How Better Off Ted slipped by a lot of people I will never understand. It is easily the best sitcom on television. The concept is fresh and the execution is spot on, but for some reason, ABC barely mentions it. It started out as a lead in to Lost and then ABC moved it around so it was hard to watch. Even though I loved it I missed the end of the season. ABC will start airing season 2 On December 8th. Set your DVR, you’ll thank me later.
The show centers around Ted (Jay Harrington), the head of the R&D department of Veridian Dynamics, a spoof on all huge corporations. Ted runs a team of some of the smartest scientists in the world; mostly we just see two of them, Phil (Jonathan Slavin) and Lem (Malcolm Barrett). Since this is a sitcom, Ted needs a love interest and that’s where Linda (Andrea Anders) comes in. Linda does testing for Ted’s team, is in love with him, and is extra quirky. Probably not as quirky as Ted’s boss Veronica (Portia De Rossi) though. She takes the cake of weird.
All of the casting is absolutely perfect. There is a lot of chemistry between Phil and Lem and they provide the backbone of the show. They always have something going on, whether it be an argument about who the boss is, or why you should ask your lab partner before you allow the company to cryogenically freeze you. They are always funny and their project is usually what the plot centers on. Ted plays well off of both Linda and Veronica. Portia de Rossi plays her role perfectly; she is the stereotypical “woman in a man’s world” and seems to have no clue how to not be in work mode. Linda on the other hand is always trying to find a way to screw the company just a little bit so she can feel sane. She’s also in love with Ted, who used up his 1 office affair on Veronica. There is a lot of the standard sitcom “will they be together, wont they be together” but it’s still funnier than anything I’ve seen on TV in the last few years.
As far as the DVD goes, in my opinion it’s perfect. The first season is only 13 episodes so you get 2 discs in a standard DVD case. No special features, no excess garbage. Just the show, which is all I want. There’s no show opening you have to suffer through each episode, you just jump right into the show. There is also a nice Veridian Dynamics commercial in each episode that seems like the true voice of large corporations. If you’re tired of the same canned crap the networks keep kicking out watch this show. It is better than anything else on TV, don’t let it die.
Better Off Ted Season One is available now on DVD and can be found on Amazon.com!