Better Off Ted

_****½

With his company determined to freeze one of it's employees, Ted finds himself trying to justify his company's wishes as Phil refuses to go through with the mission.

After the untimely death of Arrested Development, I jumped at the chance to see Portia de Rossi (Veronica, in this series) in action again. I enjoyed every moment that this series was on the air, and a part of me died when it was cancelled so soon. I've never before managed to get my hands on a copy of the second season, and the last few episodes remain unaired in my area, so I look forward to eventually seeing how this series closed.

Veridian Dynamics, the company that Ted (Jay Harrington) works for has a maniacal view on efficiency, keeping the toilet paper at more than arm's length away from the toilet so as to encourage the reduction of it's use, water fountains activated by motion sensors that are so high on the wall the fountain can't be used while sensing, and chairs designed to be uncomfortable in order to cut down on day dreaming. What makes Veridian's ideas of company standards so funny is that they completely remove any sense of humanity from their dealings, unable to comprehend any deviation from their bottom line.

Linda's (Andrea Anders) determination to take the company for everything it's worth by stealing creamer is a wonderful statement on who she is as a person. She's hoarding something from work that she plans to use at work for the sole purpose of the fact that she feels she's owed karmically due to how the company uses it's employees. She justifies her actions by claiming that no one would really care about creamers anyway, and it's both insane and brilliant.

Ted following Veronica's orders and convincing Phil (Jonathan Slavin) that being frozen for a year would be a good idea says a lot about who Ted is as a person. I'm aware that it was played comically, and that everything worked out in the end, but Ted should have been willing to stand up for Phil's rights as a human long before he eventually did, and it's odd that the protagonist would have been put in that position and written to make that choice. It would have seemed more genuine if it had been Veronica who talked Phil into being frozen, with Ted attempting all the while to convince him otherwise.

Isabella Acres as Ted's daughter Rose is probably one of my favorite parts of the episode, but I just don't buy that a 9-year-old could be so well-spoken and eloquent. It just doesn't jibe for me in this episode.

The entire cast has impeccable comedic-timing; de Rossi plays Veronica with a detachment from high emotion that lends itself well to her uncertain management style, and Anders has a good grasp on keeping Linda's insecurities just barely visible under the surface. Slavin's Phil acts as an amazing sight-gag later in the episode, and Malcolm Barrett as Lem is genuinely hilarious as the socially-awkward scientist. There isn't a single negative thing to say about this entire cast.

Michael Fresco directs this episode with a near-constant amount of peppy background music that highlights just how insane this company is. Many of the jokes in this episode are blink-and-you've-missed-it, but when you catch them, they're magnificent. Fresco never misses a beat, but it isn't so jam-packed that the episode feels rushed.

Director Fresco's brother Victor Fresco writes the episode and we find Ted breaking the fourth wall every now and then to exposit to the audience. The dialogue is witty, the situations are clever, and the script is an absolute pleasure from beginning to end.

Ted is a quirky series whose humor seems to have gone over the heads of many people who caught it, and was missed by most of the people who would have enjoyed it. Better Off Ted would have been better off on a different network, because it had miles more to go and was taken out of the race far before the finish line.

Better Off Ted is in the running to become the feature for Fridays. The series ran from 2009 to 2010 on ABC with a total of 26 episodes.