Tube Stakes

At the risk of this sounding like an
obituary, however, let’s concentrate on the joys that this witty
treasure has provided, starting with its impish first season, now
available on a double-disc DVD edition from 20th Century Fox Home
Entertainment. Created by Victor Fresco, a veteran of oddball TV fare
like Andy Richter Controls the Universe, the backdrop for Better Off Ted
is Veridian Dynamics, the fictional high-tech corporation that designs
futuristic contraptions and geegaws. Single-dad Ted (played by Jay
Harrington) is a research-development exec who often plays as a
moral-minded Jiminy Cricket to the bottom-line-oriented machinations of
his veepee Veronica (Arrested Development’s Portia de Rossi).
Ted is also slightly infatuated with pretty co-worker Linda (Andrea
Anders), but he tries to steer clear of office romances. Rounding out
the main characters are a pair of Gyro Gearloose-level lab inventors,
Lem (Malcolm Barrett) and Phil (Jonathan Slavin).

Unlike The Office, with its characters who seem to avoid all forms of labor, the manic workplace environment in Ted
provides the comic catalyst for its inventive plots. In the
instant-classic fourth episode titled “Racial Sensitivity,” the firm
has equipped motion sensors on elevators, doors and the like that can
read light bounced off a person’s skin. Those sensors, however, have
pigment-detecting flaws that don’t allow, as one example, for African
Americans to drink from water fountains. 

Veronica recites Veridian’s defense,
with de Rossi adept at deploying the soulless corporate-speak: “The
company’s position is that it’s the opposite of racist because it’s not
targeting black people, it’s just ignoring them. They insist the worst
people can call it is. . . indifferent.” Veridian attempts to right the
situation, while refusing to admit their error, such as installing
old-school fountains with signs that read “manual drinking fountain
(for blacks),” followed by Veridian’s brainstorm to hire minimum-wage
white guys to follow the black employees around in order to activate
the system. Meanwhile, a subplot features Linda hanging out with a male
friend in the hopes of making Ted jealous, but Ted ends up liking the
guy’s company more than she does. It’s all crammed into a busy 22
minutes, with dialogue pearls such as Veronica telling her staffers,
“My door is always open to you. Please close it on the way out.”

Some sitcoms take entire seasons to creatively gel, yet Ted’
s deadpan drollery, casting chemistry and clever banter have been
hallmarks since the pilot episode, and the second season’s installments
have thus far offered more of a good thing. The last time ABC had a
fully formed first-season sitcom like this was It’s Like, You Know, the Left Coast-based ensemble satire from Seinfeld writer Peter Mehlman that the network dumped in 1999 after 26 episodes to add more hours of Who Wants to be a Millionaire? to the schedule. That network decision, of course, proved as disastrous as NBC’s scheme 10 years later to lure The Jay Leno Show into prime time.

Now Ted is in danger of
cancellation, with its episodes being quickly burned off on Tuesday
nights alongside the new incarnation of the low-rated Scrubs. (WSYR-Channel 9 currently airs Scrubs at 8 and 9 p.m., and Ted at 8:30 and 9:30 p.m.) There are online petitions to save the show, however, and even the Ted
folks are going down swinging; somehow YouTube got hold of hilariously
profane outtakes of the Jan. 12 episode (the one with a misspelled memo
declaring that “employees must now use offensive language in the
workplace”) and an ABC representative had to deny that it posted these
raunchy clips, according to a Hollywood Reporter story. 

There aren’t any outtakes like that on Better Off Ted: The Complete First Season, just 300 minutes of perfectly composed comedy. Incidentally, while ABC airs Ted
in a full screen format, each episode on the DVD is letterboxed at an
anamorphic 1.78:1 ratio that neatly fills out TV screens and computer
monitors.