000 white-hot suns