Corporate Comedy
On the whole, last spring’s scheduling announcements were much less painful than I was expecting. Chuck and Dollhouse were both teetering on the edge of extinction before they were yanked back into the land of the living (for now), so other than those shows that were blatantly DOA (I’m looking at you, Kings), there really weren’t that many heartbreaks.
Part of my sensation of pleasant surprise came from the renewal of a show called Better Off Ted, an ABC sitcom I initially dismissed as unfunny and then gradually grew to love. Better Off Ted is a wacky, occasionally pointed send-up of corporate culture, set in the sterile headquarters of a massive, ethically ambiguous company called Veridian Dynamics. The main character, the eponymous Ted, is a well-dressed, well-liked, well-meaning guy trying to balance the demands of his heartless boss and his hapless underlings. The humor revolves around the absurdities of bureaucracy, with a healthy dose of silly lab projects. Not every joke hits, and Ted’s on-again-off-again thing with his colleague Linda gets pretty tiresome. (Linda is cute, but not that bright, and her role as the conscience of Veridian Dynamics drags down the fun of the satire).
But Phil and Lem, the nerdy heads of Ted’s research division, were what won me over from my initial doubts. Phil and Lem are where Better Off Ted indulges in its silliest and most disturbing jabs at corporate science, as they struggle to weaponize pumpkins, use themselves as jetpack test subjects, cure baldness (that one goes pretty badly, actually), and keep Ted happy. The absurd projects are hilarious, but the relationship between Phil and Lem is what makes it really work; their bond is a study of that relationship that all too often goes unexamined on television today – the love between lab partners. Phil helps Lem try to get dates, they participate together in a secret Medieval Fight Club in the basement, and Lem goes off the deep end when Phil agrees to be cryogenically frozen as an experiment. They’re partners, they’re friends, and although there is a little hitch when Lem discovers Phil didn’t attend MIT as he had claimed, they ultimately support each other.
Phil and Lem; some problems with an unbreakable dinner plate
Ted as Don Draper
As the whole television world is now acutely aware, Mad Men is returning for its third season this Sunday night, and it’s not inappropriate to think about Better Off Ted in that exalted TV company. The tone, the content, the scope and ambition of Better Off Ted is, of course, completely different than something as subtle and finely tuned as Mad Men, but there are a few hints of influence that are worth thinking about. Women’s clothing and role in the workplace may have changed since the days of Sterling Cooper, but Ted is a veritable Don Draper doppelganger, complete with suit, slicked hair and sharp tie. He is Don without the dark side, and strolls around the uncannily similar office space with the same sense of mastery. To put it in SAT analogy terms, Better Off Ted is to Mad Men what Scrubs was to the best of ER – it takes the intense atmosphere, the psychological portraits, and the complex workplace relationships and punctures them, finding humor and satire inside the oh-so-serious setting. This week, the last two episodes of this season of Better Off Ted aired. I’m sad it’s gone, but I’m glad it’ll be coming back.
(And next week, Mad Men!)